Socially Conscious Gaming #1 : ICED (I Can End Deportation) Review

ICED (I Can End Deportation)
http://www.icedgame.com/

ICED, a game developed by non-profit group Breakthrough, has you play as one of five immigrants from various parts of the world, most of whom have come to the United States on some sort of a visa or through other legal channels, but through one rather ridiculous bureaucratic situation or another are now in 'undocumented' status. The game plays like a cross between Grand Theft Auto, Pac-Man and a labor studies class at UC Berkeley, and the goal seems to simply be to survive for a set amount of time without being collared by Homeland Security and sent to a Detention Center.

The game drops you off on the streets of an urban setting, reminiscent of part of Chicago or New York. The goal is initially to move about the map and pick up as many "dots" as you can. Each of these dots contains an "event", where you are presented with either some sort of illegal activity, or asked a trivia question about immigration laws. Choosing the wrong answer puts "Homeland Security" agents out on the streets, who walk random patrols. If one spots you they give chase, and if they catch you, you move on to the second portion of the game, which is the Holding Facility. This grim scenario is the same as the city sequence in that you have to track down dots, except the dots are now mostly info-bits about the various injustices of detention and deportation, and they are also harder to find and access. You also have an omnipresent 'suicide' option at this point, where you can choose to simply be deported from the country and end the game. Presumably, if you hit all the dots in the Holding Facility you get to go back out on the streets and try again, but I was never able to actually do it as there were a few that seemed impossible to access.

Immigration is such a hot-button, argument-and-flame-prone issue right now that I really don't want to delve into personal opinion or particulars of the arguments, so I'll just stick to how effective it is as a game, and how well it presents its case.