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SOG
07-27-2007, 07:43 PM
from the teachers pdf guide


What is the game?
In short, the game is an immersive fully 3D role-playing simulation, which gives
the player the chance explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict first-hand. The game has a playtime of around 15 hours, and is split into six missions. Each mission has a relevant theme and can be completed by most students in 60 minutes.

You play an ambitious freelance journalist who, through the collection of information from different sources, has to write news stories. Through the diverse stories told in the game, the player learns about issues related to the conflict, and some of the larger issues at stake in the region (terrorism, human rights, conflicts, border disputes etc.).

The right picture is from the interview of a suspect in the first mission. The left picture is from the second mission, where you negotiate a pregnant woman’s passage through a checkpoint. The player is forced to consider the media’s role, source criticism and the huge variation in perspectives on the same experience. A news story is not just a neutral account of events – here the player makes the choices – what will he/she choose to publish in the newspaper?

Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Content): In the game the player will experience
everyday life in the conflict through real personal accounts, which puts focus on some of the main issues of the conflict. This gives the students an experiencebased starting point for digging deeper into the conflict.

Human rights, terrorism & media’s role (Themes): In the game there will be
regular references to human rights, terrorism, and the media. This provides a
shared and engaging starting point for discussions of these issues in a contemporary context.

Source criticism & writing article (Skills/Methods): In the game the students
constantly have to be aware of the right story angle, the disposition of sources, and what it takes to write an article. In the end, the student sets up an article that can be used for further explorations of the media’s role.

Perspective-taking, critical thinking & bias awareness (Competences): In the
game students are given access to a variety of perspectives on the same events and issues, which forces them to shift between perspectives while thinking critically of the information they receive and potential biases encountered.

http://www.globalconflicts.eu/
text was under
teaching - then scroll down in the little flash window then click factsheet.

interesting, not sure i agree. betters ways of doing this is having the kids perform research with a pro and con team and have them argue it out no matter if they beleive the opposite. then have them switch and argue again from a different side with the already rpesented facts and arguments in mind.

havent played the game nor will i, but there is also the possibility of bias in the game going to one side or the other.

Alpheus
07-28-2007, 01:41 AM
Everything is biased, you can't escape it. The only difference is if the writer tried to be neutral or wrote it with intent to blatantly distort the truth. This probably falls under the former category.
I won't play it either, I don't need a video game to tell me how to think rationally and objectively.

Con-man
07-28-2007, 10:50 AM
I think it was a failed concept from the start, there is no way to cram all of the real politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict into one game, the multi-layered problems presented throughout history and new challenges, furthermore the motives behind each group involved is just too numerous to even bother trying to simplify it into a videogame. Especially if its a game designed to 'educate' the youth on what is happening there. Now, if the person behind the game was out to purport their own personal opinion on the game then I guess they'd feel it feesible create it...

Moledet
07-31-2007, 01:27 PM
So there was an Israeli review today of the game, if you were expecting a balanced game (from Denmark? Hilarious :D ) here are some excerpts:

"...my boss in the game asked me to cover the roots of the conflict according to the experts from both sides. On the Arab side-Dr. Hussein Abu-Marduk from Abu-Dis university. On the Israeli side-Lea Loyson from B'tselem.

Excuse me!? Couldn't you find someone else to represent the Israeli side apart of an activist in B'tselem, the same organization that targets every Israeli action in the territories? You know what, Baruch Marzel called just a second ago and said he'd gladly represent the Palestinian side instead of that Abu-squashed face. If B'tselem is in, why isn't he?

Apparently B'tselem's influence is beyond that one character. After every mission there's a short text accompanied by pictures that reports a short testimony about an event that is relevant to the mission. I was surprised to find out that in all the chapters, almost exclusively, the Palestinian poor and oppressed point of view is shown.

