Liel Leibovitz looks into the videogames distributed by authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East:
The PC game, Special Operation 85 [seen above], came out in 2007, and is virtually indistinguishable from any American-made, war-themed first person shooter. The only difference is that instead of being named Huxley or McCullin, your character is Bahram Nasseri, Iran’s top agent, and his enemies—portrayed with the same silly relish reserved almost exclusively for Bond villains—are nefarious Americans and Israelis. The game sold tens of thousands of copies, a tremendous achievement in a country where technology is not frequently accessible and copyright laws are not frequently obeyed.
The game’s success was encouraging.
That same year, the Islamic Republic inaugurated the government-sponsored Iran National Foundation of Computer Game, which has proven to be instrumental in commissioning, financing, or otherwise supporting scores of games designed to promote the regime’s values at home and abroad. There’s Breaking the Siege of Abadan, which recreates one of the bloodiest battles of the Iran-Iraq War, or, for the more timid, Sara’s New Life, in which a young woman must “protect her morality” from carnal temptations.
But gaming only goes so far as propaganda:
Games, even the best ones, have no room for such uncertainties. They depend on a rigid and algorithmic progression. Couple that with an overt attempt at indoctrination, and you get the crudest sort of propaganda, the kind that appeals to none but the already convinced.
More recent Dish on the emerging complexity of video games here.
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