Laws of Play

ICED Tackles Complex Deportation Issues Through Gaming

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.