Of course, if Obama wins, seeing the president’s face in your video game could very well seem Big-Brother-ish, rather than revolutionary.

Breakthrough, an organization that does human rights work in both the United States and India, has released a game, ICED (I Can End Deportation) to help players learn the ins and outs of immigration policy and rights. The game, which targets youth, is intended to teach players how unfair U.S. immigration policy is.

The game is available as a free download, and includes educational materials for teachers who might want to use the game in the classroom. It’s an interesting intersection of web activism and educational gaming, to say the least. The amount of collaboration that has gone into the project is impressive — New York City teachers and dozens of students weighed in on the project. A number of organizations have created web-based games related to their pet issues, but ICED is more comprehensive than many of these projects. It’s not just a gimmick to convince players to spend more time at the organization’s web site, and incorporates a great deal of significant information. What remains to be seen is how successful the project will be at reaching its intended audience and what that audience will think of the game.

Now, as much as stunts and stories like this may garner publicity for Boll or for other celebrities who find themselves in a similar position, the thought of a coalition of critics, fans, and other viewers being able to quite literally vote against the continuation of someone’s career is a bit unsettling. Would Boll actually quit making films if confronted with a million signatures? I’m not sure. The bigger question is, should he? And, if he were to quit, what would that say about his work as a filmmaker, and about the act of filmmaking in the era of participatory culture?

The documentary looks like it may be covering some of the same territory explored in Julian Dibbell’s My Tiny Life (which is largely out of print, but available as a free download thanks to the efforts of the author). Although the question of what real means in online environments remains a salient one, as demonstrated by the continuing fascination with online communities that drives works like Second Skin, the division between the “real” and the “virtual” seems increasingly murky as many daily tasks and bits of communication migrate toward the digital.

What utility does the term “virtual” still have with regard to the way people use web media for their daily lives? Does the distinction between the “real world” and the “virtual world” make sense? And, finally, is the distinction something that will diminish over time?