New Game Sweeps the Nations

Smokey Diamond, cultural affairs correspondent at Stevieslaw, has been following a new interactive computer game that is sweeping college campuses and occupying tables at Starbucks across the country.  The game, called “What will the Pakghanistanis Do,” allows for one on one interaction between a player in the United States and one in Pakghanistan.  Smokey notes, “The computer will posit an incident—and, here, considering the nature of the region we are dealing with, almost anything goes—and the players can exchange response and counter-response until the incident is resolved, or some country, say for example, India, is nuked.”  Consider the case of Raymond Allen Davis, a U.S. diplomat accused of killing two Pakghanistanis in “cold blood” or in “self-defense.”  A U.S. game player might withhold foreign aid to Pakghanistan to assure Davis’ release only to have a Pakghanistani player respond by impounding all Nato fuel trucks.  What fun!

Stanley Spade, spokesperson for “Games Are Us” the developers of the WWPD game, sees more far-reaching implications.  “We are faced with a situation in Pakghanistan,” he said, “where we can be fairly sure that the ordinary citizen and the State Department have about the same probability of predicting how the Pakghanistanis will react to any response that is posed.”  “In this sense, the game represents not only Pakghanistan but the real world very well. “That is, in dealing with the reaction to our policies in many countries, in which the culture is a mystery to us, the response of an ordinary American citizen is as likely to succeed as that of a seasoned diplomat.”  Eric Cantor, representative for Virginia, was quick to seize on this aspect of the game by noting, “This, in essence, returns all foreign policy decisions to the will of the common people, a result that our founding fathers could only have approved of.” Sarah Palin, when asked for a Tea-Party response to the implications of the game, shot a moose.

General Petraeus, gaming away in his super-secret bunker, deep under the Disney complex in Orlando, Florida, had only time to say, “This is really exciting. I have no idea what my lattest response will provoke.”