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Feature: 'Hot off the Grill: la Molleindustria's Paolo Pedercini on The McDonald's Video Game'

Today's final Gamasutra feature sees Patrick Dugan quizzing Paolo Pedercini from Italian game developer la Molleindustria on making 'serious games' aimed at social change...

Simon Carless, Blogger

February 27, 2006

1 Min Read
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Today's final Gamasutra feature sees Patrick Dugan quizzing Paolo Pedercini from Italian game developer la Molleindustria on making 'serious games' aimed at social change/awareness, specifically discussing his newly released, satirical PC title The McDonald's Game. As Pedercini explains when asked about the goal of the free-to-play PC title, in terms of gameplay: "Specific goals are not always necessary, especially in simulation and tycoon games. It is implied that the player's goal is to make the system work, but as it happens, in SimCity, you have many degrees of freedom. There are many ways to succeed in the McDonald's game. There's a forum on the official site where players share tips and strategies. Anyway many users were disappointed about the lack of a final goal. We can only answer that in the reality of capitalism, there are no final goals, we're all stuck in a system where the few live to make more and more money and most of the people are always trying to live better or simply survive. In the game, you take the part of the few." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more information on this potentially controversial title (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).

About the Author

Simon Carless

Blogger

Simon Carless is the founder of the GameDiscoverCo agency and creator of the popular GameDiscoverCo game discoverability newsletter. He consults with a number of PC/console publishers and developers, and was previously most known for his role helping to shape the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Conference for many years.

He is also an investor and advisor to UK indie game publisher No More Robots (Descenders, Hypnospace Outlaw), a previous publisher and editor-in-chief at both Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine, and sits on the board of the Video Game History Foundation.

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