Gamified Politics: Both Jakarta Governor Candidates Now Have Own Online Games

You can always walk one step faster when you are the incumbent candidate in a political campaign. That’s what’s happening with the incumbent candidate in Jakarta’s governor election, Fauzi Bowo launched his online game today. Even though the official date for the second round campaign is September 14 to 16, 2012, his campaign team managed to speed things up a bit.

Bersatu Jakarta (Jakarta Unite) is an online flash game for PCs and tablets. You can play on Fauzi Bowo’s Facebook page or his official website. Before Fauzi launched his online game, his rival candidate, Joko Widodo already started this kind of campaign. Jokowi (his nickname) released an online game titled Selamatkan Jakarta (Save Jakarta), which we featured last month.

The character in this new game looks like Fauzi in the form of Mario Bros. He’s a tiny form wearing a suit and a helmet with his signature mustache. But the graphics are not quite as good as Jokowi’s game. Fauzi’s character involvement in every stage also doesn’t look as prominent as Jokowi in his game. In this game, Fauzi looks like an icon, not the main character who plays a role in each stage. In the first stage, Sky Train vs MRT, you can drag and drop passengers to enter the train. But Fauzi is not the main focus.

Before its official launch, Jokowi’s game has already been played by 50,000 users. Fauzi’s campaign team had targeted the 4,662 people who like the Fauzi Bowo Facebook Fanpage.

The team campaign stated that this game is not made for the governor campaign. The online game is launched to celebrate the anniversary of Fauzi’s official website, Bangfauzi.com which started in 2007. The team claims that they developed this game with no budget.