At first, the game looks like so many other first-person shooters: cross hairs aiming missiles at a raft of enemy targets.
But September 12th isn't like other games. Because when a missile shot at Arab terrorists kills an innocent bystander in the game's fictional Afghani village – and it's nearly impossible not to – other villagers run over, cry at their loss and then, in a rage, morph into terrorists themselves.
"The mechanics of the game are about this horrible decision, whether to do things, to take actions that will inevitably kill civilians," says Noah Wardrip-Fruin, co-editor of First Person, a collection of essays about the relationship between stories and games.
Indeed, September 12th has a point to make: that our actions have consequences, and that we should try to understand why other people take to arms. As Wardrip-Fruin puts it, the goal of the game is to develop in the player "empathy for the people who will become terrorists out of that experience, of having seen innocent people killed."
Earlier this week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued its annual report looking at websites and online games that promote hate, racism and anti-Semitism.
The report seeks to raise awareness about how hate groups are exploiting technology to spread their message, says Mark Weitzman, director of the center's Task Force Against Hate.
Such use of technology "teaches us that there always have been people in our society that will use whatever means is available to send out a message of hate," Weitzman says. "Our concern is how to deal with it."
He points to games like Concentration Camp Manager, Ethnic Cleansing, Ghettoopoly and others as examples of games put out by extremist groups.
"There's suicide-bombing games, (and) the full range taken from today's headlines," says Weitzman. But "you won't find them advertised, especially because some of them are rip-offs of legitimate games. I don't think the people at Monopoly would be very happy about Ghettoopoly."
But rather than focus on games that disseminate messages of hate, Wardrip-Fruin, September 12th designer Gonzalo Frasca and Persuasive Games founder Ian Bogost would prefer that people instead consider games that foster understanding and tolerance of other cultures.
"I think that what is essential is allowing players to freely experiment within a virtual environment and encourage them to discuss what they play with their peers," says Frasca. "September 12th carries its own humanistic message, but I think that eventually, it would be even better if players would be able to use games as small laboratories for exploring – and contesting – their own beliefs."
Bogost says there are a growing number of games that promote positive messages and mutual understanding. For example, he thinks that Real Lives 2004 does a good job of helping players see what it would be like to experience life as a member of another culture.
"You're taking on the role of another person who is not you," says Bogost. "Maybe (it's) a person from rural India. You're implicating yourself in all the trials or tribulations or difficulties that you might not think of."
Another game Bogost likes is Civilization III, because of the way it makes players work together, regardless of race or religion.
To Wardrip-Fruin, it's just as important to look at how a game is built as it is to look at a game's message.
"It's important to think about the structure of the game," he says, "not just from these hate sites, but from mainstream publishers, if we're going to understand these issues."
He thinks that hate groups are doing no more than exploiting a style of game – for example, first-person shooters – for their own purposes.
"If you think about what these people are doing on these hate sites, they're taking a set of well-understood game mechanics that are about hating someone – about hating the Germans during World War II – and finding them and killing them," Wardrip-Fruin explains. "So it's very easy to just slap (on) the image of the group you hate. I would argue the message is the same: Find the group you hate and go and kill them."
Frasca agrees.
"Keep in mind that a lot of commercial games – following the Hollywood tradition – use token enemies like Arabs (and) Vietnamese," he says, "which are shot in these games without the players thinking twice about the ideological message that these games carry. Lots of people start thinking about this when, say, Hezbollah launches an anti-Israel game, but there are plenty of anti-Arab games that are available at Wal-Mart at $39.95."
Still, that's not to say that all violence discourages mutual understanding.
"I do not think that killing virtual people is wrong, though – it is a lot of fun, indeed," Frasca says. "But virtual killing is totally different from real killing. As long as we can make that difference within a critical attitude, the situation does not need to be problematic."
But Frasca also says there are countless games that promote neither hate nor violence.
Wardrip-Fruin concurs, and says open-ended simulation games like The Sims do a very good job of encouraging constructive thought in game players.
"It's very hard to imagine one that is about hating some ethnic or religious other," he says. "I'd say that the fundamental thing about a computer game is the structure of what you do as a participant, and the structure of something like SimCity or The Sims is about understanding a system, and trying to make it grow in the way you want it to grow."
Frasca goes so far as to say that some massively multiplayer games, even ones involving violence, help players understand each other better.
"Online games such as EverQuest foster cooperation between players from all over the world," he explains. "Even if there can be language barriers that can interfere with the communication, EverQuest allows players to work together based on their skills, without focusing on their gender, age, nationality (or) religion."
According to Bogost, there is a bright future for games that promote mutual tolerance and understanding.
But right now, says Frasca, games with such agendas are few and far between.
"Games for tolerance are (in) their infancy," he says. "But I think they have a great potential because games always allow you to be in somebody else's shoes and viewing the world through their eyes. And that is the essential requirement for tolerance: Understanding that other people have different realities that may not be the same (as) ours."
