You might wonder what the mildly insane staff of a video-game website talks about amongst themselves. Here at Bitmob, I can recount several epic email strings on the minutiae of grammar, and I mean to a degree that Strunk and White themselves would suggest we back the hell off. We do also talk about games and quite often games we never really cover on the site.

Case in point: Last week Bitmob Editor Rob Savillo sent word around about an iPhone game called, appropriately enough, Phone Story.

Don't bother rushing off to the App Store to get it. Phone Story, through gameplay, highlights a goodly portion of the real-world human suffering that makes the very phone you play the game on possible. Which you unconsciously supported by buying said phone. We're talking levels covering forced-labor coltan mining and workers leaping to their deaths from a thinly veiled Foxconn building.

It took a few hours for someone at Apple to wake up and yank it from the App Store, but I can appreciate the inherent ironies. At its core, this is a game that tries to make you feel bad about something. That raises an interesting question...do games actually have to be a fun? Short answer: No.

Truth be told, if I'm reviewing a game and I'm not having fun, its score takes a big hit. But I must admit to finishing more than a few titles that didn't make me elated. Heavy Rain, for one. L.A. Noire for another. I enjoyed them, but I'd argue they weren't precisely "fun." Were they involving? Ah, well that's a different story.

And we need different stories. Every other entertainment venue tunes into an entire range of emotional states. You listen to dark music because you're in a dark mood, or a read a wrenching drama that just fascinates or illuminates you, or watch a horror movie specifically for the scares. It's still escapism, but it's also compelling, empathetic, and cathartic. We don't just want those ideas and concepts. We actively seek them out. Now, I haven't played Phone Story, so I can't speak to how compelling, empathetic, or cathartic it might be, but here's how developer Molleindustria describes it:

Phone Story is a game for smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets, behind its polished interface, hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. Phone Story represents this process with four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit....

Doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs to me. But gaming as social activism? Well, I don't think we're there yet, but the attempt might be interesting. It's definitely not another space marine game.

Thinking happy thoughts.

In fact, a whole subcult of indie games goes into some very unusual places, stuff like congressional redistricting, immigration reform (or lack thereof), and morbid obesity. Then you've got really dark subject matter, like the end of the world. AwkwardSilenceGames' One Chance gives you exactly that -- one chance -- to save humanity from a plague you created...or you can spend your final days with your family. Or cheat on your wife. DEFCON (tagline: "Everybody Dies") from Introversion Software, on the other hand, scores you on your ability to successfully wipe out humanity.

Back in less serious territory, Ian Bogost at Persuasive Games occasionally makes the video-game equivalent of discomfort sitcoms like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Disaffected! simulates the Kinko's employee experience in amusingly soul-sucking ways, to the point where it almost aggressively dares you to continue playing it. Then, in the name of science, I passed it to a friend who actually worked at Kinko's. His review? So well done, it made him want to kill himself. He didn't, but he did stop working at Kinko's shortly thereafter.

Now that's an experience worth having.

Would you like to play a game?

Hey, we won't run out of "I am an Ultimate Badass!" games anytime soon, and I'm fairly grateful for that. But I also like to sample everything else games can do. Know what? They can do a hell of a lot so long as you let go of the idea that they must constantly amuse you. Chances are that will be the one that sticks with you longer and even changes you in ways a badass game never would.

Even if you didn't exactly enjoy yourself at the time, you'll probably look back and consider it a fun experience. Not because you enjoyed playing it...but because you enjoyed the result.