The success of politically engaged games

Political and actvist games have been increasing both in number and popularity lately. From Disaffected! to Republic: The Revolution, from McVideogame, to Democracy , from The Political Machine to September 12th. There are loads of examples of games dealing with these subjects. I do believe that games are an excellent channel for this kind of discussion, and they are particularly strong embracing one aspect of the discussion:

Often, the success of those games in expressing their point of view is related to characteristics of the computer itself. Games such as McVideogames and Disaffected portray an oppressive environment, indifferent to human drama but not to cold machinations from a higher stance. Since the artistic struggle of videogames in the last years has been the representation of emotional and dramatic content, we could say those games take advantage of the media shortcomings in order to represent their point of view. In a similar way, The Political Machine depict political campaigns not so much as a debate of ideas, but as a bunch of variables to be conquered. Who would say this is not what happens more often than not? In those cases, the human drama is the lack of attention it gets.

On a related note, I am curious about Utopia, a game by Santiago Siri that will be showcased at the GDC this year. Not so much for the political content, but for its dialogue system. Too bad I can't go.