Palestine, The Serious Game
David Sarno of the Los Angeles Times reports:
Denmark-based Serious Games Interactive has built a game around one of the world’s most divisive issues. In Global Conflicts: Palestine, you control a freelance journalist who roams the streets of Jerusalem armed with nothing but a pencil and a steno pad. Your editor asks you to cover Israeli Defense Forces security raids, border checkpoints, and even martyrdom; you’re asked to interview families of the victims and of the bomber alike. As you speak to Arabs and Israelis around town, you carefully pluck their best quotes, the object being to write a balanced, thorough newspaper article at the day’s end.
With funding from the government of Denmark and the European Union as well as private sources, Global Conflicts’ $800,000 budget has enabled designers to build a dynamic and visually attractive 3-D environment. The game’s open, go-wherever feel is reminiscent of much bigger commercial games, which is amusing considering that all you really ever do in this game is talk to people.
Martyrdom? Would that include the intentional blowing up of innocent civilians in pizza parlors and bat mitzvah parties? Is that Sarno’s word or Serious Games’? “Martyrdom” aside, it would be interesting to see how this game works.
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