The Peace Doves

The Peace Doves is a nuclear disarmament game, developed by the United Nations and can be found on Nobelprize.org
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/nuclear_weapons/index.html
(Originally found on the web site Games for Change listed under "Global Conflicts")

The object of the game is to send peace doves (that have magical powers) down from outer space to countries that have nuclear weapons to disarm them. There are eight doves that can only disarm one specific country. The player must read descriptions of the country's nuclear profile to determine which country to send the dove to. The player uses a map of the world to pick the country and launches the dove. If the dove is sent to the correct country, it is disarmed. If it is incorrect, the dove flies back and the player is given another description. If the next launch is incorrect, then the dove will be out of fuel and will not be able to fly back to the spaceship.


This game teaches about the nuclear culture of the world (what countries have them, the different treaties, etc.). At first I wondering if this was truly a "serious game" because it is not realistic at all and it offers no real solutions to the problem of getting countries to disarm their nuclear weapons. But if the definition of a serious game is that its primary goal is education first, than it definitely qualifies. Did you know that there has been a treaty signed that outlaws nuclear weapons in outer space? Did you know that Israel had nuclear weapons? I didn't. This is definitely a game that you would only play once, but you can learn a lot from it and you certainly understand that nuclear arms is still an important topic in our world.