Is there anything more acutely embarrassing to a teenager than an adult attempting to be cool? The Election Commission does not seem to have understood this.
The EC, in association with the United Nations Development Program India, has developed a new game, Get Set Vote, in English and Hindi, to initiate voters into the tangled maze of the electoral process.
It seems the EC designed the game so that India’s voters could reflect on their role in the world's largest democracy. But in reality, the game works as an unintentionally revealing mirror to the EC's less appealing aspects.
Get Set Vote! is modelled on a classic Pacman format: navigate through a maze as fast as you can, picking up fruit, power ups and nuggets of information (because this is a educational game), all the while adroitly avoid floating monsters. Of course, it is nothing like Pacman. The mazes are there, as are the monsters, but the controls are straight from keyboard gaming hell.
The mazes are a most appropriate touch. If the creators of the game wanted to demonstrate just how difficult it is to modify the electoral rolls, they’ve done a stellar job. It might actually be easier to get a voter ID card than to stab the arrow keys long enough to get through Get Set Vote!
The game is meant to be educative, so whenever you run into a monster, you are given a stern warning message about how you know nothing about the electoral process. If you are particularly unlucky, you will hit a second monster and be rewarded for the game’s lack of skill with another sneering message.
The parallels go on. Just as the EC arbitrarily knocks thousands of people off the electoral roll months before a general election, the game has an annoying tendency to send your character right back to Level One just as you are making your way through the penultimate maze.
The game, like the EC, informs you that you can submit your documents online, but neglects to mention that if you actually want to get yourself a voter identity card, you have to make the trek to the nearest election office.
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The EC, in association with the United Nations Development Program India, has developed a new game, Get Set Vote, in English and Hindi, to initiate voters into the tangled maze of the electoral process.
It seems the EC designed the game so that India’s voters could reflect on their role in the world's largest democracy. But in reality, the game works as an unintentionally revealing mirror to the EC's less appealing aspects.
Get Set Vote! is modelled on a classic Pacman format: navigate through a maze as fast as you can, picking up fruit, power ups and nuggets of information (because this is a educational game), all the while adroitly avoid floating monsters. Of course, it is nothing like Pacman. The mazes are there, as are the monsters, but the controls are straight from keyboard gaming hell.
The mazes are a most appropriate touch. If the creators of the game wanted to demonstrate just how difficult it is to modify the electoral rolls, they’ve done a stellar job. It might actually be easier to get a voter ID card than to stab the arrow keys long enough to get through Get Set Vote!
The game is meant to be educative, so whenever you run into a monster, you are given a stern warning message about how you know nothing about the electoral process. If you are particularly unlucky, you will hit a second monster and be rewarded for the game’s lack of skill with another sneering message.
The parallels go on. Just as the EC arbitrarily knocks thousands of people off the electoral roll months before a general election, the game has an annoying tendency to send your character right back to Level One just as you are making your way through the penultimate maze.
The game, like the EC, informs you that you can submit your documents online, but neglects to mention that if you actually want to get yourself a voter identity card, you have to make the trek to the nearest election office.