In 2004, the noted videogame academic Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech) designed the “Howard Dean for Iowa game,” the first videogame ever commissioned by a U.S. political campaign. Even something as flashy as a videogame could not save Dean from the “Dean scream” debacle, but as Bogost himself later noted, “he was incredibly successful in changing the way political campaigns of all types are carried out.” We’re now at a different stage in the evolution of videogames and electoral politics, one in which new technology can be equally used to promote political participation and voter apathy. Enter Comedy Central’s Indecision Game, a smartphone and tablet game that plays something like a combination of Risk and the classic snarky trivia game “You Don’t Know Jack.” Players set up an avatar for themselves and compete against friends or random opponents in brief trivia matches, gaining points for each successful answer that transfer over to voters they then place on an electoral map of the United States.
