The British designer of a new video game based on Syria's civil war says he hopes it will inform people who might otherwise remain ignorant about the conflict.
Endgame Syria challenges players to make the hard choices facing the country's rebels. Is it better to negotiate peace with the regime of President Bashar Assad, for example, or dispatch jihadist fighters to kill pro-government thugs?
In the simple game, which took about two weeks to build, the player assumes the role of the rebels seeking to topple Assad's regime. The play alternates between political and military stages. In each stage, the player sees cards representing regime actions and must choose the rebel response. The choices seek to mirror the real conflict. The regime may get declarations of support from Russia, China or Iran to boost its popularity while the rebels receive support from the United States, Turkey or Saudi Arabia - reflecting the foreign powers backing the two sides.
In battle, the regime may deploy conventional military forces like infantry, tanks and artillery as well as pro-government thugs known as shabiha. The rebels' choices include sympathetic Palestinian or Kurdish militias, assassins or jihadist fighters known as muhajideen. Some of the rebels' strongest attacks also kill civilians, reducing rebel popularity and seeking to reflect the war's complexity.
All along, the player is given basic information about the conflict, learning that Islamists once persecuted by the regime now consider the fight a holy war and that the shabiha are accused of massacring civilians.
The game ends when one side loses its support or the sides agree to a peace deal. The player is then told what follows. The longer the fighting lasts, the worse the aftermath, as chaos, sectarian conflict and Islamic militancy spread. The lasting impression is that no matter which side wins, Syria loses.
