From Polygon: Escape from Woomera still highlights Australia’s shame 11 years on
Escape from Woomera, a first-person point-and-click game in which players tried to break out of the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Center (better known as the Woomera Detention Center), made its way around the world, and the Australian government – despite its best efforts at limiting information and imposing a media blackout — couldn’t stop it. The news media had covered Woomera extensively. Many people had read or heard about it. Now they could play it. Here was a first-world country that was locking up asylum seekers for indefinite periods of time, keeping them in conditions so harsh it led to suicide attempts, hunger strikes, lip sewing protests and desperate attempts at escape, and word was traveling through a video game.
The video game as documentary/social commentary is an interesting concept. Games need not always be in the pursuit of fun and points, but can also teach through an interactive experience.