wgitmo.jpg Currently on display at Parsons School Of Design in New York is a mod of Wolfestein 3D called WolfenGitmo by Evan Harper, and, as the War & Games blog notes: "In the game, you're a prisoner who wanders through a dungeon populated by attack dogs, American soldiers, and portraits of W. Since your hands are bound, you can't fight back." Controversy, anyone?

Harper's blog notes: "I've had some comments about this being in poor taste/political, and I hope that people can see it as an investigation into how games can comment on more serious topics", and Ed Halter's comments on the War & Games blog are also insightful: "The pop origin of the Wolfengitmo mod is itself meaningful: the Americans play roles previously held by Nazis."

Interestingly, it looks like this mod was created as part of Cory Arcangel's 'Disassembly: the Art of Hacking' course at Parsons - Arcangel being a veteran hacker/modder and a bit of an artworld darling, who does fun stuff like the Super Mario Clouds hack. [Via BB.]

(Oh, and before researching this post, we didn't know about Halter's new book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games, " a definitive history of the longstanding relationship between games and military culture, from wargaming's roots in ancient civilizations, to the Cold War development of computing for battle, to a recent crop of Pentagon-funded shoot-'em-ups, big-budget commercial titles and homemade hacks." Sounds interesting.)