{"143431":{"#nid":"143431","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Playing Politics with Your Smartphone","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EIn 2004, the noted videogame academic \u003Cstrong\u003EIan Bogost\u003C\/strong\u003E (Georgia Tech) designed the \u201cHoward Dean for Iowa game,\u201d the first videogame ever commissioned by a U.S. political campaign. Even something as flashy as a videogame could not save Dean from the \u201cDean scream\u201d debacle, but as Bogost himself later noted, \u201che was incredibly successful in changing the way political campaigns of all types are carried out.\u201d We\u2019re 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\u2019s Indecision Game, a smartphone and tablet game that plays something like a combination of Risk and the classic snarky trivia game \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know Jack.\u201d 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.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27659","created_gmt":"2012-07-31 10:40:56","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:12:36","author":"Christopher Ernst","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2012-07-30T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2012-07-30T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/speakeasy\/2012\/07\/30\/playing-politics-with-your-smartphone\/","title":"Source: Wall Street Journal"}],"groups":[{"id":"1299","name":"GVU Center"}],"categories":[{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}