Persian Gulf-based Red Stallion Interactive officially announced its existence this week and detailed its plan to target Middle-Eastern markets with game content for mobile platforms and PC. The company's plan is to create original content and games based on original IP's that is tailored to the Arab culture.

As part of the Game Developers Conference Localization Summit, Corbomite Games CEO Oded Sharon will discuss the challenges and benefits of working in the Middle East games market. Another unnamed speaker from the region will join Sharon.

Since the Middle East spans over 23 countries with more than 75 million internet users it is a growing and significant market untapped by most game developers. With localized titles selling significantly more in the region, it makes sense that the key to breaking into the Middle East is about catering to the local dialect.

A columnist for the United Arab Emirates-based Khaleej Times has penned an opinion piece examining the subject of how Western made games impact (and depict) Middle Easterners.

Aijaz Zaka Syed begins by noting that his son’s favorite games are of a violent nature, and typically originate “in the land of the free." Such games are shaped by “the simplistic, With-Us or-Against-Us doctrine propounded by, you know who.”

The author tries to remind his son that the action happening on the screen is “just a game,” and that “things are not what they seem to be in the movies and videogames,” but he worries about the impression the games might be having on his off spring.

Media firm Rubicon Group Holding has partnered with Modern Electronics Co. Ltd., the sole distributor of Sony products in Saudi Arabia, in order to localize content appearing on various Sony platforms for Middle East users.

United Arab Emirates publication The National (thanks The Escapist) details the plans, which will include dubbing "certain games” into Arabic, adding Arabian characters and eliminating scenes that could run afoul of censors. Rubicon Executive Director Ghassan Ayoubi explained, “Those games that are extra-violent, or have sensitive issues for the region, will be edited for content.”

GamesLatest series of articles on game development in the Middle East previously focused on Syria. The latest installment takes us on a tour of game makers in Lebanon and Jordan.

One of the first Lebanese-developed games was 2003’s Special Force, which focused on the fight between Hezbollah and Israel over occupying forces in Lebanon. The article claims that Hezbollah was taken with the game, and adopted it as its own, eventually merging it into its propaganda machine. While Hezbollah’s adoption of the game caused it to be banned in some Middle East countries, it did call attention the game, allowing the developers to create a sequel.

Syria is a country of approximately 22.0 million people, but it’s not often thought of as a center of game development.

While the country’s origins in game development are only about a dozen years old, the country has produced its fair share of videogames, the history of which are detailed in an article on GamesLatest, penned by Syrian game developer Radwan Kasmiya.

Kasmiya pins the delay in Syrian game development taking off on “serious” Arab developers generally gravitating towards creating corporate applications in order to make ends meet. This situation, in turn, helped to foster Syria’s independent gaming community, of which Kasmiya was a member—he released a game called War 73 in 1999, which centered on the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

Protests held in virtual spaces such as Second Life have real-world political value, according to international projects lobbysist Max Burns, who pens an op-ed for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Paying particular attention to SL demonstrations against the Iranian government's post-election crackdown against opponents of the Ahmadinejad regime, Burns writes:

The active Iranian protest community in Second Life is more than a curiosity, and downplaying the importance of virtual societies in our political and social lives... understates the power of synthetic worlds in creating viable social movements...

Authoritarian governments that repress real-world demonstrations have difficulty doing the same in the synthetic world. Virtual rallies are so hard to shut off because the mechanics of virtual protest are fluid...

Indeed, the efforts of real-world governments to restrict the Internet usage of virtual protesters appears to strengthen the rallies as the online community responds to what it views as an offense against expression. So, for instance, Second Life's virtual protests continued — and even increased in scale — after real-world Iranians started to mysteriously disappear from the synthetic world...

Bruce on Games takes a look at the video game as propaganda.

