Games for Peace

        In encouraging steps forward, game developers are developing peace and non-violence related games.

    Mike Musgrove, Staff Writer, recently reported in a Washington Post article
on an encouraging new trend in Internet-based computer games. The
games, usually focused on fantasy world quests, are now starting to
address serious social issues as hunger, Mideast peace, and genocide.

    For example the popular U.N. video game Food Force [http://www.food-force.com]
is based on a major food crisis in the fictitious island of Sheylan in
the Indian Ocean. The game’s object to step up the World Food
Programme’s presence there and feed millions of hungry people. The game
has been downloaded 2 million times since its launch in the spring.
Yahoo had to step in as a Web host for the game when swarms of Internet
users converged on and accidentally knocked it off-line.

    A team at Carnegie Mellon University is working on an educational
computer game called PeaceMaker — you win by negotiating peace between
Israelis and Palestinians. Carnegie Mellon’s project is led by an
Israeli citizen named Asi Burak, who has sought input from both sides
of the conflict for the game his team is building. “We want to prove
that video games can be serious and deal with meaningful issues,” said
Burak, who will be lecturing about it at the Serious Games conference
in Washington next month, a get-together dedicated to introducing game
designers to potential clients interested in educational games.

    In a similar vein, MTV has announced a $50,000 student contest [see their website]
to come up with a video game that fights genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
According to Stephen Friedman, general manager of an MTV channel shown
on college campuses, “Activism needs to be rethought and reinvented
with each generation,” he said. “This is a generation that lives online
– what better way to have an effect?”

        Thus even games are being put forward, for peace. We fully support this motion, and if ANY game developer, developing a peace game, wants a link from this site, simply reply to this post :)
       We can hope, that in future, such games will be developed for Playstation 2 as well. Adios for now :)

February 6, 2006 | Filed Under General World, Net News, World Peace | Leave a Comment 

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