For instance, at the end of the chapter about the roadblocks problem there's the testimony of a red crescent worker that was beaten for no reason by soldiers while he was transporting a pregnant woman. A classical story of brutal and unrestrained behavior. Too bad nobody tried to balance this propaganda with a report of the other side, meaning-we, Israelis. On the other hand, these reports are taken from B'tselem.

It's important to note that the game does try to show the Israeli side in a way that explains why we put up roadblocks and arrest people in the middle of the night, it just misses the point by leaving us with empty and lame quotes. During an IDF raid on a house of a suspect, we ask one of the soldiers why he trusts an anonymous source (collaborator) to take from a civilian its basic right of freedom. In response the soldier starts an embarrassing speech, "we have passed the holocaust and so we won't be led as sheep to slaughter" and "we will do everything to make sure a second holocaust won't happen, eve if that means taking the freedom of a civilian". Hello?! Where did you take this from, the museum of 50's cliches?

If we are talking about cliches, it looks like the developers tried to not leave any cliche about the conflict out of the game, including some of the cheapest propaganda of the Palestinians. So what did we have there: A pregnant woman that faints in a roadblock an no one lets her pass; A Palestinian woman that is killed by soldiers fire in a peaceful demonstration against the separation fence, and all this, listen carefully, while holding her child; And ofcourse, how not-settlers trying to steal the land of an old Palestinian. For fairness I should mention that there are shooting attack and suicide bomb attacks, though the game leads us to identify and understand the other side, pretty much exclusively.

About the settlers, the miss is sticking out even more because the game uses quotes for their characters such as "don't judge the settlers by the media, not all of them are religious and they aren't law breakers" and "they just want to live peacefully", but soon after it shows the same superficial and unreal character of a bearded man with a yarmulke that tries (successfully) to take over the land of an old Palestinian. The only thing missing was uprooting of olive trees and the game could've been a perfect Palestinian propaganda"

Hebrew:
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3431618,00.html

Bert
07-31-2007, 02:20 PM
Is this the same game where the only solution is complete fiction (two-state 'solution') and anything else causes the 'third intifada' and an automatic game loss?

deadtired
07-31-2007, 03:22 PM
Dammit, I was hoping this was some new 1st-person shooter.:-(

kamaz
07-31-2007, 03:43 PM
bwhahaha having Btselem represent Israeli side of the story is like having David Duke explain the Civil Rights movement.

egenfeldt
08-05-2007, 05:17 AM
One is a bit disappointed to read such superficial and factually wrong account about the game. The resume of the game above is completely off focus. Like the devil reading the bible to be quite frank.
- another neutral account is here: http://www.blogschmog.net/archives/1093. One might also want to read the Haaretz article after playing the game. http://www.seriousgames.dk/downloads/haaretz.pdf

Interestingly, I just read a few comments on the below Palestinian website that find the complete opposite. Namely, that the game is blatant zionist propaganda - any thoughts on why this is?

http://www.paldf.net/forum/
http://www.alaqsagate.net/

Some faulty observations in above thread
First of all, after each mission there is story randomly selected. The pro-Palestinians stories are from B'T Selem and the pro-Israely are from the book "Life in the Shadow of Terror". In the demo mission (referred to above) one story is about a Palestinian person being beaten and the other is about an Israeli soldier overwhelmed at a checkpoint.

Second, B'T selem is a secondary person in the game in four of six missions , and serves as one source of information among many (not even close to being the primary source of information). The B'T Selem person is not at any point the only source nor the most crucial source of information.

Third, in the settlement mission the interpretation of the events have at least four different outcomes based on your choices, so apparently the tester in Ynet (and above) have been quite eager to get a pro-Palestinian outcome.

Fourth, the game is completely independent of political and economic interests, so this is a serious attempt based on several years of research, interviews with experts and eye witnesses to present the different perspectives in the conflict. Sadly, this is apparentlly by many on both sides interpreted as one-sided, makes you wonder.



Best,

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen

egenfeldt
08-12-2007, 07:31 AM
I was hoping for some more qualified feedback from the people in the thread instead of the the factual wrong accounts so far?

Best Regards,

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen