Video games are usually seen as a means for Jakartans to escape from the suffocation of their daily challenges, including the city’s crippling traffic congestion and flooding problems.

But in an attempt to alter the conventional notion that video games are merely a form of entertainment, an interactive exhibition held by the Jakarta-based Goethe-Institut showcases a wide variety of video games and aims to uncover the political undercurrents behind certain games.

The first-of-its-kind exhibition held in Indonesia takes place from May 8 to 27 at the Goethe-Institut in Menteng, Central Jakarta. As of this week, it has attracted more than 100 visitors.

It demonstrates 16 different computer games to visitors, with each game focusing on different political topics, such as the aftermath effects of armed conflict, governmental surveillance and hazardous working environments.

“These games require you to think to discover what’s inside. It’s not merely about having fun,” said 50-year-old Agung Gunardi, a resident of Cengkareng in West Jakarta, who visited the exhibition on Monday.

A particular game called Perfect Woman tries to address the issue of gender equality by letting players pick the female role in each level.

Players then have to imitate every movement displayed on the screen in front of them. The movements symbolize the struggles women face in meeting the standards set by society to become what people perceive as a “perfect woman.”

According to the game’s description, it aims to encourage people to think that “it’s OK for women not to be perfect all the time.”

Theresa Farah, 18, who tried playing the game during the exhibition, said the game helped her to understand how difficult, and even impossible, it is to become what society perceives as the perfect woman.

“The game helps me better understand the consequences of taking certain actions or making certain decisions. Different environments provide a certain challenge and lead to different characteristics,” she said.

Theresa, who lives at the BSD residential area in South Tangerang, Banten, said she usually played video games just to release stress, and rarely paid attention to every detail of the games she was playing.

“I never really thought that there were hidden messages in games, such as messages about the struggle of refugees, international relations and how to view a war from a humanistic approach,” she said.

Theresa was referring to three games featured in the exhibition, namely Killbox, Unmanned and The War of Mine, which specifically highlight the stark nightmares and the bad consequences of wars.

Indonesia is among the countries with the highest number of gamers in the world.

A recent survey carried out by game engine company Unity3D showed that the country had the world’s fastest growing number of mobile game players as of August 2015. Indonesia is also the country with the largest amount of mobile game downloads in the world. Some 96 percent of mobile internet users play these games.

“Computer games today are not merely lucrative products of a globally networked and vibrant industry in the creative economy, they also have the potential to develop civil society and push for action through the structure of the games,” Goethe-Institut secretary-general Johannes Ebert said.

He said the exhibition specifically focused on portraying social conditions and injustices through video games that would allow the players to assume new, marginalized and surprising perspectives simultaneously.

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