Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Last Thursday, workers in nearly 60 separate cities walked off their fast food restaurant jobs to protest for better wages and the right to organize unions, the largest number of such strikes in a day. Organizers and workers hope the August 29 strikes marked a tipping point in a campaign that kicked off last November in New York City. Watch the strikes spread across the country in this map created by ThinkProgress:

The strikes have spread rapidly throughout the country: first to northern cities, then to the midwest and the south. Fast food workers represent both a huge potential opportunity to organize workers, with millions of people who feed tens of millions of Americans every day, and a compelling economic cause, as their wages have stagnatedbut the surface is the only real shared feature. Both are constructed so as to resemble games within the screen – one on a board, the other in a machine – but the innards are as different as chalky guts and cheesy entrails. While 7 Grand Steps does feature tokens and character building, the emphasis is on a dynamic, generational tale rather than the mystery-solving of High School Girls.

The mechanical interface is appropriate, the board and its pieces replaced with a clanking engine, the workings of which are driven by player input but obscured and, at first, obscure. Eventually, the ticker tape output begins to pile up and connections are made between tokens dropped into slots and the story unfolding through history. And when that happens, 7 Grand