Category Archives: Founder’s Comments

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 Mobile and More…

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Asi Burak’s recent interviews have renewed interest in PeaceMaker and prompted a bunch of inquiries into whether the game is being updated or if there is a mobile version currently available or in the works. The simple answer is yes. Broadening our impact through wider distribution as well as updating the engine to be more stable on new computer environments is something we have always viewed as important and we have been working on a port for some time now.

We have undertaken the process of rebuilding the game using the Unity Game Engine to make it available on a range of platforms. Updating the game to the new engine will also move us forward on two other longer term goals we have had:

Through the new engine we will be better able to update the content of the game itself. We are not sure at this time if version 1.0 will be updated with new content or just be a port of the current version of the game to mobile, but it will make it a lot easier to do so in the near future.

The new engine is also the first step towards our other goal of creating a more strategy game publishing platform or “PeaceMaker Platform” (name TBD) that will allow others to build their own versions of PeaceMaker on whatever scenarios are important to them.

At this time we have not set an actual launch date for the mobile version but we are in a very early beta and things are moving along fairly smoothly so please check back for more details or keep an eye out in the app stores.

Asi Burak Reflects on Designing PeaceMaker Amid Current Events

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Asi Burak was asked to write an article for Kotaku reflecting on his role in designing Peacemaker given current events. I will just link over to it for you so you can read directly his words.

Kotaku Article

I also thought I would link to a post by Tim Sweeney a long time ago regarding our design assumptions related to the game as it seems relevant to the article.

Design Assumptions

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):

Play the Election 2012: Going Live With Play the News Election Edition

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We have had the amazing opportunity to partner with Rand McNally to launch, free to schools and educators, an election version of Play the News for the 2012 US Presidential Election.

You can go straight to the site here.

And view the Press Release here.

This was a great opportunity to do a lot of things we have wanted to do for a long time. Over the years we have conducted a lot of outreach to schools and foundations because we think Play the News could be great for the classroom. We have also heard from many of you educators out there requesting the opportunity to use it in you classes.  Here is our chance to find out if it is as great as we all hoped.  Sorry to the rest of you Play the News fans since this version is specifically set up for educators and students, but hopefully if this is successful enough (with your help) we can leverage it into partnerships and opportunities that will help us bring back the open to all broad news topics platform.

Inside you will find all kinds of extra teacher resources to help integrate this into your classroom or community including the opportunity to create your own game stories. Stay tuned as I hope to hold a couple webinars down the line to interested teachers on the game creation process.

ImpactGames Refresh

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The overhaul of the ImpactGames web-site was long over due.  My complete lack of blog posts over the last couple years has also been a source of shame for me.  So, I am happy to say that I am going to remedy both of those situations with the announcement of our new site as well as a rapid fire publishing of several blog posts highlighting some of the other projects we have been working on over the last couple years.  I realize this is not the proper way to maintain an active blog but it’s a start.  We look forward to hearing your thoughts on some of our new projects and ideas.

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

Play the News Thanks You

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Dear Play the News Community,

On behalf of ImpactGames we would like to thank you all for your participation in our Beta community.  We have reached a point in the progression of this product where we will be ceasing to produce new content for the site.  We will not be opening, locking, or closing any of the current content.  For now we will be leaving the site frozen in time for demonstration purposes and to support our fundraising, content partner acquisition, and future development needs.

In the last few months we have created 126 games on a wide range of subject matter.  The process has educated us personally, and hopefully those of you in our community, on many issues.  Some of the games we created were on issues we read about every day, while some were on meaningful subjects that are generally buried in the margins of the mainstream press.   The discussions around the games have been very thoughtful and revealing to us as developers and individuals.  We believe that the way we have packaged current events represents a fresh way for people to consume headline news, and provides greater context and engagement on complex issues and even lighter entertainment.  We are confident that the future “new and improved” incarnation of the platform will serve as a real alternative or addition to traditional media.

We are planning to take this time, free from the intense development cycle required to continuously produce new content, to analyze all of your thoughtful feedback in order to create an even better experience. We are opening a new thread in our forum where we welcome you to submit any and all thoughts and ideas about the experience, share user testimonials, and present any leads you think we should explore.

We hope to revive the community in the near future and will preserve all of your user data for integration into our next edition.  We thank you again for taking the time to pioneer a new user experience with us.  Your feedback and ongoing participation has been integral in exploring this new form of communication, game, and community.

Eric and Asi,
Co-Founders – ImpactGames