Australian Governor-General Quentin Bryce popped into Afghanistan for a quick visit with members of the Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force stationed at Tarin Kowt.

Bryce praised the Aussie troops for their difficult and dangerous work against the Taliban:

We Australians take great pride in you, your contribution to the freedoms that we cherish, the values and principles that you stand for.  The mateship, the trust, the confidence, the professionalism, the skills you share.

As a token of her appreciation, Bryce bestowed upon the troops the gift of gaming goodness which, according to Kotaku, was a single Nintendo Wii.

Hey, they’re probably hard to find in Australia too.

Via: ABC News

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics correspondent Andrew Eisen…

In recent days GamePolitics has covered web games propagandizing the current Gaza conflict from both the Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints.

The latest of these is Iron Dome which takes the Israeli perspective. Along with a Missile Command-esque interface, Iron Dome offers three levels of difficulty as well as several links offering the Israeli version of the issues behind the conflict.

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics reader Itamar for the tip!

As GamePolitics reported last week, Israel's invasion of Gaza has spawned protests in Second Life as well as a Flash game with a distinctly pro-Palestinian view.

The latest online game inspired by the conflict, however, is very much pro-Israeli.

Save Israel is a simplified, Missile Command-like game which seems very difficult to win - and that appears to be the designer's point. When it's "game over," a splash screen advises the player:

It's very hard to save Israeli citys from Hamas's rocket, so we must defend ourselfs

User comments to the game on its Kongregate page reflect the strong division of opinion generated by the conflict.

Via: Enduring America

The current Gaza conflict continues to be portrayed in game imagery.

Earlier this week GamePolitics looked at Raid Gaza!, a web game which harshly criticizes the Israeli incursion. We also reported on anti-Israeli protests in Second Life.

Humor site CAP News has posted a parody report on Gaza Under Fire, a fictitious Wii game that would allow players to fight as either the Isaelis or Palestinians.

The concept behind the game is that players insert their Mii characters into the Middle East conflict... and then choose whether to go on the offensive against the other side or help protect their own people. The game utilizes both the Wii remote and nunchuck and incorporates updates from the Wii News Channel to keep the game current...

 

Some, like [fictional professor] Spaulding Wang, see the game as an educational tool...

"Rather than try to explain to my daughter something I just don't get, why not have her take Israel's side and blow up some civilians in Gaza, and then take Palestine's side and do the same to Israel," Wang said. "Then she can form her own opinion about who she thinks is right, and share that with her fellow first-graders."

At the Georgia Tech News Games Project, Ian Bogost discusses Raid Gaza!, an editorial game dealing with Israel's offensive against Hamas in Palestine.

Raid Gaza! is hosted at Newgrounds and has an RTS-like interface in which the player, acting as the Israeli side, builds structures and uses them to create military units which are then launched against the Palestinians.

Of the game, Bogost writes:

The game argues against the justification of Israeli attacks on Gaza, representing them as unprovoked and characterizing Israel's response as overt aggression. The game's goal is to kill as many Palestinians as possible in a three minute session...

The game is headstrong, suffering somewhat from its one-sided treatment of the issue at hand. But as an editorial, it is a fairly effective one both as opinion text and as game... It's release on user-contributed animation and games portal Newgrounds came on 30 December 2008, only three days after the Israeli Defense Forces launched airstrikes...

Raid Gaza! was probably not created by a journalist nor a professional game developer (it was submitted to Newgrounds eponymously). Still, the piece was timely, coherent, and exerted commentary that is appreciable, even if it is not profound...

Israel's controversial incursion into Gaza has sparked virtual protests in Second Life, reports scribe Wagner James Au.

On his New World Notes blog, Au describes the protests taking place at SL Israel, a Second Life area which recreates Israeli landmarks and tourist attractions in virtual form:

Last week when Israel began launching guided missiles at Hamas targets in Palestine... SL Israel became a flashpoint of another kind.  As the airstrikes pounded Gaza, so did protesters, teleporting into SL Israel, waving flags.

