Breakthrough, a New York-based non-profit group, has recently launched a freely available PC game called ICED, which hopes to help gamers “understand how important it is to restore due process to the immigration system.”
ICED, an acronym for “I Can End Deportation,” puts gamers in the role of one of five characters—an asylum seeker from Haiti, a student from Japan, or two green card holders from Poland and India. The object of the game is to carry on life as an undocumented immigrant in America while avoiding deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”)—see what they did there?
Players are awarded points for doing good deeds in the game’s virtual New York City, but any active participation in the community invariably ends up assigning the player enough negative points to send them on to Level 2, The Detention Center. The game’s designers admit that there is no way to avoid being placed in detention and that the player will always end up either being kept in jail, released, or deported. However, the final outcome of the game is always chosen at random, regardless of any choices the player previously made.
The randomness of the outcome is intended to send the message that US deportation procedure leaves immigrants with little control over their future and underscores the inconsistencies that the developers see in the American legal system.
For more information on ICED, visit Voice of America News or Breakthrough’s website.
I wonder if the Fox News reporter played the game before speaking about it. I like the idea “that the final outcome of the game is always chosen at random, regardless of any choices the player previously made.”
Decent message, will probably start a big huh-bub.
Jesus, the interviewer needs to shut the hell up and let the woman answer. I half expected her to ask “Is it true this game teaches Mexicans how to steal white babies to use as heroin mules?”
Interesting concept. I really want to play it
This looks like it could be the most important game I ever play.
Did I win?
Not the most annoying interview I’ve seen on Fox, but it ranks up there.
LOL at:
-Fox News for “ending” the interview just as the woman was starting to make sense when the reporter was trying to put down the “game” as just another way to make the govt look bad.
-The Japanese guy for wearing a shirt with the MTV logo.
I liked the blurb on the bottom saying that 1/3 of gamers are between the ages of 6 and 17. What you mean to say is that 2/3 of gamers are adults, with voting rights, which is who this game is for? WEIRD, Fox News. Weird.
I have never before wanted to reach through the internet and punch someone in the face more than that newscaster at the end of the interview.