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Video Games: The Latest Weapon in the Middle East

[Telegraph-UK] David Lasserson - An exhibition of ideological video games from Arab countries at the Israeli Center for Digital Art outside Tel Aviv demonstrates the chilling potential of games as a propaganda tool. Special Force offers players a choice of missions in southern Lebanon against "the Zionist enemy." The game opens with a training center in which the shooting targets are portraits of Israeli leaders. A Syrian game called The Stone Throwers offers a sort of digital martyrdom, as the player takes the role of a lone Palestinian resistance fighter armed only with rocks against waves of Israeli soldiers. In the Israeli game Intifada, the player becomes a single IDF soldier facing stone-throwing demonstrators. In dealing with the demonstration, players must bear in mind the army's public opinion rating, and refrain from using live ammunition. If they cause casualties, the government is voted out of office, and available weaponry is reduced for the next game. An al-Qaeda game called The Night of Bush Capturing is sophisticated, set in a U.S. military camp where players must gather weapons and shoot down approaching soldiers. It turns out to be a direct adaptation of an earlier American game, Quest for Saddam.
2007-02-16 01:00:00
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