Robert McHenry dismisses video games as a way to develop real-life skills. But can games get us more engaged in real life, specifically in politics?
Pollsters have long cataloged the detachment that many people feel from politics: in Harvard’s spring 2010 survey of 18- to 29-year-olds, 36 percent said people like them don’t have a say in what government does, while 23 percent said political involvement rarely has tangible results. Just a week before the November 2010 vote, 34 percent of respondents to a Pew poll had given little or no thought to the elections. At the same time, within days of its December launch, an online WikiLeaks game attracted a million users who played Julian Assange stealing documents from President Obama. Are games like this the solution to the problem of low political engagement?