Is this how international relations will play out in the future? Wired has an article on a new game designed by the hardline Union of Students Islamic Association in which players must rescue two Iranian nuclear experts kidnapped by the U.S. military. 'Rescue the Nuke Scientist' is apparently a response to Assault on Iran, one of the missions created by online news game developer, Kuma Games. From the story:
"n "Rescue the Nuke Scientist," U.S. troops capture a husband-and-wife team of nuclear engineers during a pilgrimage to Karbala, a holy site for Shiite Muslims, in central Iraq. Game players take on the role of Iranian security forces carrying out a mission code-named "The Special Operation," which involves penetrating fortified locations to free the nuclear scientists, who are moved from Iraq to Israel.
To complete the game successfully, players have to enter Israel to rescue the nuclear scientists, kill U.S. and Israeli troops and seize their laptops containing secret information.
Mohammad Taqi Fakhrian, a leader of the student group, told reporters, "This is our defense against the enemy's cultural onslaught". Which, you have to admit, is more interesting than the usual 'our FPS employs the Unreal 3 engine and boasts cutting edge AI".
This is not the first highly critical response to Kuma's Assault on Iran. Last year, another Iranian development team created a game named 'Counter Strike' in which you had to plant bombs on a tanker in the strait of Hormuz, thereby rendering the oil route impassable. Read more here. This too was intended as a reposte to the Kuma mission.
Thing is, the Kuma\War downloads are usually reasonably level-headed and objective - they've been designed to explore real-life conflicts and hotspots using available data as accurately as possible. They're news games, really, rather than jingositic crowd-pleasers. We're not talking America's Army here.
Still, videogames are a great form of protest - easy to distribute, fun to interact with and they garner attention on both sides of the debate.
