I laughed when I read the the review of FatWorld in Wired Magazine. It opens with this paragraph:
“Ian Bogost likes to play with failure. The 30-year-old Georgia Tech professor designs popular Web games powered by sarcasm and social commentary.”
You mean, as opposed to the other ninety percent of popular culture aimed at teens and Generation Y, also powered by hip sarcasm, irony and “social commentary”? Bogost goes on to defend his purely commercial venture (nothing wrong with that!) by adding this self-serving nonsense:
“Bogost describes how games can engage us through irony, luring us into a pattern of actions that we recognize as reprehensible,…”
No, all it does is create depressed, disaffected, apathetic people. The subtle message is “Why do anything? The fix is in, everyone is corrupt.” Well, if the fix is in and everyone is corrupt, why shouldn’t that also apply to Bogost? How about something engaging, hip and uplifting? Now that would be truly unique.
