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Genre：Newsgame
Author：Alex Tew
Size：70KB
Date Published：December 18, 2008
Game Description:
Sock and Awe is a minimalist 2008 Flash game created by British entrepreneur Alex Tew, recreating the Bush shoeing incident and putting the player in control of journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi who flung a shoe at George W. Bush during a news conference. Although the game was hastily put together, it went viral and received widespread news coverage right around its release, only a day after the actual incident. It is a well-known example of a newsgame. The name of the game is a pun on the US shock and awe military tactic.
Alex Tew, the author, was a "student entrepreneur" at the time, and previously "Internet famous" for The Million Dollar Homepage, a successful ploy website that helped him pay for his college tuition. On 18 December, the day of the shoe throwing incident, Tew was part of a group of people on Twitter trading ideas on what might be a good tabloid headline describing the incident when somebody suggested "Sock and Awe." Already by the following day, Tew had registered the domain sockandawe.com, developed and uploaded the game. Two days later, the game had already been played 1.4 million times. At the end of the week, Tew had managed to sell the site on eBay for £5,215 GBP to a company called Fubra. Tew cheekily commented to a Reuters journalist: "From Monday concept, Tuesday launch, Wednesday growth, we’ve had a Thursday exit." By 22 December, 49 million shoes had been thrown in the game.
Game is known also as “Hit President Bush in the face with your shoes”.
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