You've got 18 months of hard political campaigning left before your Presidential elections: here in the UK we have less than a week. Next Thursday, 7 May, is our General Election and while take very seriously the job of choosing the least worst candidate available to us, it is fair to say that we are ready for some relief.
Debate Time is an iOS game that intends to do exactly that by switching our attention from the political party leaders to cartoon images of the same people.
Well, the same in every way short of being in any legal sense the same. So where the real world sees us having people like David Cameron and Ed Milliband, Debate Time gives us Dirk Cameroon and Ted Millipede. You've possibly read enough now: those names tell you just about everything because this is the level and the standard of the humor. If real-life Nigel Farage being called Niles Barrage tickles you, you're in for a good time.
It's just a slow time, whether you like the humor or not. You'll recognize the format of the game as it's approximately the same as US Presidential TV debate. You've had those since Lincoln, we've had them since five years ago – i.e. exactly once. We're already bored.
However, we also have
Question Time. That's a BBC series which ran very quietly and unobtrusively from 1979 to about two years or so ago when Twitter transformed it. Seriously, if you know anyone in the UK who watches
Question Time, check with them how far behind your time is so that you can avoid our Thursday evenings. If you see #bbcqt on Twitter, it will be preceded by roaring anger directed at the politicians on the show, roaring anger at the audience in the studio and roaring anger at the presenter, the BBC, the world, everyone. Also, every now and again, a tweet that is the funniest thing you've seen all day.
Debate Time is kind of in the form of
Question Time joined to our version of the Presidential debates so it's definitely picked a format with potential and it's a bit late in the game but still out before the election so still topical.
They just forgot the funny. Each round of the game has you being an audience member of some consciously stereotypical background: a woman concerned about pollution, a flat-cap-wearing guy with overtly eloquent views on the capitalist nature of society, and so on. They ask very, very, very long questions in the form of a lot of text on screen and then you get to choose a type of response from the various political leaders.
Tap on one like "Blame the unions" and off goes Dirk Cameroon giving a very, very, very long answer in the form of text. The writers have the political voices of these characters down, you can well imagine them saying this and dialog is tricky to write, they should be commended. But it just isn't funny. There's also the option to hear them speak but, as the makers admit from the start, it's a gibberish soundtrack. Might raise a smile, might not, but that's your lot.
Debate Time requires iOS 7.1 or later and a very particular sense of humor. It
costs $3 in the App Store or £2.29 if you want to go the whole Anglophile hog and open a UK iTunes Account.
Who is Debate Time for:
You need to be young. Really young. The sort of young that means you think you're smarter than the world but in fact you just haven't seen The Daily Show with Jon Stewart yet.
Who is Debate Time not for:
John Oliver.
-William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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