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 way to get the highest score--that is, to submit articles that receive the highest attention from the readership--seems to be to choose either the Israeli or Palestinian paper, and slant your coverage, making it as inflammatory as possible. The difficulty with this, however, is that the NPCs remember your bias in future missions, making it harder to get quotes and cooperation from one side or the other.
The actual gameplay reminds us most strongly of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, one of the first CD-ROM games (and preceded by a tabletop version). In both games, you move about a city interviewing people; in Sherlock Holmes, the eventual outcome is the solution of the mystery, whereas here it is a news article, but the dynamic is similar.
While Global Conflicts: Palestine does not have the overwhelming emotional impact of PeaceMaker, it's a worthy and very different take on the subject--and worth a look both by those interested in these issues, and those interested in how game techniques can be used to illuminate our world.
The developer says:
Global Conflicts: Palestine is the first installment in a series of high quality games evolving around global conflicts. The first installment takes it starting point in the conflict in Israel/Palestine, where you arrive as a green freelance journalist. You have to cover the conflict for your paper maintaining neutrality, but as you dig deeper you will find it increasingly hard to stay neutral.
The game-parts of the game basically consist of interviews and collection of quotes from these interviews. The students need to pick these quotes carefully since the quotes have to support the angle, which the student has promised the newspaper to support.
In addition their article has to have news value so that the article can have a conspicuous place in tomorrow's paper and thereby get a high journalist score. This demands that the student understands the content and is able to relate to it. This form of gameplay integrates the gaming part into the learning part – without compromising game or learning quality. Furthermore the game is constructed so that it can be integrated into regular lessons with teacher presentations, teamwork, tests and debriefing.
The fundamental idea is that learning must be based on experience – to advance from concrete into abstract learning. The game has to be realistic, engaging and dynamic. The students make a difference in the game world and gets feedback on their actions. At the same time there is room to make mistakes. And mistakes will be made since the game is very challenging.
Reviews
"For jaundiced gamers looking for something a little different GC Palestine definitely has worth. Morally, it's one of the most interesting videogames I've played in ages. By the end of the mission sequence I felt thoroughly confused (in a good way) - torn between my professional desire to remain independent and aloof, and my duty as a human being to assuage suffering and aid my friends."
- Eurogamer
Awards
KEK Creative Products Award (Danish)
Reviews
"...there’s a great deal of insight here into not only the facts that have brought about the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but also a very interesting portrayal of the human side of things, with strong (well written) characters that display subjective judgement and emotional responses."
-- Bytten