Pax Warrior in the News

Sunday, Aug. 6, 2006

Pax Warrior is featured in a Time Magazine article on activist video games.

Call them playstations with a higher purpose. Activist video games--which use whiz-bang formats to address real-world issues--are scoring high with both kids and teachers.

Pax Warrior - A gamer playing the role of a U.N. commander during the Rwandan genocide is confronted with grim trade-offs, such as choosing whether to fax the U.N. or save the Prime Minister. Licensed to schools, the game has been incorporated into thousands of curriculums in Canada, Britain and South Africa, and will hit the U.S. this fall. Next up from Resolve Labs: Pax Prosecutor, about the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes.

Full article by Hillary Batchelder

July 17, 2006

Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, uses Pax Warrior as an exemplar of a new genre of gaming activism.

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."

Full article byTim McKeough

July/August, 2006

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists report on Pax Warrior.

"Pax teaches you how good intentions are not enough," says Andreas Ua'Siaghail, the game's co-creator. "It tests an individual's valor in a historical context."

Full article by Josh Schollmeyer

Thursday February 16, 2006

Pax Warrior President Andreas Ua'Siaghail is interviewed on BBC Radio 4.

This week we also look at one of the latest in a line of educational computer games that claim to be good for you. 'Pax Warrior' takes the backdrop of the 1994 Rwandan genocide to explore complex moral and ethical issues.

The game's designer, Andreas Ua'Siaghail, tells Material World what he thinks children will learn by taking the part of a UN peacekeeper in Rwanda. Quentin is also joined by Dominic Savage, the Director General of the British Educational Supplies Association, who explains how games are gradually finding their place in schools."

Quentin Cooper Interview on BBC 4

Pax Warrior gets major mention in Canada's national newspaper the Globe and Mail

PAX WARRIOR

A gamer playing the role of a U.N. commander during the Rwandan genocide is confronted with grim trade-offs, such as choosing whether to fax the U.N. or save the Prime Minister. Licensed to schools, the game has been incorporated into thousands of curriculums in Canada, Britain and South Africa, and will hit the U.S. this fall. Next up from Resolve Labs: Pax Prosecutor, about the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes.

M onday Jan 31 2005

Sandra Martin article

"Finally he has our attention"

"Roméo Dallaire is suddenly everywhere. He's on television tonight in a Sundance-winning documentary. Nick Nolte plays him in the movie Hotel Rwanda. He's even inspired an interactive-learning video game," writes SANDRA MARTIN

...

"Clearly, Dallaire has the power to make some of us listen -- although one can't help but despair at the thought of Elie Wiesel, that articulate and eloquent survivor of the Holocaust, speaking to a half-empty room at the United Nations last week. Whether Dallaire has the strength to make us change our behaviour remains to be seen. And that's where yet another Dallaire-based product comes into play.

Andreas Ua'Siaghail (pronounced O'Shields) and his Pax Warrior colleagues were at the Canadian Film Centre, casting about for a project when the story about Dallaire being found drunk on a park bench made headlines back in June 2000. The pathos of that story gave them a focus that four years later has resulted in an interactive-learning module for senior high-school classes, university courses and leadership-training programs. Essentially, Pax Warrior (http://www.paxwarrior.com) gives students and trainees enough background and content about Rwanda, the UN and Dallaire to push themselves through the crises he faced. At every stage the interactive software asks: "What would you do?"

At first, the name Pax Warrior made Dallaire think it was just another violent computer video game, but the more he worked with the new media types, the more convinced he became of the merits of their interactive teaching tool. "It brings all the weight of the moral and ethical dilemmas in which students must see themselves in the future," he says. "They are in the entrails of the decision making."

So far Alberta has bought the software and several other educational jurisdictions are in negotiations with Pax Warrior. If it works, the teaching module will take Dallaire's message beyond passive listening into active learning."

Mike Lee, ABC international correspondant and his crew film interview with Pax and Edinburgh pilot. This is due to air anytime soon now.

Here is a behind the scenes snippet of us being interviewed. Thanks to George Edwards of Canada's High Commision for the video.

[requires Quicktime]

Pax Warrior Profiled on BBC 's Newsnight

Airdate Jan 13 2005

running time 10'30"

BBC Newsnight's Mark Doyle profiles the use Pax Warrior in Edinburgh.

In order to understand how Pax Warrior is used to teach citizenship curriculum in UK schools, the BBC interviewed Andreas Ua'Siaghail of Pax Warrior and filmed Pax Warrior's use on location with the students and Head Teacher of James Gillespies High School, Edinburgh.

BBC online "electronic print":
english version

[as BBC translates its online service into multiple languages. numerous other languages are also available]

BBC Newsnight piece archived:
jan 13 2005

real media stream direct link

Story has also been picked up by NPR across the US.

About James Gillespies:
James Gillespies high school was the location for "The pride of miss Jean Brody"

In a new book, E-content: Voices From the Ground, 40 outstanding new media projects from around the world were chosen by the United Nation's World Summit Award. E-content was created under the framework of the World Summit on the Information Society and exemplifies the quality of today's multimedia market worldwide. Authors Osama Manzar and Peter Bruck have put together a definitive guide highlighting the best e-content and creativity practices across the world.

Excerpt from "E-content: Voices From the Ground"
Osama Manzar and Peter A. Bruck
Copyright 2004

Discrete Interactive learning project

Pax Warrior: A discrete project by a small new media company. It is a hybrid of a conflict resolution management-training tool and interactive documentary on the genocide in Rwanda. It is a brave work, still in development; but a good example of interesting and challenging initiatives that this climate supports in the expansion of what our e-tools can do. In this case, Pax Warrior holds out the possibility that interactive, group-learning tools can offer deeper understanding and global, critical learning.

April 6, 2004 Andreas Ua'Siaghail, Pax Warrior producer, interviewed by David Cadasse for afrik.com on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. (Interview in French)

January 16, 2004 issue of Canada Focus magazine, published by Industry Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs, highlights Pax Warrior's presence at the UK's largest education and training technology

October 1, 2003 edition of L'Actualité. We're featured in the Ecran Radar section. Pages 12-13.

July 23, 2003 the Globe and Mail carried Kevin Marron's feature. Page B9

"...Nevertheless, electronic games have a long way to go before they reflect the serious moral issues and complexities of the real world, according to Andreas Ua'Siaghail and Sean Hopen, partners in a Toronto new media company 23 YYZee Inc. and producers of Pax Warrior, an interactive documentary that uses elements of electronic gaming to put its audience in the shoes of United Nations peacekeeper Roméo Dallaire in Rwanda.

"Our aim is to tell peace stories rather than war stories," says Mr. Hopen, explaining that Pax Warrior, a project originally conceived at Habitat and still under development, resembles an on-line strategy game in so far as it presents people with situations in which they must make decisions, such as whether or not to try to disarm a group of rebels at a roadblock. But, he adds, "the strategy is deeply rooted in morality. Each decision you make is a confrontation with your own values.""

For the complete article, please visit The Globe and Mail archive.

October 17, 2002 Pax Warrior was presented to the Quebec and World Film and New Media industries at The Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media [FCMM] as part of the forum program.

" Pax Warrior and White Noise : These two IPL projects push the boundaries of conventional interactive documentary and mystery genres, respectively. Sharing their vision on reconfiguring story, these teams will speak about such topics as hybridity, non-linear story forms, new production processes and the like."

May 2, 2002Pax Warrior was presented to the documentary industry as part of Cyberdocs at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

"... hybridity, genre-busting, identity politics, calls to action, socio-political thought on the Web, education, and accountability."