The game is divided into six missions, each one corresponding to one news article your character needs to publish. At the beginning of each mission, you must select one of three specific newspapers for which you’ll write. Each one has a different type of article it wants written, and each one has its own bias. As you pursue the news, you’ll talk with experts, terrorists, IDF soldiers, pregnant Palestinians and survivors of suicide bombings. As you speak with them, you can pull quotes from their part of the dialog. Once you’ve collected enough statements, you can create a news article by selecting a headline, a photograph and three quotes. When finalized, your article is rated in terms of newsworthiness and bias. Your alignment with the two factions is modified by whichever faction is favored in your article, and your status as a journalist is increased for the newsworthiness of your articles. Your alignment to factions and your status as a journalist carries over to following missions, allowing for the journalistic equivalent of “leveling up.” At the end of the mission, the game tells you how popular your article was, including whether or not it was front page material and whether any readers wrote letters to the editor discussing your article.

If the gameplay sounds simple, it’s because on one level, it is. Running around, speaking to people and taking notes isn’t the most taxing use of a gamer’s brain; however, playing even a single mission twice, and adopting slightly different dialog choices and behaviors, yields a significantly different experience. Most people you interview are very sensitive to faction alignment, your credibility as a reporter and your interview technique, so even simple dialog choices carry vast consequences.

If it’s not already clear, the one thing you won’t find in Global Conflicts: Palestine is player perpetuated violence. While you’ll be a witness or victim of suicide bombings, shootings, military raids and kidnappings, you won’t participate in any of these activities. Serious Games, in trying to teach people between the ages of 13-19 years old, has wisely decided there’s enough real violence in the region without adding fictional, character driven violence orchestrated at the hands of teens learning about the area. There are also no mini-games. Global Conflicts: Palestine remains tightly focused in its mission to teach, and this is a smart move that will endear it to teachers who wish to use the software to supplement their lectures.

However, for both teachers and gamers, several questions have to be considered. Is this game fun? Does it really teach anything? And does it end up being mired in the very bias it attempts to avoid?