Category Archives: Community

Tell Us What You Think #PeaceMakerGame and More!

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If you found us and are playing PeaceMaker we want to hear from you and want your help to spread the word about the game. Here are a few ways that we would love for you to tell us what you think. We have also recently had some requests from people wanting to write about us that would love to speak to some of you. If you are willing to share your story please use the contact option to let us know and we will pass along your information.

Review the Game
Due to the nature of the content and our sensitivity to the experience we didn’t include the pop-up that asks you to rate the game while you are playing it. This definitely doesn’t mean we don’t want you to do so. If you have played the game and have an opinion good or bad don’t hesitate to do so in the different app stores.

Tweet About Us Or To Us
We would love to hear your thoughts and experiences #peacemakergame and hope we can get it trending enough to give people a sense of the experience people are having with the game. Tweet us directly at @impactgamespgh. We were a little late to jumping on twitter handles related to our company and game so it seems a bit obscure but that is us and we will respond as best we can.

Join Us On Facebook
We have a couple of different presences on Facebook. You can check out our ImpactGames page our PeaceMaker page or join our I Wanna Be A PeaceMaker group!

Contact Form
Using our contact form is a sure fire way to get us. Need to send us more information than makes sense in any of those channels we are always reachable through this blog or our contact form and happy to do so.

Educators We Want To Hear From You!

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Many years ago I collected information about teachers using PeaceMaker and began the process of building an educator community that included a forum and resources for lesson plans associated with the game. Unfortunately that forum has long since been overrun by spammers and my information is definitely outdated. I would love to try to kick start this effort again and if you are an educator using PeaceMaker we would love to hear from you.

We have recently been contact by someone at UNESCO MGIEP who is trying to compile best practices around education and games and would love your help. He is very interested in hearing how you use PeaceMaker in the classroom at all levels. Hopefully we can also pull specific best practices around using PeaceMaker from his work as well. I will update this post soon with a link to a survey that he will be providing but in your contact please let me know if you would be willing to be introduced.

We are also starting to try to get the news about our newest release out there through press and reviews. We have been asked by some interested parties if we could put them in touch with our users to interview for their stories. If you would be willing to speak to them we would greatly appreciate it and again if you would be willing to have your contact shared please include that in your contact.

Finally we would just love to hear how you are using the game. If none of the above appeals to you we would still love to hear from you and have you let us know where you are using the game, what context and what format. As much or little information as you are willing to share would be great. I will try in the near future to make it even easier on you by creating a survey and attaching it here.

Please contact us using our contact form and sending to general inquiries or whatever box tickles your fancy here.

PeaceMaker Mobile is Live!

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Dear All,

I am excited to say we have released the mobile version of PeaceMaker. We hope this will help broaden the availability and exposure of the game to new and exciting areas and audiences.

I want to thank our dedicated team for their great work on this project. A big thank you to all of our Beta testers. I also want to thank the people who have continued to support us and use/play our game over all of these years. Your vocal disappointment when our old version stopped working kept the pressure on for us to get this development completed.

We are also excited to offer the game through the desktop AppStore for MacOS and soon through other avenues to insure access for PC users. While the new design was primarily with mobile devices in mind we think it translates well to desktop (and makes the game available to those without mobile access). We do plan to further optimize the desktop build as we move forward.

Please continue to let us know about issues you may find and ideas for improving the game. We hope this is going to open up new avenues for us to continue to develop the platform, new titles, and new languages.

More to come soon.

Sincerely,

Eric

PS. If you do not see the game in the app stores one reason may be that we were forced to give it a 17+ rating. I will write more about that later but we hope this does not limit your access.

PeaceMaker Mobile Beta Approaching Release – Mobile Testers Needed

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We are very close to submitting for release. Different platforms may come online at different points depending on review and approval process. Currently we are making a push on the mobile version for Android and iOS with a desktop version to follow.

We are looking for people willing to beta test different platforms so please contact us through the contact form if you are interested. We are especially interested in fluent Hebrew and Arabic testers to validate our new menus and that the localized files transferred correctly into the new builds.

Look for more news in the upcoming week(s). I want to put a date to it but as with any release every time we think we nailed it a tester points out a usability issue or finds a bug. Our open issues currently number in the handful so the optimist in me is counting down the days to release.

Once we launch we will be discontinuing the old version of the game. For now if you are desperate to play and are willing to work with the technical problems associated with our old build it can still be downloaded from the About page as the classic version of Peacemaker.

Sincerely,

Eric

PeaceMaker Free to Everyone!

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Dear All,

Thank you all for your support over the years. We are pleased to announce that we are finally making PeaceMaker free to the public. Our newest build doesn’t require any serial number activation and can be freely downloaded from the site. We hope this will allow the game to find an even larger audience in schools, community centers, and the general public.

If you have any technical issues with the game please refer to this post first to look for answers to the issues you may be facing:

Having Technical Issues? Read this first!

Enjoy and check back for news on future projects related to PeaceMaker. We currently have a mobile version of the game under development which will also address technical issues related to this version. This new development is also getting us moving down a path that will make a PeaceMaker toolkit available that will allow anyone to try their hand at making a version of PeaceMaker for other conflicts and social issues.

Sincerely,

Eric

PeaceMaker Free to Beta Testers!

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** Update December 2nd 2015 – This version is no longer supported on newer OS. you can still find this version to download but we have no and are not working on a version that will resolve the issue that arose with Quicktime and Java. If you are trying to access the game and we have not yet released the new version you can use our contact form to reach out to be a beta tester of the newer version.

