[dorkbot]

I love this game! It's simple to learn and play, but varied and challenging enough to provide rich replay value. Also, a single game only takes about half an hour.

It's so dated and hilariously absurd that it's easier to look past the game's inbuilt racism.

Your goal as Prime Minister of Israel is to surround yourself with a sea of anarchy so that you can "retire in glory." How does Israel benefit from the government of Egypt being overthrown by "Islamic extremists?" The last thing any country wants is for all of their neighboring states to collapse into chaos within the span of two or three years.

The basic premise for Conflict is so preposterous that it's hard to get upset at the fact that all insurgent movements in the game are Arab and/or Islamic extremists, even in Iran, which is a Muslim theocracy. Just as I want to criticize the game for unthinkingly using Arabs as all-purpose villains I stop and ask myself how it could possibly be in Israel's interest to fund these groups. Okay, so your relations with Syria are lamentable. They're not going to improve if some extremist faction pulls off a successful coup and takes over the country.

I'm not accusing the game designers of overt racism here. They're just guilty of not thinking about things too hard, which is perfectly forgivable if your goal is to make a fun game. These leaps in political logic represent the most simplistic assumptions that we in the West can make about the Middle East situation. Namely that the Arabs are the bad guys and everything would be better off if they'd just go away. Also, that conflicts between Israel and Palestinians can be easily solved forever if Israel and just one neighbor can get along for five minutes and create a separate state.

Nothing about this game makes any sense. This is good, as it frees us to stop worrying about its thoughtless political insensitivity and enjoy it both as a strategic challenge and as a cultural artifact that's so ripe for analysis it's falling of the vine.