Peacemaker

Project Type:
3) graphic design

Project Mission/Goal:
1) improve the human spirit
2) increase awareness of the environment and/or address climate change

Project Description:
"Peacemaker" envisions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with players role-playing as either the Palestinian Authority President or the Israeli Prime Minister. Available to both are military, political and construction-related actions – and watching both are simulated stakeholders whose approval or disapproval of the players' policy choices is made clear along the way.

Said to have sold more than 100,000 copies (priced at US$19.95) in more than 60 countries, the game has been used as an educational tool in Palestinian and Israeli high schools with trained facilitators.

Approved by the Shimon Peres Center for Peace (and distributed by the center in Israel and the West Bank), the game is playable in three languages – Arabic, Hebrew and English.

The United State's National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed designer Asi Burak, a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) captain.

"The interesting idea about PeaceMaker," Burak said to NPR's Steve Inskeep, is that you can play both sides. And they're very different because, as you can imagine, the Israelis have different resources than the Palestinians."

Stakeholders, as Inskeep and Burak discussed in their interview, include the USA, the Arab world, Jewish settlers in the West Bank and others – and a thermometer next to each to display how these various factions are reacting to what you, as the Palestinian or Israeli leader, are doing.

On the conservative US television network Fox News, Martha MacCallum interviewed Erick Stackelbeck, a terrorism specialist with the Christian Broadcasting Network, who pointed out that actual archival footage of violent events in the Middle East is part of the game.

"The realism of the game is really striking," Stackelbeck said. "It's the wave of the future, I guess."

But as was pointed out on NPR, BBC and other news outlets, one of the most significant elements of PeaceMaker's arrival on the market is that it's a serious game – something designed to do more than just entertain.

"Serious games sounds almost like a contradiction in terms," admits David Wortley of the Serious Games Institute of Coventry University in England, "but things like e-learning, simulation, role-playing games … these come under the scope of serious games."
Video(s):

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Project Details: (Please complete as applicable)
Project Location: USA
Date(s): 2009 Finalist
Project Phase: Completed
Client: Public
User Client: Videogamers
Designer: Asi Burak and Eric Brown

Nominated by Jessica Scanlon