Report: UK Serious Games Conference Pranked By Anti-McDonalds Group?
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Report: UK Serious Games Conference Pranked By Anti-McDonalds Group?[06.06.06]
According
to online reports, the UK-based International Serious Games Event,
which deals with games for educational, corporate training, and other
uses, this week hosted its conference
in Birmingham, England, complete with a session by Andrew Shimery-Wolf,
Strategic Comm. Mgr at fast food giant McDonald’s, on "McChange:
Serious Games from Training to Corporate Social Responsibility."
Shimery-Wolf claims to be part of an organization named McDonald's Interactive,
which has apparently announced that it "is striking out on its own from
parent company McDonald's." "We can no longer stand by while McDonald's
corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin," said Andrew
Shimery-Wolf, co-director of the former Interactive Division.
However, as is clear by the apparent text of Shimery-Wolf's speech
at the legitimate International Serious Games Event, someone has been
hoaxed - the speech claims that McDonald's has run an elaborate
'serious game' to help work out the future of its business.
The results of this? "We began developing a simulation of the fast-food
industry, for use by managers in developing market strategies." said
Division CTO Sam Grossman. "When we added a climate simulation module,
it showed those strategies helping lead to global calamity...
Management doesn't seem to care, and we can't sit back and fiddle while
Rome burns, so our team has decided to break away from McDonald's and
do something about it."
While it's possible that only the website is fake, a set of pictures
on the McDonald's Interactive site, which is registered in Italy,
clearly show someone giving the hoax speech, including bogus slides, to
an audience apparently at the International Serious Games Event.
As for the culprits, an update at serious games weblog Water Cooler Games
indicates that an email response to a McDonald's Interactive press
request came back as: 'Sent by: admin@rtmark.com', linking the stunt to
the social activism group RTMark, which has previously
"swapped the electronics of talking Barbie and GI Joe toys and then
returned them to the store... and then issued a message as the 'Barbie
Liberation Organization'", among other stunts.
Previously, particular attention had been given to the developers at la Molleindustria, who have previously been interviewed at Gamasutra,
are also based in Italy, and have already created the fake McDonald's
The Video Game, which gives the player "the opportunity to discover all
the secrets behind the fast food restaurant that is one of the biggest
companies in the world."