All Your Political Base Are Belong to Us

Video games with a political agenda

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


“Advergames” are an increasingly popular method of bringing commercial messages to the nation’s 117 million or so video gamers. Interest groups are also getting into the action, hooking up with design shops such as Persuasive Games, which, for a mere $40,000, will design a custom game to get out your political message.

 

Game / Creator

How to Play

Feels Like…

Nice Touch

Airport Security
Persuasive Games

Oversee a busy airport security checkpoint, relieving passengers of contraband such as water bottles, toasters, and pants

If the ACLU reissued the ’80s arcade game Tapper

Tapper

Courtesy announcement: “Please be advised: Security personnel are authorized to use groping.”

Take Back Illinois
Illinois Republicans

Take Back Illinois

Lower medical costs, boost civic engagement, and improve schools and the economy

SimCity meets Milton Friedman

Rigged so that you can only win if you freeze taxes or cap malpractice damages

Darfur is Dying
University of Southern California students, winners of the Darfur Digital Activist Contest

Play a refugee trying to find water while hiding from Jeeps filled with rampaging Janjaweed militiamen

Sid Meier’s End of Civilization

Sid Meyer's End of Civilization

So you’re sitting on your butt playing a video game about genocide

Border Patrol
The Insurgent, a white supremacist website

Border Patrol

Blow away Mexican drug smugglers and “breeders” with children in tow as they cross into the United States

Duck Hunt for racists

Score 88 points and win. The number is a neo-Nazi code for “Heil Hitler” (H is the 8th letter of the alphabet).

Bushgame
Activist programmer Jason Oda

Guide Hulk Hogan and Mr. T as they battle corporate pigs and mutant Bush Cabinet members in a surreal fight to save the world

Old-school Nintendo, as imagined by the South Park guys

South Park

Bridging a gaping chasm with a super-nerdy bar chart of the federal deficit. Don’t fall into that $500 billion hole!

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate