Poetry vs Politics: The Game That Oughtta Be

Originally published at Appszoom dot com back in May the 15th, 2014.

This “game that oughtta be” series explores the vastest part of gaming: the void. The already explored Appsverse is really small compared to its nearly infinite potential, and many options are beyond an event horizon we can’t even conceive of in our wildest dreams.

As such, a game called “Poets vs Politicians” or any other variant may seem odd nowadays, but Tetris, Frogger or Loom sounded just as odd in their time. Anyway, it’s just a figurative title — perhaps PoVsPo for short, or Call of Rhetoric.

Word games and choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks have undergone a sharp raise since the advent of m-gaming. And yet, there are neither hardcore word-games (wow, that sounded tough) nor a hardcore word-gamer niche (ouroborosly).

Said hypothetical game shouldn’t be text-only. If we really want to break some ground, there oughtta be some cross-genre pollination here.

The great inspiration has been the Ace Attorney series. Nobody would have bet a dime a few years ago on a game about courts, lawyers and stuff taken from late night low budget TV series. Even revamped with a dystopian hi-tech theme, in the end it’s about the legal system. No headshots, no objections, Your Honor.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. A game about… lawyers?

The idea would be similar, but there wouldn’t be any need to create a whole new world from scratch, nor even create new characters at all. Videos of real politicians’ speeches (or selected parts of them, unless you want Fidel Castro to run your device out of storage) would be played, and the player would have to stop it when a blatant fallacy was told.

The developer uploads vids and marks ‘windows of action.’ For example, if there’s a rhetorical error from 0:46 to 0:51; as soon as players push the red button within that time, they’d gain experience points.

An additional dialogue could pop up to challenge players to choose between several options of fallacy: reductio ad adsurdum, argument ad hominem, false analogy… (run to Wikipedia, illiterati!)

Once all the mistakes have been pointed out, the level is cleared, a fanfare sounds and points are scored based on how many times you needed to play the vid. At higher levels, historical figures might show up, such as JFK, Churchill, Lincoln, Hemingway… Bush Jr. Ehem.

These days, videos of politicians are available everywhere. It would be extremely easy for anyone to take a vid, time tag the ‘windows of action’ and upload it to a PoVsPo website, where other players could choose their favorites.

As close as rhetoric is to Exact Science, there should be little room for trolling. This doesn’t mean we aren’t going to kill ourselves laughing (… or crying) reviewing how our beloved civil servants address each other, both in the Senate and in public.

This kind of gameplay might also be reversed, playing with poetry instead. Fallacies (‘mistakes’) are very welcomed in the noble art of lying — I mean Poetry; we’ve already talked about Politics above. The game would be about pointing out figures of speech.

At the start of the vid you’d be required to point out, for example, two synecdoches, a polysyndeton, and a prosopopeia. And bonus points if you dig up the chiasmus (you know where the wiki is but don’t know who your high school Literature teacher was).

I’m not sure how many politicians would dare to upload their speeches, but I’m pretty sure this game would be a breeding ground for Poetry Slams, sophomore goths and bored housewives. E-ver-y-bo-dy loves poetry, but few can be a rhapsodist for a living.