The game industry of Iran

“The leaders of [Israel] threaten us with military action,” the Iranian supreme leader proclaims as a gleaming white missile prepares to launch. “But I think most of them know — and if they don’t, they should — that if they lay a finger on us, the Islamic Republic of Iran will raze them to the ground.”

One loading screen later, the missile is airborne. The player must chaperone their little white capsule of doom through what’s intended to be the Israeli port city of Haifa, strafing past enemy jet fighters, nabbing glowing power-ups and activating what might be a nitrous boost. And when this soaring payloaded projectile approaches an obelisk circumscribed with the Star of David? Cue explosion.

In recent years, this game — Missile Strike — as well as Attack on Tel-Aviv and others with an ideological bent have made headlines and helped give rise to Iran’s public persona. Sources say they’re developed to obtain funds from conservative elements within Iran’s ruling establishment who dislike the West and Israel.

The developers, meanwhile, say they’re only responding to what they see as provocation from the governments of Israel and the U.S., two countries often conflated in Iranian politics.

"The reason we explicitly depict an attack on Israel in this game is that they too are explicitly depicting [attacks], in Battlefield for instance," said Missile Strike developer Mehdi Atash Jaam in an interview with Iranian news outlet, Fars. He’s referring to the simulated ground invasion of the Iranian capital in Battlefield 3, developed by Stockholm-based DICE but published by California-based Electronic Arts.

But within Iran, various people interviewed for this article say they've never played Missile Strike or its headline-grabbing brethren. One Tehran-based game journalist who asked not to be named, fearing government reprisal, says incendiary fare like this misrepresents Iran’s budding gaming community. "If you ask gamers here, they don’t even consider these things games," he says. "[They] aren’t even from the game development community," he adds before writing them off as "mods."

Many games made in Iran have little to do with politics and ideology, even as their country of origin is locked in a perpetual news cycle over its nuclear program, Middle East proxy wars and those burning American flags dating back to the 1979 revolution (one that a former Grand Theft Auto developer is making a game about). That year, Iranians overthrew their monarchy and emerged with an Islamic republic. Revolutionaries took 52 American embassy staff hostage, prompting the U.S. to sever diplomatic ties and begin the first of many waves of economic sanctions against Iran.

Continue Reading: http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/1/14/10757460/the-game-industry-of-iran