Game One: ID The Creep
The purpose of ID the creep is to teach, or at the very least, inform, teenagers about the dangers of online chatting, instant messaging and emailing people you do not know. You choose a character, choose a format of communication and then you choose what to say and whether the online “friend” is a “creep” or not. Prior to playing the game I had assumed that the character you portray would be a neutral gender, but since all characters you have to pick from are female, it would be rightful to assume that the creator of the game was aiming the game more towards the teenage female audience rather than the teenage male audience. I say teenage because all the girls are between the ages of 15 and 17 years old. In the end, the game is structured so that all the “friends” that you are communicating with online are actually creeps. The game does a fairly decent job displaying the ways that a person online can seem like a friend, when in reality they are a “creep”, by using neutral phrases like “hey what’s up” and talking as if they are part of your generation of people, and live their lives the same way you do as well, however the fact that they chose to portray only female characters slightly takes away from the reality of the game. Perhaps it’s because most news cases deal with girls who talk to guys that they don’t know online, and then a negative consequence occurs, but the truth of the matter is that males are also unknowingly exploiting themselves to “creeps” on the internet.
Game Two: Escape Your Boyfriends Room
“Escape Your Boyfriends Room” would most properly fit into the educational genre of games as well. You are “mouse-sitting” for your boyfriend, and while snooping around his room you discover things in his room that lead you to the conclusion that you should no longer be with him. From that point you are on a mission to find the key to escape his room. It took me awhile to realize that what seemed like random numbers, actually when put together, became a phone number you were supposed to dial on the phone to get the key. Once I figured that out I received the key and was then informed that the number you are supposed to dial in the game is the number for an abuse hotline. I found this to be educational because it displays signs that the person you’re dating may be abusive and provides you with a number if you are in an abusive relationship, and because of that, one could also sort this game into the advertisement genre of games. As far as the effectiveness of the game, I didn’t find it to be that affective because although it shows you “signs” of a potential abusive partner, it does nothing further to inform you about abusive relationships. The title alone suggests that the intended audience is women.
