I wrote this essay as part of a subject, "Cross boundaries: Children’s literature and other media", in the CLMC programme. I have been interested in how game rules and narratives can be used to teach players about complicated topics like democracy, international politics, economics, virology and so on. In this case, it is corruption.
Corrupt the Game is one of, if not, the first games in Thailand that deals with the anti-corruption education. I'm so proud to write about it, well, also a bit angry and depressed that Thai children need to learn about corruption at such a young age.
Anyway, Corrupt the Game is a visual novel, which can be played on both mobile app and website (Stream). The story sets in a dystopian authoritarian world and features Sci-fi elements like time traveling, grandpa-paradox, and futuristic gadgets and architecture. However, the game also hides many Easter eggs referencing to real corruption cases in Thailand. So technically, it is partially historical game about the history of Thai corruption.
In this study I will explain how the game design plays its role in anti-corruption education. This includes its procedural narrative (e.g., reward-punishment system and game routes), character design, meta-elements in the game (e.g., statistics of choices other players have made in the game), etc.
I played the game myself and used the game guide that fans made on Stream as my navigator to explore all the game's routes. Like all good visual novels, Corrupt the Game has many surprising hidden routes. So to make the most comprehensive analysis, I watched many game caster videos to get access to all the possible narratives in the game. What I learned from that was that analysing game caster videos can be an interesting method for game designers to see how each scene plays out and gets reacted to. All of these records are already public and free to use academically anyway.
This study is my first game study. I used the methodology that was not taught in the class. So pardon me for the wacky academic writing style I had in the first semester.
I plan to re-write the piece, when I have enough time...