Media Tilt

The broken media game.

More anti-game than game, this app is a port of the Net.Art "game" Tilt made by Andy Deck for Artcontext.net. The original version was made in 2001.

From arcade parlance, 'tilt' is an error condition that occurs when a game is disrupted and not level.

Tilt addresses media conglomeration and the tilting playing field for media distribution. With large corporations represented in the halls of government by teams of lobbyists, independent media -- individual producers, writers, artists, musicians, and journalists -- are forced to adapt to a media landscape shaped for profit. The Internet's fundamental neutrality with respect to the content of packets has already been sacrificed by the American F.C.C. under pressure from corporations that own its radio spectrum for wireless data transmissions. In the form of a game, Tilt addresses issues that led Ben Bagdikian to publish The Media Monopoly in 1983, a text that has been revised repeatedly to reflect the increasingly concentrated ownership of the media. The book was influential in the eventual development of the Media Reform Movement, as have been intellectuals such as Bill Moyers, Robert McChesney, and John Nichols.