An Indonesian Political Candidate is the Hero of His Own Online Game

We previously covered stories about how social media has been used in politics in places like Singapore, Korea, and Indonesia. In Jakarta, one candidate for governor, Joko Widodo, stepped up his game quite literally by releasing an online game as part of his campaign.

Selamatkan Jakarta, meaning “Save Jakarta”, is a flash-based game published by Joko Widodo’s campagin team and created by Metric Design. The game mechanics are actually very similar to Angry Bird’s mechanics. In this game, players will play Joko Widodo’s character to throw various weapons such as tomato bombs, rockets, and TNT towards the enemies such as corrupt government officials, city criminals, and underground kingpins.

There are 30 available levels in this game and players should destroy the bad guys while not harming innocent citizens. While players move between levels, the screen will show Joko Widodo’s campaign messages. In the picture below, the screen shows message “Reform the Bureaucracy”.

Speaking to Tribunnews, Budi Purnomo Karjodihardjo, chief of Joko Widodo’s media center team, stated that the game has been played 50,000 times even though it was only released as a beta version last Saturday. Budi hopes the game will be played by one million people by the end of Jakarta Governor Election’s second round. Amid the recent tension involving religious and ethnic issues around the election, I really like this game because it brings a very refreshing and out-of-box campaign strategy.

Source: Tribunnews