'When they hear about Peacemaker, people sometimes go, "What? A computer game about the Middle East?"' admits Asi Burak, the Israeli-born graduate student who developed it with a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. 'But people get very engaged. They really try very hard to get a solution. Even after one hour or two hours, they’d come to me and say, you know, I know more about the conflict than when I’ve read newspapers for 10 years.' Video games have long entertained users by immersing them in fantasy worlds full of dragons or spaceships. But Peacemaker is part of a new generation: games that immerse people in the real world, full of real-time political crises. And the games’ designers aren’t just selling a voyeuristic thrill. Games, they argue, can be more than just mindless fun, they can be a medium for change.
The proposition may strike some as dubious, but the 'serious games' movement has some serious brain power behind it. It is a partnership between advocates and nonprofit groups that are searching for new ways to reach young people, and tech-savvy academics keen to explore video games’ educational potential.
- Clive Thompson, "Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time," New York Times, July 13, 2006.
The passage above communicates new ideas circulating about video games and their interpretation by the people who play them. The view is that video games need not just be a medium for entertainment, that they can also be used as a way to educate people about serious matters. More than this though is their potential to educate players in a unique manner which allows for an individual interpretation of real life events and situations. The example used in this article is the game Peacemaker, a video game in which the player may assume the role of either the Israeli or Palestinian side. The aim being to bring about a peaceful end to the real life political conflict these two factions have in the Middle East.
The article argues that the medium of the video game is a powerful force when it comes to informing players about the conflict. This is because instead of receiving information about the conflict and then interpreting it, as is done in traditional forms of education such as print and film, video games allow people to interact with the information. By assuming the role of the Israeli Prime Minister a player is required to think in the role of this faction, they personally identify with this side and are required to play in a manner that would be beneficial to the state of Israel. The game then allows for the reversal of this, the player then gains a personal understanding of both sides of the conflict, something that the traditional news media can currently not achieve. The ability to educate people in such a way has excited many different groups, from politicians to academics, who would like to see the medium used as a way to generate change. The article also identifies the video game medium as a way to reach younger generations, who may not be as likely to take interest in more traditional forms of current events education.