Conflict zones might not occur to you as the best starting point for creating a game but Global Conflict: Palestine is aimed at bringing to life some of the issues in the Middle East in a bid to educate people.

Based in midst of the conflict in the Palestinian territories, the game depicts a young journalist arriving in Israel, navigating their way between Palestinian and Israeli sources to obtain their article.

Developed by Serious Games Interactive, the player can take a pro-Palestinian angle, a balanced angle or a pro-Israeli angle.

Simon Egenfelt Nielsen, for Serious Games Interactive, told the BBC: “The game is much more about the personal experience, the emotional experience.”

The game takes the player around a city which resembles Jerusalem and the surrounding area by talking to local people.

By engaging with real personal stories, seeing conflicts from different perspectives and experiencing the situation as it intensifies, the game helps to explain some of the reasons for the ongoing situation.

Global Conflict: Palestine is planned to be released early next year, following the success of MTV’s internet-based Darfur is Dying, which had 700,000 players in the first month.

The game also features extensive support for educational use with extras such as an encyclopedia and a teacher’s manual.

Nielsen stated: “The Palestine topic fits very well with what you need for making a game - it has conflict, different perspectives and people are interested in it.

“That was the initial starting point, that Palestine would make a good game. I might regret this, but I think that you can do a game about anything - it depends very much on your framing and your approach to it.”