The 2D Game Hilariously Satirizing A Political Scandal

At least one more indignity exists for former Alberta premier Alison Redford after her tumble from power earlier this year: having her likeness made into a video game in which the aim is to accumulate the taxpayer dollars allegedly wasted under her office.

The scandal was a huge deal in Canada, as Redford, once a rising star in the Canadian political scene, resigned in the face of corruption and misspending allegations.

The game, Aura of Power, is part of a healthy tradition of lampooning political figures through video games (not to mention a broader artistic tradition of political satire that spans human history).

"They're part of a long tradition of satire and mocking politicians—everything from graffiti to comic book characters suddenly appearing in local cartoons, things like that," said Sean Gouglas, a professor of humanities and computing at the University of Alberta.

Edmonton-based Rocketfuel Games created Aura of Power in the wake of the August release of a damning report from Merwan Saher, Alberta's auditor general, which criticized Redford's expenses and travel. The name of the game actually comes from comments Saher made, explaining that an "aura of power" around Redford was the reason nobody in her office questioned her lavish spending.

Redford resigned as premier (think governor), and later as a member of the legislative assembly, dogged by the revelations that she'd flown her daughter on government planes and that staff had booked false passengers so that she could fly alone or with her entourage.

"Twitter exploded with all these different hashtags, like #auraofpower, #skypalace … #fakesonaplane," Rocketfuel CEO and creative director Jason Suriano told Motherboard. "The one that stood out for me was the 'aura of power' hashtag and I thought, 'Well, even regardless of the Alison Redford political angle that sounds like a cool game title.'"

He pitched the idea to his five-person team, and they took around a week to build the game, racing to finish as quickly as possible in what was basically an internal hackathon.

As of its release in September, the game has been downloaded more than 3,000 times, and is available on both Apple and Android devices.

In the side-scrolling game, the player controls the former premier as she dodges journalists and accumulates diamonds in a vain attempt to reach the 'Sky Palace,' alluding to Redford's plan to build a penthouse suite, complete with a pantry for a butler, at the top of the Federal Building in Edmonton.

Of course, the twist is that the only way out of the game is to lose—Redford never does reach her palace, just as she never got her penthouse in real life.

When you do lose, a screen shows the total taxpayer dollars you've managed to waste (the longer you play, the more money is wasted) and presents embarrassing factoids about Redford's tenure in office.

It's entertaining, but whether or not these types of games actually have any impact on the players, or on the political circumstances they mock, isn't really clear. But Gouglas said there is some value to them beyond simple fun.

"Bringing awareness to political corruption and financial malfeasance, I think, is certainly something that these sorts of games are really good at doing, because people start talking about them," he explained.

Suriano said his game is more about having fun than playing serious politics. "I called it essentially like a next-gen or a digital political cartoon, and that's really what I think it is," he said. "It has some serious undertones but it's intended to make people laugh."

Earlier this year, a Rob Ford parody of Flappy Bird popped up, where players navigated a flying Ford head past the Toronto skyline. Part of the growth in these kind of games is fuelled by the simplicity of the technology that facilitates game design.

Even better than Flappy Ford is Crackathon, developed by two University of Waterloo systems design engineering students, where the player navigates a pixelated Rob Ford past cops and journalists in a hunt for marijuana and crack pipes. A voiceover of Ford's most shocking quotes provides the soundtrack.

"Parody games are fun to make because the quality of the game itself doesn't really matter," said Crackathon co-creator Nick Mostowich in an email. "People love the joke or the message, not necessarily the actual game."

Mostowich said that there are usually two motivations for making political parody games: business and fun.

"On one side you have game makers that want to cash in on a media frenzy. They set up a quick game with a catchy title and some ads in order to try to get as many eyeballs as possible. The other camp, my side of things, are the amateurs that just want to make something funny," he explained.

Not all of these types of games are dedicated to comedy, though. Some of them, Gouglas said, work to raise awareness of serious political issues, such as the genocide in Darfur.

"There's a spectrum here between these really quick, have-to-be-current-with-an-idea games and these really complex games," he said.