Two interesting (and competing) lists have been published. Game Tunnel introduces the “top 100 Indie Games list” and TIGSource fires back with a collection of 50 “high quality independent games”. They introduce a short blurb on each game, and I believe that people who are interested in what we’re doing may like to follow some of the recommendations. Not many social/political/serious games made the lists, but there are some very interesting approaches to gameplay that you won’t find in mainstream titles.

Thanks to the Rampant Coyote Blog that appeared on my Google alerts for PeaceMaker.

From time to time we are receiving angry emails criticizing our asymmetrical design: how come the Palestinian President cannot attack Israel directly while the Israeli PM has a robust branch of military options to choose from. And of course, both sides challenge our neutrality. Israelis/Jews claim that we are one-sided because “we assume that the Palestinian President is not responsible for terror attacks”. Palestinians/Arabs want to know why they are restricted from directly attacking Israel.

Our assumption is based on the current situation and the current tool set of both leaders. We verified it with Palestinian, Israeli and American content experts: the Palestinian President controls a limited internal police force. On the other side of the border, the Israelis manage an extensive military with the ability to operate in Gaza or the West Bank. The two sides are unbalanced and we’re trying to demonstrate that. Many would contest that the Palestinian leader directly controls militant attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. Based on inconclusive supporting facts, we have chosen to limit this interaction to indirect measures to support or curb Palestinian militant organizations, such as Fatah or Hamas.