Learning Your Lesson

The most important idea to be taken away from the social impact games are the messages that they intend to impose on gamers. Most of the games are relatively straight forward and make no attempt to hide their message, whereas others have more subliminal messages that come out the farther along you get. My idea is to make a racing game where you start out with a relatively nice car (I didn't see any racing games that had social commentary so I figured it might be an interesting alternative.) The game would allow you to race your car, but there would be more realistic consequences when you violate the law or get into accidents. The fact is, most racing games promote aggressive driving because the consequences tend to be minimal.
Although my game is kind of a downer, it can be interesting to play more realistic games than the dramatized and exciting ones usually marketed to kids and teenagers. Ultimately, social impact games are not always intended to be fun, but rather have a more important message.