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Games about Conflict: Palestine
Posted by Hsing Wei on 11-19-06Can games make people experience, care about, and better understand complex conflicts in Palestine and Darfur?
A BBC article interviews Global Conflict: Palestine’s developer about the game and what it calls a trend in politically-conscious gaming. Recent games such as MTV’s internet-based Darfur is Dying have engaged players. Darfur is Dying (which had 700,000 players in its first month) moved tens of thousands of players to send politicians emails urging action on the crisis.
Some might criticize games about real world conflicts as “trivializing” the issues. However in a media society dominated by simplistic soundbyte news, supporters of politically-conscious games would likely rebuke that new ways of getting information is needed. Games have the potential to allow people to explore and situate themselves in someone else’s reality. Drawing from the troubles in the Palestinian territories, Global Conflict: Palestine, set to be released in early 2007, aims to let gamers see different perspectives and experience why the conflict won’t just go away. Players are young journalists who can potentially shape the region’s future. As the conflict escalates, the player must navigate between Palestinian and Israeli sources, maintaining their trust, while trying to uncover the truth. The game will support educational uses with encyclopedia, teacher’s manual, assessment, and other features.