RAMALLAH, West Bank - Moad Arqoub, a Palestinian graduate student, was bouncing around the Internet the other day and came across a site that surprised and attracted him. It was a Facebook page where Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs were talking about everything at once: the prospects of peace, of course, but also soccer, photography and music.
Computer games are a global phenomenon and a $25 billion a year industry. Over 800 million people worldwide are regular players. Gamer Revolution looks past the hype, paranoia and hoopla to explore the real stories behind the computer game revolution.
Gamer Revolution explores how computer games are not only changing the world, but giving rise to a new version of life itself. The line between the real world and the virtual world is disappearing. Millions of people feel that they have a life inside these games and that it's better than their real life.
Gamer Revolution takes viewers around the world from Asia to the heart of the Middle East in search of the most mind-bending stories from the cutting edge of the game revolution. It also features interviews with gamers and game developers including Will Wright, creator of the wildly popular life simulation game, The Sims.
Just how pervasive has gaming become? The US army uses video games to train new recruits and to simulate real-life battle situations in preparation for combat. In Korea, computer nerds are the sex symbols of the 21st century. In Syria, a developer has designed an extremely popular shooter game in which the player gets to kill Israeli soldiers.
Every year, the biggest companies in the industry try to out-do each other in an effort to create buzz for their games. It's a high-stakes business. The development cost of a new game has almost tripled in a decade. Eighty percent of games fail in the first year, but for those who succeed, the payoff is huge.