We have been working on and off to try to create a DRM (activation code) free version of PeaceMaker for some time now.  In the process of doing this we are attempting to update some of our media players and other know issues that have resulted over the years.  We have been giving this version out to select individuals for testing purposes and have had some success with only very rare technical issues.

Our hope has been to get this version stable enough to update our store and implement a pay what you want system.  The funds people decide to give would go to other extensions to this product that we have been slowly chipping away at such as a mobile version and a publishing platform.  With our activation server currently having technical issues we decided the time was right time to make this new version available to anyone who would like to play the game.

We hope that those choosing to download our new beta version would at least let us know of any technical issues by contacting us at our support email (support[@]impactgames.com). All we will request from you would be your system specs and a log file that we will steer you to.  We would ask for this in order to make the game more stable for everyone and expedite our final transition to a free to all model.

Without further ado the links (** Links removed from this post to insure understanding of discontinued support):

Changes at ImpactGames

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I wanted to write to our community to update you all about a significant event for ImpactGames.

We have recently sold our award-winning PeaceMaker and Play the News platforms to Hybrid Learning Systems.  They have also taken over the ImpactGames brand so that our products could enjoy a seamless transition into their company.

This is a bitter-sweet moment for us as a company as we were not able to maintain the necessary resources to see our vision through.  However, on the positive side we believe we created products with meaning and value that found a good home for their future.

Hybrid Learning Systems has both the resources to carry on where we left off and new skills that will take them beyond.  They share our vision and mission for the possibilities that our work represents and are committed to taking them to new places.

While ImpactGames in its current form is not moving on, as many of you know our co-founder Asi Burak has since become the Co-President of Games4Change, I am happy to announce that I have accepted a position with Hybrid Learning Systems.

Feel free to visit this link for the formal announcement about the acquisition: Press Release

And with that I would like to introduce to you Kris Rockwell CEO of Hybrid Learning Systems who wanted to add a few words to this post.  I am sure you will be seeing more from him in the future.

Eric Brown
CVO, ImpactGames

Kris Rockwell’s words:

“The acquisition of the ImpactGames assets was unexpected but very welcome.  Peacemaker alone is an important game covering a very delicate issue and both Eric and Asi have created an amazing work that more that speaks for itself.

Undoubtedly we have some very big shoes to fill. It is our intention to continue to grow the Peacemaker platform and continue to support its existing user base. We are very honored and excited to be a part of this process.

We are very pleased that Eric has agreed to join us as Chief Visionary Officer of ImpactGames. His vision, experience and remarkable talent will help us continue to grow and keep on the path that he has set with his work.

I am very pleased to be working with Eric and look forward to growing ImpactGames while continuing to keep it on the path of socially responsible gaming. It’s very exciting to keep such an important effort in the Pittsburgh area and I look forward to talking with the existing user community over the next few months.”

Sincerely,

Kris Rockwell
CEO, ImpactGames

PeaceMaker: Launching the Educator Community

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I am writing to announce the launch of a PeaceMaker Educator Forum.  We have now had over 2 years of teachers and students playing PeaceMaker.  Over these 2 years we have had many inquiries from teachers, researchers, and even prestigious press organizations as to how the use of PeaceMaker has contributed to classroom and out of classroom learning.  Who better to answer these questions then those of you who are teachers and students.

We would be very grateful if you could quickly answer the following relevant survey.  I promise you that it is a very short survey and will only take a couple moments of your time.

Educator Survey

Student Survey

The goal of this outreach is to create a central repository and community where you can share with each other all of the different ways that PeaceMaker can be used to enrich learning and community initiatives, provide testimonials to promote the use of PeaceMaker in and out of the classroom, and create a list of individuals that are willing to be contacted by peers and press.  We would love for you to visit the Forum at forum(dot)impactgames(dot)com (sorry for not hyperlinking it but it has started to be apammed), and even better to contribute your own testimonials and lesson plans for others to learn from.

We greatly appreciate your continued support.

Play the News – Call for Partners

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We have recently outlined two new projects that ImpactGames would love to pursue.  Based on multiple discussions we have had with leaders in the educational space and our own internal experience with creating content for both ourselves and clients we feel there is a timely and genuine potential for the use of our Play the News Platform as a teaching and training tool.  We welcome you to review the following proposals:

(1) Play the News in the classroom (K-12) – A proposal that focuses on the creation of educational modules for a range of subjects: 

Download Educational Proposal Here

(2) Play the News to teach new media journalism – A proposal that focuses on teaching new forms of journalism and discussing the future of interactive journalism:

Download Journalism Education Proposal Here

As always we are continuing our discussions with media outlets and content providers that are looking to broaden their digital and community offerings.  You can view our media partner presentation here:

Download Media Partner Proposal Here

We are also open to other creative applications and ideas on how our work can be integrated with other efforts.  We hope that these proposals will serve as a starting point for discussions.

PeaceMaker: An Index Award Finalist

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We are excited to announce that PeaceMaker, our first game, was selected as a finalist in the prestigious contest INDEX: Design to Improve Life.  

The INDEX organization was founded by the Danish Government under the patronage of HRH The Crown Prince and is regarded as one of the biggest design awards in the world. Kigge Hvid, CEO of INDEX: explains, “INDEX:’s mission is to ensure more Design to Improve Life of higher quality in the world. Therefore we inspire, collect, advocate, communicate, evaluate, connect and discuss Design to Improve Life globally.”

The finalist’s works will be presented in a touring exhibition that premieres in August 2009 in Copenhagen and travels throughout Denmark and Internationally.  The award is given to winners in five categories – Body, Home, Work, Play and Community (all to be announced August 28).  Among other finalists in the Play category are Nike Trash Talk, City Invader and the Recycle Factory.  You can view all of the finalists here.