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Is Trump's Wall an accidental metaphor for Donald Trump's presidential bid?

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Is Trump's Wall an accidental metaphor for Donald Trump's presidential bid?

You can say a lot about Donald Trump's absurd rise to US Republican presidential candidate, but you can't deny that the epically combover-ed demagogue courts controversy with the best of them.

So it's not a surprise to see a few games on the App Store designed to capitalise on some of the awful things that Trump has said to try and entice the American population to buff up his ego some more.

Walled in

Chief amongst these is Trump's Wall. It's a game that sees you trying to build a wall around Trump's mansion - ostensibly to keep ducks from pooping on his garden. That's some high-level satire going on right there.

The game itself is pretty shonky. You control a crane, which Trump is dangling from, and need to drop an assortment of blocks into a pile. The bigger the pile, the more points you'll score. If a block falls off the pile, it's game over.

And that's about it. I should probably point out now that the game claims that all the characters portrayed in the game are fictional.

I mean Donald Trump probably doesn't swing about on a crane spouting rhetoric and dropping blocks with offensive pictures of Hilary Clinton on them, so, yeah.

I think it's fair to say that this is an example of opportunism. One of the big talking points of Trump's campaign is his desire to build a wall between Mexico and America, and while the game doesn't deal with that specifically, it's pretty clear that it's aiming to ride on the interest in that, frankly, ludicrous idea.

But it does it without the backbone that real satire has. It shifts its focus, ending up turning what is a hugely contentious idea into a joke about birds and excrement. It's a simple game layered with a childish take on Trump's rhetoric designed to get people to click.

Tick the boxes

And there are a good few other games doing the same. Trump is the epitome of big business, so it's no surprise to see apps like this springing up to capitalise on his surge in popularity – and some of the garbage he spouts makes perfect fodder for cheap, unofficial tie-ins.

In a way this is a game that exemplifies Trump – all bluster, all loud noises, but when you actually get down to it a hollow, loveless thing designed to appeal to as many people as it possibly can without actually doing anything worthwhile.

Videogames are more than capable of dealing with big political issues in smart and engaging ways. Trump's Wall doesn't do that, but in a way it makes its own statement about Trump's candidacy, even though it probably doesn't mean to.

Is Trump's Wall an accidental metaphor for Donald Trump's presidential bid?

A terrible game, but one that manages to say a lot without meaning to
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.