While blogger Bruce Everiss concludes that games have generally been ignored for propaganda purposes, he argues this is because government officials are basically old school types:

The reason we have been left alone is quite obvious. Games are just another media, albeit a technically superior media. But the people with all the power, the politicians and journalists, don’t realise this because mostly they just don’t understand video games at all. We see this in the way they blame video games for violence in society when the opposite is true. And now that ignorance is protecting video game players from propaganda.

GP: we're not so sure we agree, given that a new issue-oriented Flash game pops up about once a week on the web.

At any rate, Bruce has identified a list of propaganda games. Among others they include several PC mods produced by Islamic extremists, the Religious Right's Left Behind, and the Defense Department's controversial America's Army, of which Bruce is clearly not a fan:

America’s Army is the big one. A series of games designed to foster the American Army view of the world on an unsuspecting public and also to work as a recruitment tool. This has been a remarkable success at promoting gung ho American militarism.

The PlayStation 3 may be struggling in major consumer markets, but Middle Eastern gamers apparently love Sony's Blu-Ray equipped console.

Emirates Business 24/7 reports that the Middle East enjoys the highest level of PS3 sales among developing countries. SCEE exec Jim Ryan commented:

The PS3... has a strong market in the Middle East. The sales have been disproportionately strong in the Middle East and Africa... and parts of Asia, especially in the May-June-July period.

At least 20,000 to 25,000 PS3s have been sold in developing countries this year and 80 per cent of that was in the Middle East... In other emerging countries such as Iran and Africa it's entry-level machines like the PS2 which... are moving fast.

The high summer temperatures, combined with the economic downturn, have encouraged [Middle Eastern] users to stay at home, which is another major driver of sales.

Despite the PS3's relative success, gamers in the Middle Eastern market shouldn't expect much in the way of culturally familiar games on the system, Ryan said:

Without too much of Arabic content in games, sales figures are positive. Unless gaming companies see big returns from the localisation or Arabisation of content there will be no investment made on that front.

Emirates Business 24/7 reports that the total Middle Eastern gaming market for systems and software is $750,000 million, with at least a third of that amount controlled by Sony.

The post-election tumult in Iran has taken a toll in Second Life, where Iranian members have been notably absent in recent day, reports New World Notes:

When the widespread protest... erupted last weekend, I went searching Second Life for Residents who lived in that country. According to Linden demographic stats published last year... there were over a hundred of them then, logging into Second Life on a regular basis...

 

Linden spokesman Peter Linden confirmed to me last night, "[W]e've not seen any log-ins from Iran." ...the utter lack of Iranian log-ins in the last few days suggests that Second Life is being blocked, or that Internet connectivity has become so degraded in that country, it's shut down by default...

 

For the moment, however, it is probably better that Iranians' Internet activity center on Twitter and other such tools.

Here at GamePolitics we lay no claim to understanding the complexities of Lebanese politics.

But we do note that Lebanon-based WixelStudios has launched what it says is the first use of games for a political campaign in the troubled nation. From the company's website:

For the first time in Lebanon, games are used as an election propaganda! ...

Wixel Studios produced an interactive animated documentary for the Liberty Front... in addition to the documentaries you will find four games accompanying to the stories.

The four browser-based mini-games, which are nicely varied in presentation, involve themes in which the player does battle with Syrian forces. Based on its Wikipedia entry, Lebanon's dealings with Syria is a prime concern of the Liberty Front.

Check out the games here.

A new first-person shooter which its publisher describes as "hysterical" and "outrageous" drops players into a fight with virtual Iranian forces; its ultimate mission is a face-off with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Durka 3D: Quest for Ahmadinejad takes its name from the faux Farsi spoken by the puppet characters of the 2004 comedy film Team America: World Police. A press release from Petrilla Entertainment describes the downloadable PC game:

Durka 3D: The Fall of Ahmadinejad is a full-fledged fast-action shooter that lets the player hunt down the Iranian dictator...

Scenes include bunkers filled with crates labeled "Not a crate destined for Iraqi insurgents," or missiles that say "Made in Russia," as well as battles where the enemy hurls insults at you in gibberish...

