Video game on Syrian civil war polarizing

BEIRUT -- A new video game based on Syria's civil war 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?

The British designer of Endgame: Syria says he hopes the game will inform people who might otherwise remain ignorant about the conflict.

Views differ, however, on the appropriateness of using a video game to discuss a complex crisis that has killed more than 60,000 people since March 2011. Computer giant Apple has refused to distribute the game and some consider the mere idea insulting. Others love it, and one fan from inside Syria has suggested changes to make the game better mirror the actual war.

Tomas Rawlings, who designed the Syria game, said he got the idea while watching TV pundits debate the possible consequences of directly arming Syria's rebels, which western nations have declined to do. He said he thought a game could explore such questions by allowing players to make choices and see their consequences.

"For those who don't want to read a newspaper but still care about the world, this is a way for them to find out about things," said Rawlings, the design and production director of U.K.-based Auroch Digital.

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 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 no matter which side wins, Syria loses.

Rawlings said that's the game's point.

"You can win the battle militarily but still lose the peace because the cost of winning militarily has fractured the country so much that the war keeps going," he said. "You can also end the war so that there is less of that."

The game was released on the company's website and as a free download from Google for Android devices on Dec. 12. Rawlings submitted the game to Apple to distribute via its App Store but the company rejected it.

-- The Associated Press

Houses torched, 100 dead

BEIRUT -- Gunmen loyal to President Bashar Assad swept through a mainly Sunni farming village in central Syria this week, torching houses and killing more than 100 people, including women and children, opposition activists said Thursday.

The reported slayings fuelled accusations pro-government militiamen are trying to drive majority Sunnis out of areas near main routes to the coast to ensure control of an Alawite enclave as the country's civil war increasingly takes on sectarian overtones.

Activists said the attackers were from nearby areas dominated by Shiite Muslims and allied Alawites. Assad and most of the top officials in his regime belong to the minority Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 18, 2013 A19