Real life agency

There is a new free game I found interesting called Endgame:Syria http://gamethenews.net/index.php/endgame-syria/  which takes game agency to a different level. Like most games, you act as a person/group of people making choices for a war like deploying military units. However what sets this game apart is that it is not based on a past time like WW2 or in a fantasy land. The controversial game is focused on making choices that explore the real world consequences of the civil war currently in Syria. Military tools provided even reflect the what the rebels have. You are not a super skilled soldier or a mutilated man with super powers. You fight in the shoes of a simple Syrian rebel and your actions have consequences that mirror real life consequences. You are not escaping and immersing yourself in another fun world or with other online gamers, but in someone else’s world today. Instead of making a game for pure entertainment, the designer, Tomas Rawlings says that he hopes the game acts more as a tool to inform people who might otherwise remain ignorant about the conflict. The game gives you basic information about the war and helps you understand the people. The game allows player to express agency in a different way. Those who are already aware of what is happening in Syria still learn as they get a chance to express perhaps what they would want to happen in battle and with international politics and in turn get to see the outcome. In the end, in some way loses something. Rawlings says that’s the point of the game. To show that "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. You can also end the war so that there is less of that”.