A few weeks ago I mentioned an article on video game journalism I was working on, which will be in the next Emmie, and one aspect of the article concerned the availabilty of games that have a social conscience. An article released by the AP discusses how real life issues are invading video games.

Although many good points were made, what interested me were the political responses in online games. There was an online vigil in Everquest after September 11th, an anti-war protest at There.com and a suggested protest in the Sims Online for the addiiton of a McDonald's logo. Another hilarious one involved a patch to allow anti-war protests in an online war game. Granted, these weren't built into the game, but the fact that people are using video games as a conduit for political protest is an interesting step forward.