Designer Jesse Petrilla's last effort was Quest for Saddam, an FPS hunt for the late Iraqi dictator. Islamic radicals subsequently used the Quest for Saddam engine to create a video game riposte, Night of Bush Capturing, which was widely criticized in the West. Given the history, it seems likely that Durka 3D will spark criticism from Iran, if not another instance of turnabout.

Commenting on his game via press release, Petrilla said:

Durka 3D goes beyond the politics surrounding the conflict. I created Durka 3D to attack a tyrant with Saturday Night Live type satire to relieve some of the stress many of us share.

GameCulture has more.

With an increasing emphasis on fantasy entertainment provided by mobile phone games, comic books and TV, there is some hope that radicalism will become a less attractive path for Islamic youth.

Wael El-Zanaty, an exec with the Egyptian firm behind cell phone game Bab el-Hara, told the Associated Press:

The best thing about this game is that this is something that Arabs can relate to. It’s about part of [Arab] history — the resistance to the French occupation [of Syria]... We wanted something that reflected our culture... developed with an Arab perspective.

The AP explains:

The Arab world’s private sector is leading a push to provide Muslim and Arab youth with homegrown heroes, as a bulwark against the trend toward radical Islam throughout the Middle East.

Clearly, superheroes won’t offset all the problems that stoke radicalism — anger at corrupt Arab regimes and at Israel over its treatment of Palestinians — but El-Zanaty said he hoped these pop culture characters could give young people a positive image of themselves as Arabs.

Meanwhile, Naif al-Mutawa, publisher of The 99 comic book superhero series, offered his view on how media can help deliver positive role models for Arab youth:

Our [Islamic] story has become [more] about what not to do, than about what to do. I wanted to … go back to the same sources others have pulled out a lot of negative ideas from, and pull out positive, tolerant, multicultural, accepting ideas.

I’m not trying to sell religion here. I’m trying to sell the idea that at the values level, we’re all the same...’  I really think that we [Arabs] limit ourselves with this catastrophic thinking that the world is controlled by others and there is nothing we can do. I think this is rubbish.

Mobile phone apps may be the ideal platform upon which to deliver the message, said Ayman Shoukry of the Good News Group:

[In Egypt alone] there are 40 million mobiles. We don’t have 40 million [other types of] devices anywhere in Egypt."

In a 2006 interview with Kuwait TV, an Islamic religious leader issued a call for computer games which require players to "slaughter Jews."

We don't have the exact air date of the video at left, although a Washington Post article from September of 2006 references the video.

We're presenting it now because this is the first time that GP has located the actual footage. Among Imam Nabil Al Awadi's remarks:

As their games corrupt our morals, now they are making games with their current wars.

Their wars, that are not Islamic, in Islamic countries have turned into a computer games. When the child plays, he adopts a character that is not Islamic, that kills Muslims.

Why, gentlemen, should it not be the opposite? Why can't we produce a few games like these? Why can't we make games that instead of teaching children how to slaughter the Muslims, they can teach them how to free the Al-Aqsa mosque. The child will play and slaughter Jews and others.

Not only children, but adults too, will kill heretics and free the Al Aqsa mosque. There are games with pit battles, it's nice!

Along with Al Awadi's comments, a narrator shows clips and explains Islamic-themed battle games.

GP: While the clip is somewhat dated, it shows the extent to which video games are seen by some as a vehicle to politicize - and militarize - youth.

Via: Jumpcut

A Syrian developer is creating a game that it hopes will boost the image of Islam, reduce tensions with the West and encourage pride among young Muslims.

That's a pretty tall order for a computer game.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Al-Quraysh, due for a September release, is being developed by Damascus-based Afkar Media. From the CSM's description, it sounds like the type of build-and-fight game that will be instantly familiar to Western fans of the historical strategy genre:

Al-Quraysh is a strategy game that tells the story of the first 100 years of Islam's history from the viewpoint of four different nations - Bedouins, Arabs, Persians, and Romans.

