Gane: PeaceMaker
URL: http://www.peacemakergame.com/
Cost: $20
Estimated Age Range: 16+
Reviewer: Andy Rose
In PeaceMaker, created by Impact Games, the goal is to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The game's design has made it so that this is only possible through peace, and violence will almost always provoke a response in kind.
PeaceMaker is by no means an easy game even on the easiest setting. When the game starts, the player is prompted to choose either the role of the Palestinian President or the Israeli Prime Minister. Both roles play very differently while retaining the same basic game play concepts.
The Palestinian President, for example, has to spend the beginning of the game slowly getting rights back from the Israelis. When I first played, I chose to play as the Palestinian leader, and I had few options and little control. I spent the beginning of the game making hopeful speeches and using my police to perform routine security. When I had done enough to convince Israel of my peaceful intentions, I was able to get the rights to control the Palestinian schools. I got foreign money from the UN to rebuild the old schools and create new ones. This led me to further happiness and peace, and I was able to negotiate with Hamas and Fatah (the two groups within Palestine who are militant to varying degrees) to help me enforce the law instead of operating under it. This gave me further reliability in the eyes of the Israelis, which snowballed into more control over things like the water level and airspace, which all eventually culminated in a peaceful two-state solution.
I then chose to play as the Israeli Prime Minister. I had many more options and didn't need to get foreign money every time I wanted to rebuild anything. I also started with control over most things. However, my populace took an indifferent approach to my speeches and was more difficult to positively affect in general. In addition, his two approval ratings (Palestinian Approval and Israeli Approval, instead of the Palestinian President's National Approval and World Approval) were more opposed to each other, making it more difficult to improve one without harming the other. I also felt like there was less of a clear-cut goal for the Israeli Prime Minister to accomplish. Since he effectively controlled the whole area, his goal was to stop militant attacks, which was a less tangible goal than the Palestinian's goal of a self-governing state. I attempted to convince the Palestinian President to deal with the militant groups on his own internally, and I provided support to him, which turned out to be a better solution than attempting to go in and fix it on my own. Nevertheless, even with the added power, I found it was more difficult for me to create peace as the Israeli Prime Minister.
The game has a fairly simple interface, and although there is a tutorial, it isn't really needed because the tutorial can't teach you the difficult part of the game, which making the right decisions.
The game looks great even though it utilizes fairly simple graphics. It is a combination of a 2D playing field with a nice, accessible menu bar at the side, along with real video, pictures, and sounds to demonstrate the events that occur. It comes together very well and is clean, easy to use, and transfers the game's message very well.
PeaceMaker will give real insight to someone with an almost nonexistent knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a very short amount of time while also making it an interesting mental and diplomatic challenge to the player. I highly recommend it to anyone with either a passing interest in the topic or in political or strategic games.