"Lots of people yelling," Beth Odets tells me. "They were going on and on with slurring obscenities about murderous Israeli forces, etc."  She gives me a screenshot taken during the incursion, festooned with anti-war or pro-Palestinian signs, some depicting dead Arab children...

A soon-to-be-released computer game will take its theme from the recently-concluded war between Russia and Georgia.

Confrontation: Peace Enforcement will launch in December from Moscow-based publisher Russobit-M. As reported by the Moscow Times, the title is a reference to the Kremlin's insistence that the purpose of the short but bloody engagement was to "force Georgia to make peace."

In the hypothetical game, Georgia - backed by NATO forces - attempts to seize the same rebellious South Ossetia region over which the recent conflict was waged. From Moscow Times:

It hasn't yet been revealed whether there is a special role-playing function allowing gamers to torch and bulldoze villagers' homes while stealing their cars and shooting their cattle, or if players get bonus points for every refugee they create. But screenshots from the game do show fighter planes swooping low over blazing houses and a tank opening fire close to a Georgian Orthodox church.

"Politics are politics, and a game is a game. These things should not be confused," said a spokesman for Russobit-M, the company that designed the game. But some of the people who suffered during the war may find it hard not to see it as triumphalist propaganda.

The report also describes a mission from the upcoming Arma 2 in which U.S. forces intervene in a fictional former Soviet republic that resembles Georgia. Mentioned as well is Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, which rather eerily predicted a 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict over South Ossetia... in 2001.

GP: Given that the conflict just ended in August, the rapid development turnaround of Confrontation: Peace Enforcement, seems to indicate that the Russia-Georgia war bits are a mod to an existing game.

Via: GameCulture

Kotaku reports that a Fallout 3 side quest involving the possible detonation of an unexploded nuclear bomb has been edited out of the Japanese version of the best-selling game.

Developer Bethesda has made changes to the Japanese Fallout 3. The side-quest The Power of the Atom has been changed. Non-playable-character Mr. Burke has been taken out of this side-quest, removing the option of detonating the nuclear bomb.

 

That's not all, the name of a weapon was changed as it was deemed "inappropriate" for Japan. Smart money says the weapon is mini-nuke launcher "Fat Man" for obvious reasons. The online reaction from the Japanese users seems to be largely disappointment to these edits. Fallout 3 goes on sale in Japan this December.

Japan, of course, is the only nation to have been attacked with a nuclear weapon to date, so cultural sensitivities to the issue are understandable. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II was nicknamed "Fat Man."

Occasionally here at GamePolitics we pay honor to the sacrifices made by gamers serving in the military.

Along that line, we note an unusual human interest story posted on The Mad Blog, which is penned by Mad magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond.

Richmond writes about visiting a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany with a group of fellow cartoonists. There they came upon a soldier who had been badly injured while gaming during his free time:

Eventually we made it up to the ICU, where we saw a few seriously wounded soldiers. The first young man we saw told us a story of how he had been serving in Afghanistan and was in his tent taking a little R&R playing a video game when a projectile explosive hit. He was missing a part of one leg and the other was damaged.

 

Chip did a hilarious drawing of him playing his video game which was exploding and he was thinking “Man, this video game is so realistic!” That sounds a little insensitive but the fact is these guys like to talk about their injuries, how they happened and what was going on. He got a big laugh out of that. He was hurt but was going to be okay. He was in a lot of pain but I think we brought some laughs to him.

Citizen Sugar reports on a new, web-based game offered by the British Red Cross.

Traces of Hope is designed to raise awareness of the plight of children in war-torn Uganda:

Players aim to help Joseph, a boy whose home and family has been torn apart by rebels, find his missing mother. The game site says: "He has a satellite phone, you have the web – together you’ll make a great team. Time is running out; guide Joseph through sickness, fire and violence as together you follow his traces of hope."

 

By placing clues for the game around the Internet, the game creators hope to blur the boundary between the game and the real world conflict. Since atrocities in the region often go unnoticed, perhaps this educational entertainment will help some wake up.

Cnet Asia has more:

After registering your email, Joseph contacts you and the game begins... The game is part of the Civilians and Conflict Month, a media blitz to raise awareness on the plight of those displaced and separated from their families because of war.