One can choose to command any of the armies of the four nations or lead the army of the main character, Khaled Ibn Waleed, a Muslim warrior who defeated the Roman and Persian empires and never lost a battle. Or one can play the role of the Bedouin sheikh, who must earn the respect of his tribe. The player has the task of building and protecting trade routes and water sources, building armies, conducting battles, and freeing slaves.

Akkar Media exec Radwan Kasmiya commented on the game:

Al-Quraysh is going to help people in the West better understand the people who are living in the East. We want to show that this civilization was a sort of practical and almost heavenly civilization...

I get very embarrassed by the way we [Muslims] are showing our civilization. There were rational laws that were governing Muslims at that time [on which the game is based]. This allowed this civilization to last for a long time and to accept the other civilizations that they came in touch with...

 

Most video games on the market are anti-Arab and anti-Islam. Arab gamers are playing games that attack their culture, their beliefs, and their way of life. The youth who are playing the foreign games are feeling guilt... But we also don't want to do [a game] about Arabs killing Westerners.

Via: Inside Arab Gaming

In recent days GamePolitics has covered web games propagandizing the current Gaza conflict from both the Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints.

The latest of these is Iron Dome which takes the Israeli perspective. Along with a Missile Command-esque interface, Iron Dome offers three levels of difficulty as well as several links offering the Israeli version of the issues behind the conflict.

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics reader Itamar for the tip!

The Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance apparently does a crackjack job of clamping down on bootleg IP in the Middle-East. But as far as protecting its own website?

Not so much...

TorrentFreak reports that the news section of the AAPA site fell victim to hackers and remains unfixed as of this report. The brag posted by the hackers (left) is dated January 6th.

From the TorrentFreak report:

While the AAA might do a good job at protecting the intellectual property of their clients, preventing their own website from being hacked seems to be a real challenge. For days now, the news section of the site has been stripped of all its content, displaying the following message: “hacked by ashiyane security team”.

When it comes to securing websites, anti-piracy outfits seem to fail time and time again. Last year, the RIAA website got hacked, and the IFPI and a Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit both lost their domain names to BitTorrent sites after they failed to renew their registrations. Perhaps they should consider investing a few of their hard earned dollars in a proper sysop.

New World Notes reports that State Depatment official James Glassman (in avatar form at left) will hold a virtual meeting with student journalists in Cairo this morning.

Among other issues, Glassman, who serves as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is expected to field questions about the current Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age reports that USAID is funding the event.

No Second Life account? Catch the video simulcast.

UPDATE: DIP has a video of the event.

As GamePolitics reported last week, Israel's invasion of Gaza has spawned protests in Second Life as well as a Flash game with a distinctly pro-Palestinian view.

The latest online game inspired by the conflict, however, is very much pro-Israeli.

Save Israel is a simplified, Missile Command-like game which seems very difficult to win - and that appears to be the designer's point. When it's "game over," a splash screen advises the player:

It's very hard to save Israeli citys from Hamas's rocket, so we must defend ourselfs

User comments to the game on its Kongregate page reflect the strong division of opinion generated by the conflict.

Via: Enduring America

The current Gaza conflict continues to be portrayed in game imagery.

Earlier this week GamePolitics looked at Raid Gaza!, a web game which harshly criticizes the Israeli incursion. We also reported on anti-Israeli protests in Second Life.

Humor site CAP News has posted a parody report on Gaza Under Fire, a fictitious Wii game that would allow players to fight as either the Isaelis or Palestinians.

The concept behind the game is that players insert their Mii characters into the Middle East conflict... and then choose whether to go on the offensive against the other side or help protect their own people. The game utilizes both the Wii remote and nunchuck and incorporates updates from the Wii News Channel to keep the game current...

 

Some, like [fictional professor] Spaulding Wang, see the game as an educational tool...

