Escape from Woomera

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Escape from Woomera is an unfinished adventure video game from Australia, made around 2003–2004. It was created to critique how asylum seekers are treated in Australia and the government’s push to censor coverage of detention centres. In the game you play as Mustafa, an Iranian asylum seeker held at the Woomera centre after his asylum request is denied. Fearing torture if he is sent back to Iran, he decides to escape.

Mustafa must explore the centre and talk to other detainees to plan a way out. In the playable portion, he learns another detainee wants to escape but needs a pair of pliers. Mustafa joins a work detail to access the pliers, hides them to avoid searches, retrieves them at night, and gives them to the other detainee. The segment ends when Mustafa delivers the pliers. Other conversations reveal there is a partially built tunnel from a previous escape attempt.

The game is an adventure where Mustafa interacts with computer-controlled detainees who move around the facility. Some characters share information or guide him to find objects. As Mustafa works toward escaping, a “hope” meter rises. Listening to detainees’ experiences or breaking rules can drain hope, and if the meter runs out, he is deported and cannot continue.

The idea for the game came to Katharine Neil, a developer in Melbourne, after the 2001 Tampa affair. She built a team of Australian game developers and an investigative journalist, Kate Wild, to research the project. The game used the Half-Life engine and received a AU$25,000 grant from the Australia Council for the Arts to develop. A playable demo was released online, but the project never received more funding and remained unfinished.

The project sparked strong criticism before it began. Australia’s Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, said funding the game reflected poorly on the Australia Council. Sev Ozdowski, head of the Australian Human Rights Commission, called the idea of turning detainee hardship into entertainment “sick.” The New Media Arts Board defended the decision, saying the project fit its goals and could demonstrate the value of cross-disciplinary media.

Today, the game is viewed more positively. In 2013 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation called it one of the first and most important politically focused video games. It’s also used in discussions of culture jamming in books such as The Alternative Media Handbook.