by David Rasmussen

Created on: April 21, 2009

So, question, somebody takes a social issue and decides they really need to bang it out in a format they feel will reach the most people in the quickest way possible (and it wouldn't help if said effort returned money for the work put into it). Movies and TV Series cost too much, documentaries are not universially known (at least to me) for being gilded cash cows, and there are a ton of books out there on just about everything under the Alpha Quadrant. So what is there left?

Video games? Sure, you could go there, no problem. Even a third party developer worth their tech can whip up a fairly decent social commentary video game... if they actually put the effort to make a game worthy of the topic, and not just slapped together to be historically accurate (aka boring) or a retarded dumbed down shock and awe game to get people to buy into it because it's controversial or pretty to look at... or both.

So are video games based on social issues a good method to educate audiences on complicated issues? Probably not

Even at present gen tech you'll never make a game that can cover really big issues just right without the game losing something in the translation, or just missing the translation all together in some cases or getting people on their soapboxes in full on rant and rave mode... more on that in a second.

The best games that educate are not as much about social issues as they are hands on historical sims. One of the best examples of this, of course, is the Total War series on the PC (which culminated in it's greatest achievement, Rome : Total War, some years back). This was an all consuming glorious product that put the legions of Rome (and later the nomadic barbarian hordes of latter day Germany) in your hands to go all out and really get your Ceasar on with. And yes, it wasn't all about the violence, you had the daily grind of managing an ancient empire as well including politics to really grind your teeth into, bringing forth a tasty gaming meal that really fed your mind and nourished your gaming spirit all at the same time. You don't get that very often out of a historical sim. Opposite side of that, of course, being the latest Civil War first person shooter game that came out also sometime ago. Yeah... wow... I only seen footage of this but this is so slow and clunky and really lame I couldn't imagine why somebody actually made the effort to put this out, let alone expect other people to put time into it.

From there the best educational games that make you feel

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