"Rather than try to explain to my daughter something I just don't get, why not have her take Israel's side and blow up some civilians in Gaza, and then take Palestine's side and do the same to Israel," Wang said. "Then she can form her own opinion about who she thinks is right, and share that with her fellow first-graders."

There's no word on what he played, but Sir Salman Rushdie told UK newspaper The Times that he indulged in some computer games while dodging a fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini from 1988 until 1998.

Khomeini lodged the death sentence against Rushdie following the publication of his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. The book was regarded as blasphemous by some segments of the global Islamic community.

GameCulture notes, however, that Rushdie was rather dismissive of games in a 2008 interview with Stephen Colbert:

I think video games, YouTube, you know, these are the things that will change the world. Because when people see what garbage everybody else is consuming, they want it too.

A report that Iran was "joining" the ESRB received wide play on game news sites last week. However, that information appears to be erroneous.

When the story first broke, GamePolitics immediately questioned the report, which originated in the Tehran Times.

We also put in a request to the ESRB for clarification. Spokesman Eliot Mizrachi took time from his holiday break to respond to GamePolitics:

Our ratings apply to games available at retail in the U.S. and Canada. No membership is required to submit games to ESRB.

 

Companies from other countries may submit for rating if the game is to be sold in the U.S. and/or Canadian market... Our ratings apply to games sold in the U.S. and Canada only...

 

We have not had any discussions with Iran about their adopting our rating system.

There is a somewhat curious report in the Tehran Times which says that Iran is "joining" the ESRB.

One interpretation of this is that the Iranian government will henceforth require that games sold there carry ESRB ratings. Another possibility is that the Iranians are instituting their own rating system and using "ESRB" generically, in the same way that xerox is commonly used to refer to copy machines.

We're guessing the latter, since comments from an Iranian official involved in the project indicate that some sort of local editing process took place. From the Tehran Times:

The managing director of the National Foundation for Computer Games Behruz Minaii announced that Iran will be joining the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) next week...

Minaii added that the idea of joining ESRB was initiated last year and since then, 20 experts from different religious, psychological, social and media organizations have worked on compiling the project.

“Afterwards, several members of the Guardian Council and scholars of the Qom Seminary and different universities of the country did the final editing,” he remarked.

The first part of the plan is now ready and the next parts will also be completed through establishing this organization, he stated.

We've got a request into the ESRB for clarification as to any potential involvement on their part.

Via: Kotaku
 

Rappelz, a free-to-play MMO developed in South Korea, is getting a face lift to bring it into line with the Middle-east's Islamic sensibilities, according to website TechRadar.

[Dubai publisher] Game Power 7... has made a few adjustments to Gala's role-player Rappelz to make it supposedly more appealing to customers in Islamic countries...

 

As well as changing the background music, the noises monsters make (really?) and taking out non-Muslim religious symbols, such as crosses, Game Power 7 has given some characters a little more to wear. We're told that female players will be properly covered up so that they're no longer showing too many flesh-coloured pixels. Arms and legs get special attention, with chainmail and long stockings pasted on.

The new version of Rappelz is online now and aimed at 19 countries that include Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

GP sister-site GameCulture, citing Indian newspaper The Hindu, reports that Taliban thugs burned down a video game shop as part of a sweep through the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan.

Stores selling videos and electronics were also attacked.

Is piracy ruining the video game market in Saudi Arabia?

That's the spin coming from the Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance at this week's Dubai World Game Expo. But, as GP sister-site GameCulture explains, it is actually game censorship by the Saudi government which pushes gamers into pirating the titles they want.

AAA official Scott Butler claims that Saudi officials aren't doing enough to combat piracy:

In the UAE they are sending pirates to prison a lot, whereas in Saudi Arabia there has never been a judgment like that for any kind of pirate. When they mete out the judgement of imprisonment, that's when the market will finally crack.

But, as GC editor Aaron Ruby points out:

That might be the first time the Saudi legal system was chastised for being too lenient. And therein lies the absurdity of Butler's proposal... Censorship in that country has effectively driven the videogame industry underground. The kingdom's fear of media that challenges its cultural values has created a thriving entertainment black market, of which games are a key segment...

