When Being In the Game is Not a Game

The phrase "Are you in the game?" takes on new meaning now that the Bay Area Video Coalition is sponsoring development for a new serious game about sex trafficking that is based on the documentary Sands of Silence.

I'd be interested to hear more about the game mechanic of this project about human trafficking, tentatively called SOS Slaves. Will they pursue a procedural rhetoric that looks at how geopolitics dictates patterns of global migration and exploitation? Or will the point of view of the game be dictated by what Ian Bogost has called a "rhetoric of failure" in which the algorithm draws attention to the impossibility of winning.

Rik Panganiban of Rikomatic explains more about the project in "'SOS Slaves' digital game challenges youth to help end sex trafficking."