Activists posing as representatives from McDonalds Interactive convinced attendees at the International Serious Games Conference held in England in early June that an internal rebellion was underway in the belly of the fast food giant.

A gentleman posing as a company executive named Andrew Shimmery-Wolf told the conference audience that they had developed a game as a training tool for McDonalds managers and executives that simulated business, agricultural, and global climatic conditions. According to Shimmery-Wolf, "We tried to tell the players to do fewer of the things that were leading to calamity," he said, "to reduce emissions, stop cutting forests, etc. But they didn't.... They might hold out for a while, but as soon as one took off towards greater profits, the rest did as well."

When McDonalds Interactive informed their parent company he said, "Although the top management didn't react, many of the new hires who played it did and took the results to heart." McDonald's Interactive intended to break away from their parent company and try to make things right, Shimmery Wolf declared.

Attendees were shocked by the proclamation, but believed it. One of the activists who claimed to be representing McDonalds Interactive said, "These are not revolutionaries in the audience. And yet, as soon as McDonalds was saying to the audience, 'We are ready for revolution,' they were saying, 'OK. Lets go.'"

There was one catch: McDonald's Interactive does not exist, except as a satirical fiction. A group called the McDonalds Resistance Collective, a French group made up of current and former McDonalds employees whose members had participated in a store occupation in 2003 to protest the company's employment and environmental policies, perpetrated the hoax.

The collective was informed of this latest opportunity by an Italian group called Molleindustria that had developed a satirical game called 'McVideoGame' that conference organizers mistakenly took to be a McDonald's product.

Now the group is considering producing a documentary about the experience. Jean-Michel, a spokesperson for the collective, said, "We want to give hope and show that we are a mouse's width away from rebellion."

Information from MTV News [5] and www.mcvideogame.com [6]

The following did not appear in the original print edition due to lack of space:
For more information, or to get involved, contact McDonald's Interactive [7].