Simulation games, popular factual media and civic engagement: an audience study of Asylum Exit Australia

Asylum: Exit Australia is a first person simulation game that puts the player in the shoes of an asylum seeker. Produced to accompany the television series Go Back to Where You Came From (SBS, 2011) it seeks to make a new kind of intervention in a divisive social debate. This paper considers simulation games in terms of their ability to foster civic engagement. Locating simulation games within the broad field of popular factual media several strands of continuity are identified, while attention is also paid to the specific characteristics of simulation games, particularly the relationship they establish between player and text. Audience responses to Asylum provide insight into the experience of play and the ways in which audiences relate this experience to the asylum seeker debate.