 

Iran, whose entertainment is also heavily regulated by the state, is also a hotbed of piracy. According to Mehrdad Agah, chariman of Puya Arts Software, 99% of all games sold in Iran are pirated...

 

It's no coincidence that the countries with the highest piracy rates (Saudi, Iran, China) have some of the most draconian censorship policies on the planet. The true counter to piracy is more freedom, not less.

Bonus: In this fascinating article, a Saudi gamer pens a history of game piracy in the kingdom.

An Australian businessman who once was caught up in the legal battle over the Kazaa file-sharing network has launched a controversial, ad-driven war game.

As reported by the Syndey Morning Herald, Kevin Bermeister is the money man behind Rising Eagle - Gaza. The game pits Israel's elite Golani Brigade against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Players can fight on either side.

Bermeister, who is Jewish, told the newspaper that he wanted to "throw out a challenge to Iran." Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to destroy Israel.

People will get to know each other in a competitive battleground environment, get to text each other, speak to each other, connect with each other and figure out that they're human beings and they can get on with each other...

 

Just like Ahmadinejad is throwing out a challenge to Israel, I think this game throws out a challenge to Iran. Clearly the intent is that the Israeli Defence Force is the futuristic fighting force that is capable of overcoming anything thrown at it, and the challenge is for anyone to come and take a shot.

Rising Eagle has been developed in Israel. Developer Yaron Dotan also spoke to the SMH:

Dotan, 34, was delighted at the suggestion that his game, which includes billboard-size photographs of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looking like a monkey [see pic at left], might cause offence to Iranians. He describes the Iranian soldiers as "the Waffen SS of today".

"I want this to upset people. I hope it causes the biggest shitstorm in history," he said.

In this Associated Press photo by Maya Alleruzzo, U.S. Army Capt. Charles Ford plays an unknown video game with Wa'ad, a seven-year-old Iraqi boy who lost an arm and leg to an IED near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. From the AP report:

Soldiers from Hammer Company, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment are arranging for the child to be fitted with prosthetic limbs.

Via: Franklin Now

A site which tracks developments in the Middle East reports that a radical Islamist website has posted a video game encouraging players to battle Americans, Israelis and Shi'ite Muslims.

Of the game, which appears to be a crude adaptation of a side-scroller, MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, writes:

On July 21, 2008 a member of the Islamist forum Al-Ikhlas posted a video game designed to encourage children to fight against "the forces of tyranny". The game enables the player to shoot at planes marked "Shi'ite", "Jewish" or "American".

 

Throughout the game, inciting speeches by Osama Bin Laden are heard, accompanied by the sounds of explosions and gunfire. The player is exposed to images of bin Laden, Zarqawi and other prominent Al-Qaeda members.

Although we don't know much about MEMRI, the site has in the past been given high praise by David Kaplan, chief investigative reporter for U.S. News & World Report:

MEMRI... does translations of media from the Muslim world, focused on jihadist propaganda and efforts by reformists. The group's new MEMRI Blog serves up news stories, videos, and postings from 60 leading Islamist websites. Hey, where else can you get headlines like "Mega-Evil Zionist Queen Stars in Iranian Sci-Fi Movie"?

GP: Big thanks to reader enbob for the tip!

Kotaku reports that PlayStation 2 favorite God of War 2, officially banned by Saudi authorities, is available for purchase on the black market.

In fact, a Saudi reader even describes the process to Kotaku in great detail. It seems that a local mall peddles GoW2 discs concealed inside shrinkwrapped boxes for other games. In the instance described, GoW2 was covered up by box art showing Winning Eleven 7, a several years-old soccer sim. (see pic)

GP: It's nice to see that Saudi gamers aren't totally limited in their choices. And we hope that the store clerk still has possession of his thumbs now that this info is public.