Thank you
As media creators
we often struggle with the idea of media perception in the public eye
the idea that media is promoting violence
that media is shallow or that it usually highlights the negative
in our society
I'll try to show you something different today.
Eight years ago, I arrived to the U.S. and it was the perfect timing
and, in terms of my work, it was a time where my medium, video games and computer games
was perhaps the least understood and the height of the criticism against the media.
The time was the release of Grand Theft Auto. It was taking the headlines all over the world
and parents were basically afraid that their kids were going to be hijacked by this terrible and terrifying thing.
At that time I came to carnege and mederin with a team of colleagues, we decided to make a game about peace
And not only that we said we were going to make a video game about peace
we also said it was going to be about the middle east conflict
so we took one of the most complex dilemmas of today and we tried to test the bounderies of what the media can do.
So I want to show you a short video so you can get some more context and then we'll come back.
United by Impact Games
Can you be a peacemaker
www.peacemakergame.com
Peacemaker is a game in which you take a roll of one of the leaders.
You can take either the roll of the Israeli criminist or the Palestinian president
You can play both perspectives. And the idea is as the leader, you have to react, to real time events happening in the world.
You can negotiate with other leaders, but you also have security or military actions that you can take
and by doing so, you have to reach a peaceful solution while in office.
In an Israeli high school, a new computer game called PeaceMaker was launched today.
Children playing the role of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, trying to make peace in a virtual world of suicide bombings
and Israeli military strikes.
We don't expect to resolve issues of the conflict.
We don't expect to give all the answers.
We're bringing up issues for discussion.
I think the best aspect of playing this game is that especially if you're Palestinian student in the territories
or an Israeli student in Israel, you get a chance to really feel what both sides are thinking
and get a better sense of what they can do together to work towards peace.
If you look at the video game industry today, there's so many games out there about violence, about war, about destruction.
We say simply there is certainly a place for one little thing about peace.
This is when, this is when I was very young and naive, but seriously shall we play?
Shall we play a game together?
Okay, kind of yes, kind of [yes!] okay.
So in our convention, the chair is not going to remain empty.
And I want to call on stage, my fellow volunteer leader, Susan Tick, please, here she is.
When Susan is not a world leader and taking decisions that are going to affect generations
she's the chair of the labor trades and crafts counsel
and my role is a peacemaker in that fact I have to say
So lets go to the screen, lets launch the game and what you're going to see first is something that was very important for us
which is to set to make sure that the player starts with the right mindset.
Yeah, before, we'll get there.
So the whole idea that, we have one minute, we went back to 1920, in terms of archive footage
and we wanted to say this is a game about real events, this is a game that uses real footage, and you'll see a kind of one minute
reflection of the conflict from 1920 til today.
Can you be a PeaceMaker
So the idea is, that, again the player comes into the game, we're saying it's a peace game
but you're going to be challenged with a lot of violence.
You're going to be challenged with very serious issues and events that are going to come with you.
Susan, were you ready for a first decision?
First decision is which side are you playing and the two sides are very different
so we've actually built two games, the Palestinian version and the Israeli version
Different resources, different agenda, obviously the Palestinian side is under occupation.
Which side will it be.
I don't know, I think we should ask the audience to decide.
Oh interesting, so you want the audience to participate. So because it was unplanned you all have those clickers right
-I can't make this decision
-Right Susan needs some help from
-The premonition of a Palestinian president, a female Palestinian president
-Can we change to the voting system
Okay, cool. So you can click 1,2,3 or A, B, c in your clicker basically to help Susan make the choice
And you see the responses numbers go up. Wow we have a nice participation.
Let's give it kind of another ten seconds.
-That's awesome
This is a really hard game to play you guys
I have to ask forgiveness of my son because I've asked him not to play video games
now I'm stuck on this video game at home.
-So what do we have. 251 votes.
Okay, interesting. We'll analyze this later.
Sixty percent go for the Palestinian president.
Let's switch back to the game. And I'll make the choice for us.
I chose the Palestinian president and I'm going to go for ten in terms of difficulty
So let's dictate how many events we're going to throw at Susan
So, you entered the office right
This is all based of real world footage of the real office of the Palestinian president
Real ceremony where you're accepted.
In terms of learning we added a quick timeline just to show you what you've see in the video
and some of the major events. Really just brief, you know, not to flood you with information
however, the first thing that you see is this red dot on the screen
So let's click on it because we don't have any other thing here.
And this is what we call the inciting incident. It's a very violent event.
In this case it's a military operation, the Israeli military operation that went out of control.
Killed civilians, wounded others, and we can watch the event.
This is basically the first day of office. At office, this is what you are dealing with.
So, now we're about to make decisions, but I want to just show you a bit what we are talking about in terms of the interface.
