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Video game propaganda
Posted: Thursday, September 11, 2008 12:01 pm
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A new online video game developed by professors at Dartmouth and NYU is said to offer "an exploration of the issues surrounding genetically modified organisms". However, the game constitutes propaganda, as determined by the very criteria its creators appear to accept. The point of the game, called 'Profit Seed', is to protect a field from GM seeds, so that corporate lawyers won't take the farmer's land.

Profit Seed was developed by Helen Nissenbaum, professor of computer science at New York University and a senior fellow of the NYU School of Law, and Mary Flanagan, the newly-appointed first chair of Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College.

Both of them are part of Dartmouth's 'Values at Play' project, which seeks to "harness the power of video games in the service of humanistic principles".

To play the video game, the player attempts "to control the wind, trying to plant heirloom seeds while preventing GMO seeds from blowing onto a farmer's plots. If enough GMO seeds land in the field and germinate, the lawyer from an agribusiness corporation comes to sue the farmer and take his land."

The game is billed as a genuine learning tool, with the claim that "[a]ll information was taken from major news sources or peer-reviewed scientific studies." However, a review of the references given shows the sources are as biased as the game itself.

The sources include Friends of the Earth, Center for Food Safety, Purefood.org and GM Freeze. For 'balance', one assumes, The New York Times is the major source.

At its website, Values at Play carries an article condemning the US Army for offering a video game which acts as a recruiting tool.

"At a minimum, the Army hopes 'America’s Army' will act as 'strategic communication' to expose 'kids who are college bound and technologically savvy' to positive messaging about the Army", the article complains. "Phase one of the propaganda effort is to expose children to 'Army values' and make service look as attractive as possible. The next phase is direct recruiting."

One has to wonder if Profit Seed is a propaganda effort, designed to expose children to 'neo-Marxist values', and make anti-biotech activism look attractive.

Could the next phase be "direct recruiting"?

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GMO (noun) 1. An acronym for the term, 'Genetically Modified Organism'. 2. A plant, animal or microbe with a genetic code which has been intentionally altered, such as through forced evolution (see selective breeding); through random mutations induced with radiation or chemicals (see mutagenesis); or through the selective transfer, promoting or silencing of specific genes (see genetic engineering). 3. Most generally, any descendant of a primordial urbiote. (See evolution.)

obelus (noun) A dagger-shaped typographical symbol [ † ] which directs a reader's attention to important matters. From the Greek, obelus, literally, a roasting skewer.

GMObelus (noun, proper) A publication directing the attention of readers to the latest news and commentary regarding the development and use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture and related fields.

peer (noun) 1. One of two or more computers sending data to each other over the same network. 2. One of two or more persons sharing information with each other over such a network. (See also, 'remote peer'.)

peer review (noun phrase)  A process by which peers review information shared over a network, rather than each other. (Compare, argumentum ad hominem.)

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