Balance Real Needs, or Cynically Work to Reelection?
Game Tunnel's 2005 Sim Game of the Year

Books can be important; movies can be important. Games, however, are the degraded purview of violent male adolescents. Democracy cannot exist.

Except that it does, of course. It is not without flaw; but it's a game that every citizen of a democracy should play, to get a better gut understanding of the pressures faced by they leaders--and every citizen of a tyranny should play, to get a better gut understanding of why democracy, whatever its flaws, is better than the alternatives.

It's Free

Disaffected! is an anti-advergame, if you will, in which you take the role of a Kinko's employee who is not all that interested in working and is faced with a constant stream of increasingly annoyed customers. Gameplay is somewhat similar to the old arcade game Tapper, or to games like Diner Dash, in that you must run around attempting to satisfy the demands of your customers--although in Disaffected!, sometimes your character just doesn't feel like working or gets confused...

Covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as a Journalist

Global Conflicts: Palestine takes a very different approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from PeaceMaker; rather than casting you as one of the opposing leaders, you are a journalist, and rather than making high-level decisions, you are exploring a 3D environment meant to represent a section of Jerusalem.

In each of six missions, you must investigate a story--in one, a checkpoint where Palestinians are being screened for entry--and interview the people you meet. In each, some newsworthy event occurs--e.g., a suicide bombing. You are permitted a limited number of "quotes," and must choose when, during a conversation, you choose to write a quote down in your notebook. At the end of the mission, your story is submitted to your editor, and scored--on the basis of the quotes, and the political bias of the paper you choose to write for (you can choose an Israeli, Palestinian, or European paper).

The "What Ifs" of World War II

Making History is more than a wargame; it's a grand strategic military, economic, and diplomatic simulation of the entire globe, starting in 1934, and going on until the end of the Second World War. If that happens, of course.

As such, it addresses one of the central failings of most WWII games; it doesn't lock you into a historical straightjacket, with Russia inevitably coming into the war even if the Nazis don't attack, and with the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor on inevitable schedule. Instead, you can play with all sorts of what-ifs: What if France had resisted the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1934? Or if Italy had gotten pissy about the Anschluss? Or if the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had stood firm behind Czechoslovakia in 1938?

Can a Game Make You Cry?

Certainly... At least if its subject is enough to make you cry.

PeaceMaker begins with a cut scene--brief video clips from the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning in 1948 and ending with the present day.

In any game, the purpose of an initial cut scene is to set the emotional context; for most games, this means bombast and violent triumph. For PeaceMaker, it means--sorrow, and perhaps despair.

Created by a mixed American, Israeli, and Palestinian team, PeaceMaker deals with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Playing as either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President, you must try to satisfy the urgent needs and demands of your own people, while establishing a degree of trust on the opposite side--and, with (a great deal of) luck, an agreed resolution to the conflict.

Why Is Super Columbine Massacre Controversial?

Super Columbine Massacre is controversial for one reason only: Because our culture continues to assume that games are "mere entertainment," that a game based on so horrific an event must ipso facto be in bad taste. Games are fun, Columbine was a tragedy and never the twain shall meet; a game on Columbine must by nature trivialize or cynically exploit the event. Q.E.D.

Yet we do not make the same assumption about any other medium: a documentary on the Columbine massacre, or a novel, or a New Yorker essay would, a priori, be treated with respect, at least until the viewer or reader had experienced it, after which a judgment might be made as to its merits. And if the work proved insightful, somber,and respectful of its material, the world would consider it unexceptional.