Sadly, they didn’t take our suggestion of having the player see how many cop cars they can shit on.
OAKLAND, California — It’s not often that something new for cultural alarmists to fret over just rolls up, all flashing and beeping. But here it comes: the homebrew Occupy arcade game on wheels. If conservatives are worried about videogames encouraging violence, imagine how they’ll react to an itinerant amusement designed to topple the 1%.
The OAK-U-TRON 201X console and the videogame that lives therein, Keep Me Occupied, are the most recent inventions of a movement that has spawned human-microphone apps and its own brand of music. They made their inaugural voyage Jan. 28 as Occupy protesters marched in Oakland, dragging the awkward cabinet along with them like ants shuttling weighty foodstuff. Protesters teamed up for games while miraculously avoiding the tear gas and flashbang grenades that eventually made their way into the crowds that day.
The OAK-U-TRON 201X (a nod to the Mega Man games that took place in the ambiguous year of 200X or 20XX) is the brainchild of game designers Alex Kerfoot, Anna Anthropy and Mars Jokela, a project designed both as entertainment and as a microcosm of the Occupy movement — collaborative, ambitious and optimistic. And it’s set to officially debut before the gaming community at San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference on Friday.