One thing that we did, we kind of put a geographic context of Israel and Palestine.
The idea that you can look at cities. And already at this level by the way when you play the game with students or others
thy can learn a lot just from that. Something they don't get in the news.
The proximity of cities, where the settlements are, where's the Israeli defense security defenses.
So Gaza, and usually when you hear in the news about the rockets, we're talking about Steroit.
Look at the proximity of an Israeli city in Gaza. And in terms of stakeholders
there's also an opportunity to learn about them.
So we can go from some of them on your side now, on the Palestinian public, fata humra group, harsma still position.
The Israeli prime minister, the Israel public, of course sub war leaders
The Arab world, and The Unites States. Another ting you can consist is the context of the whole map
so you can see some of the neighboring countries. And the most important thing is the score.
So PeaceMakers is not a simple game, so there are two scores and they can go positive or negative.
So you have your Israeli approval, sorry, your Palestinian approval, and the world approval, and they can go in opposite directions
and one of things you'd have to do is to balance them.
So, let's start with decisions. You have security decisions, you have diplomacy decisions, political decisions, or what we call construction strategic decisions.
So lets start with choosing between those three decisions.
-Well because, we bombed them, we bombed Israel right?
-No no, it was an Israel attack, that supposedly we went for militants, but they killed 18 civilians
-So I want, so because you don't have a prayer option, I would pray first and ask for guidance. I'm wondering why that doesn't exist.
-Do you want to ask the audience?
-Yeah lets ask y'all. You're the prayer.
-Lets go for the voting again. We have three choices. Very high level. You're going to guide our executive branch here.
Security, political, or construction strategy.
Oh we have a higher number I think.
So Kyle what is the result here.
Okay good diplomacy.
Love and forgiveness
-That's exactly where I was going
-Okay, so now Susan you're taking leadership here. So we did a voting, political, a few options you can have.
Okay, you can make a speech in Arabic to your own people, you can make a speech in English.
And by the way one of those things they say about Arafat, is that those speeches were very very different.
And this is a fact, speech to world in English, internal negotiations with your own factions, Israeli negotiation
You're going to the Israeli leader. It doesn't have to be by the way of appeasing him.
It can be demanding. Foreign negotiation, going for the penate state. This is kind of the red button, you just like, you're going for it.
And dealing with the holy sights.
-How tense do we wanna be. No, I would go to , I would like to secure my people first. You think I should go there?
You made this game! Okay, go there, go there.
-Israeli negotiation
-Yeah, yeah
-Okay so every menu hides another one.
And by the way you have advisers, so we're not going to read the now, but again they kind of represent those two opposing viws
One is your national agenda, and the other one is like what the UN and U.S. would want you to do.
-I wanna stop aggression
-Ask them to stop aggression. Right?
-Yes
-Ready. So this is a turn. A turned peacemaker takes a week. So we're actually playing into the future.
We're going to click on that. A week, in real time, in game time, is passing by, and then we hear back from the Israeli prime minister.
Consider request, which is a moderate response, however like you said, the score doesn't move at all.
-Alright we gotta go somewhere else. Alright lets, yeah, go there. You guide me please.
-Security. By the way, you're probable sure that you can do many things with security, but you're very limited.
You don't have tanks, you don't have airplanes. You have a police force that sometimes does what you want, sometimes doesn't.
-Yeah, alright.
-So police presence, manage police, extreme measures, Israeli forces corporation, internal treasury restrictions, or Gaza border control
-How bout the helmet
-Okay. Let's go for Israeli forces corporation
You can initiate join training or
-No go back, I don't like this .
-Okay. It's interactive so
-Okay, so go there, manage police
-Manage police. So you're basically saying I want to focus on my national agenda, I'm going to ignore the event, you can restrict your leadership
order training,increase funding,or decrease funding
-I think that, ooh should we get police funding? Who's going to give us money
-Lets try it. Increase police funding. So what happens in the Palestinian side of the picture is that we always need money to fund or actions
and when you look at those different forces, a good idea is to get money from people who like you, right?
So there more on the positive side of trust.
-So you win right?
Or who's, no no no, who's the next one
-I mean, I would go for Palestinian allies or the UN.
-Alright go there.
-Palestinian allies?
-Yeah
-A week passes. Oh my God, no wait. Susan we're going to stop here. We're running out of time.
We're not going to solve the conflict in this session.
-I have no points on either side!
-We're not going to solve the conflict, however, however, honestly, you could win this game, and this is the way we designed it.
In a few hours of failure, successes, failure, successes.
I hope it was a good glimpse into the power of video games and what they can do, but again most of all
I want it to be a kind of window at what media could be when it just, you look at it differently.
Thank you so much.