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Most Boring Game Ever? Government Turns to Microsoft To Balance Budget
Most of us play video games to get away from the troubles of real life, but some in the government want to use games to convey the mind-numbing complexity of governance. Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of President Obama's finance commission has asked Microsoft head Steve Ballmer to look into making a game based on balancing the budget.
The thing is, Bowles isn't trying to discover creative ways to actually balance the budget. He wants to use it as a tool to educate the public and show them that tough choices will have to be made along the way. So, instead of solving the problem, this seems like an exercise in lowering the bar of expectation to the point where the public won't expect success. Strange.
Who knows what will happen with this, but if left up to gamers, we can handle a balancing the budget game. Decisions of life or death? We've learned how to make the tough choices in plenty of games. How to conserve resources? We always have something stored away for later. How to survive against tremendous odds? We've saved the universe. Saving a few trillion dollars shouldn't be a big deal.
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