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Monitoring Israel from a computer terminal with an aerial view of the landscape, the country's prime minister pauses at the sound of an alarm. Crosshairs zoom in to identify the trouble zone and a news report pops up -- there has been a suicide bombing. He has a decision to make: Does he retaliate with a bombing campaign of his own, order a targeted assassination, or respond through diplomatic channels?

This is not real life, but a video game based on real issues. Called PeaceMaker, the goal is for players to create stability in the Middle East as either the Israeli head of state or the Palestinian president. Gain enough approval points and you're a "Nobel Prize Winner;" lose too many and you're a "War Criminal."

The game is part of a growing breed of digital play that aims to educate users about pressing global issues even as they entertain them. In fact, at a recent conference in New York hosted by the organization Games for Change and Parsons The New School for Design, representatives from MTV mingled with those from the World Bank, the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict and UNICEF. Their shared vision: video games as tools for positive social change.

Their interest in video games should not come as a surprise. In Canada, more than 35 per cent of households own dedicated video game consoles. Half of all Americans play video games, for about 6.8 hours a week. (Some players are plugged in much more: Just last month, Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants in the Netherlands announced the creation of what it claims is "the first residential gaming treatment program in the world," to address gaming dependency.) In other words, there are few doubts that gaming is an extremely popular -- and powerful -- medium.

"What better medium to tap into social networks?" says Susana Ruiz, the creator of a game about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. "What better medium to bridge distances, and ideologies? It just makes perfect sense to me."

It made sense to Suzanne Seggerman too. Now the co-director of Games for Change, the former documentary filmmaker had a "transformative experience" with video games in the early 1990s after the editor of one of her films gave her a copy of Hidden Agenda, a game about Central American politics.

"I played for 12 hours straight, and I couldn't believe that games were capable of some of the same things that I had seen documentaries do before -- which is to engage people with really serious content," she says.

Ms. Seggerman then attended the Game Developers' Conference in 1997, in search of "cool people making cool games about politics." She didn't find any, but she returned to the same conference in following years, hopeful that the medium would "grow up" enough to sustain real-world issues.

It did. In 2003, Ms. Seggerman heard others in the industry expressing interest in games with meaningful subject matter. The following year, Games for Change was formed as part of the broader Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Toronto's Andreas Ua'Siaghail has also seen the industry blossom firsthand. In 2001, he and business partner Sean Hopen started work on Pax Warrior, an educational game based on Roméo Dallaire's experience in Rwanda. At that time, Mr. Ua'Siaghail says, the notion of a "game for change" didn't really exist.

"People's ideas about what games or game-based learning might entail is actually much broader than it was even five years ago," he says. "A lot of people understand that this is a great way to engage kids, and to help people understand particular situations."

Now, Pax Warrior reaches about 250,000 students through licensing deals with schools worldwide. "The reaction from students to the game is really, really strong," Mr. Ua'Siaghail says.

As for the arguments critics and concerned parents often raise about video games -- that they're addictive, that they encourage violent behaviour? David Rejeski, director of the Serious Games Initiative, points out that such concerns have been around since the advent of television, the last controversial medium. And few people working under the Games for Change umbrella seem interested in trying to control what is already out there.

Instead, just as organizations such as PBS, the BBC and the CBC created alternatives for television viewers who desired more thoughtful programming, today's socially conscious game developers are hoping to create more meaningful options for their own medium.

So far, without steady public funding, developers are generally left searching for grants from non-profit groups, are partnering with academic institutions, or are trying to mix their message with a for-profit enterprise.

One of the latest games generating attention is Darfur is Dying, developed by students at the University of Southern California and awarded $50,000 in a contest organized by mtvU, a channel aimed at a university audience.

"Activism is where [MTV] started, because it's where music has always been. . . . Look at Dylan to Public Enemy," MTV's Stephen Friedman said during a Games for Change panel discussion. (Never mind Black Sabbath and Britney Spears.) "We realized that activism has evolved beyond sit-ins. Our goal at MTV was to give our audience more tools, more resources, to take it into the digital realm."

In Darfur is Dying, players control a displaced Darfurian family and have to rebuild a village while making periodic trips into the desert to forage for water.

The village is under constant threat of attack, but that threat can be countered -- and this is the real genius of the game -- by taking real-world actions, such as importing an e-mail address book and blasting a message about Darfur to its entire list of contacts. Players can also decrease the in-game "Threat Meter" by writing a letter to a political representative.

Available free on-line, Darfur is Dying has already been played by more than 700,000 unique visitors. And although the graphics aren't as slick as blockbuster commercial games, the action demands a certain level of skill, which keeps players coming back for more.

"It hooks you in," says Kate Garaufis, 21, a Parsons student in New York. "The running-for-water visuals are kind of cheesy, but it gets the point across and it's hard."

A classmate, Rebecca Stern, also 21, agrees. "I think it's pretty impressive," she says. "I don't usually play on-line games because they feel like a waste of time. But this is fun and has a real impact."

That chance to make a difference is what prompted Susana Ruiz, one of the game's creators, to jump from filmmaking to game development at USC. "It's an entryway to the crisis, so that people at least find out what Darfur is, where it is, and what's happening," she says.

Meanwhile, the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict recently collaborated on A Force More Powerful, a strategy game where players plan and execute simulated non-violent interventions such as strikes, protests and boycotts. The game offers a variety of missions, including challenging a corrupt government, desegregating a city and changing a country's foreign policy while getting the government to bring troops home from an unpopular war. But this one's no freebie -- the game sells for $19.95 (U.S.).

Then there's PeaceMaker, which ranks among the most elaborate games under development. With an interface similar to SimCity and integrated real-world news clips about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, players seek to raise their public-approval ratings while interacting with eight other political leaders and social groups that are watching their every move.

The game was conceived by a group of students at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, and is being further developed by a spin-off company looking for investors.

"We said to ourselves, 'This is the [gaming] industry we're going into, and there's a very negative view of the medium, so how can we prove that it can be a lot more positive?' " says co-producer Eric Brown, a game developer who hopes his creation will help young adults understand both sides of the conflict. "We were a group of students that wanted to make a serious video game about really serious topics . . . and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resonates worldwide."

Indeed, overcoming the negative connotations associated with video games is a top-of-mind issue for many in the field. And it's not an easy job. "We see a lot of black and white about games being bad for you, about games destroying our culture and polluting the minds of our children," Ms. Seggerman says. "But that's coming from people who don't play games -- and who haven't seen these new kinds of games yet."

Tim McKeough is a freelance writer based in New York.

Joystick therapy

Political activists aren't the only ones getting into gaming -- digital play is also being used as a healing tool.

Mindhabits Booster: First developed by researchers with McGill University's psychology department, this game boosts low self-esteem by challenging players to spot the smiling face in a crowd of frowning people. The theory: that repeat gaming will train players to focus on positive feedback. The price: $17.99 U.S.

Earthquake in Zipland: When parents split up, kids can feel angry and helpless. To help them cope, this $54.99 (U.S.) game for tweens was created by child psychologists. Play involves a quest to rebuild the zipper that holds Zipland together -- and keeps the king and queen in one place -- after a massive quake.

Virtual Iraq: This virtual-reality game is designed to treat military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The idea is to desensitize suffers to experiences that triggered trauma.

Ben's Game: With the help of Make-A-Wish, LucasArts and his own oncologist, leukemia patient Ben Duskin's dream of a video game to help kids endure cancer treatments came true. The object of this game is to destroy mutating cells and collect "shields" against common chemotherapy side effects.