Peacemaker

One of the new games released at Manifesto Games is PeaceMaker, a game where you have to manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, choosing one side or the other and making changes that balance your population's needs with global needs and so forth. Sounds interesting.

From the MG website:

Games--light-hearted, mindless entertainment for adolescent boys, right?

Pshaw.

PeaceMaker places you in the shoes of people who have to make difficult decisions in often horrendous circumstances. In so doing, it illuminates and explores its subject in a way that only a game can do--because you participate, rather than merely witness. PeaceMaker is compelling, painful, saddening, curiously hopeful...

But fun?

Depends on your definition of fun, I guess. But why should this one word be the single factor by which we judge games? Is Burroughs's Naked Lunch "fun"? Is Kurosawa's Rashomon "fun"?

PeaceMaker is a game you should experience not because it will entertain you (though it may)--but because you will never forget it.

That is perhaps one definition of art.

PeaceMaker has received quite a lot of attention from the press, because of the issues it addresses, and good for it; but in our context, it is at least as important for an entirely different reason. Games are growing up. PeaceMaker is leading the way, demonstrating that they are capable of grappling with the most contentious issues of our time in a thoughtful and sophisticated manner. In short, it demonstrates that game design techniques are applicable to subjects that the conventional industry would never touch--and that the palette of the possible in games is far broader than is generally conceived.

PeaceMaker is a game that anyone interested in games qua games should play.