Facebook game with involvement of history professor spotlights immigrants
Facebook games tend to end up in the growing pile of cultural detritus, along with reality TV and tweeting congressmen. Usually, they involve coercing one’s friends to join in silly, virtual undertakings like farming pixilated cows or putting hits on badly animated mobsters. America 2049, released in April, is a stark exception: Start playing, and a stern-looking Victor Garber, best known for his work as CIA spy Jack Bristow on Alias, instructs you to capture a dangerous terrorist. Fail, Garber warns you, and a plague might destroy America. Or what’s left of it: These United States aren’t so united in 2049. They have turned into a string of loosely affiliated entities, bound together by fear, hate, and disease.
The game’s dark, dystopian tenor and its plethora of stars—Lost’s Harold Perrineau plays the terrorist, comedian Margaret Cho and former 24 president Cherry Jones also play supporting parts—aren’t the only things setting America 2049 apart. Created by the human rights group Breakthrough, the game was designed to raise awareness for an array of social-justice issues, from immigration to racism. Clicking on a grid representing realistic maps of major American cities, the player uncovers videos, encrypted notes, newspaper clippings, and other information relevant to the mystery at hand. As is the case with every worthwhile game, the clock ticks here, too, urging the player not only to find the alleged terrorist but also to decide whether it is the fugitive or the federal government he should fear.
More than 20,000 players have played the game since its release, according to a Breakthrough spokeswoman, a small number compared to the hordes who flock to a megahit like Farmville but an immense one considering America 2049’s demanding gameplay and thought-provoking themes. In addition, Breakthrough produced a series of events, held in institutions such as the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Mich., allowing players to explore in person some of the real-life issues raised by the game....
For America 2049 to be both entertaining and educational, however, Breakthrough needed a scholar who could help to weave a rich historical fabric into the game’s fast-paced action. Enter Hasia Diner, a professor of history and the director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. Diner is best known for her most recent book, We Remember With Reverence and Love, which puts to rest the myth that American Jews were silent in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. She has rarely played video games, she said, but when Breakthrough approached her two years ago with the idea for America 2049, she was intrigued. Together with three of her graduate students, she put together a treasure trove of historical artifacts—from the New York Times’ coverage of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 to a poster for the 1928 movie Abie’s Irish Rose, about an interfaith relationship between a Catholic woman and a Jewish man—that are strewn throughout the game. These historical objects both help make the game world feel more realistic, and allow players the opportunity to examine these rarely seen gems firsthand....