The state sponsors titles that solid it in a good mild and punish indies for depicting a extra complicated imaginative and prescient of Iranian identification. From a report: Commander of the Resistance: Amerli Battle is a first-person shooter set in Iraq. Launched in 2022, the sport pitches gamers in opposition to Islamic State militants laying siege to a city, based mostly on a real-life occasion that came about in 2014. Its hero — the commander of the title — is a real-life determine too: Qasem Soleimani, a significant normal within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a navy pressure below the command of Iran’s theocratic management. Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020, was a strong determine within the regime — and a controversial one, declared a terrorist by the US and accused of overseeing human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings in Iran, Iraq and Syria.
The sport was produced by Monadian Media, an offshoot of the Basij Our on-line world Group — the digital wing of the IRGC’s paramilitary group, the Basij’s and it’s a part of an ongoing propaganda effort by the regime to rewrite historical past and mythologize its main figures. Dealing with rising discontent, the Islamic Republic has more and more invested in producing video video games, within the hope that it might probably use them to affect younger folks. The video games’ narratives attempt to reinforce the non secular identification of the nation, to painting home opponents — such because the Girl, Life, Freedom motion that started final yr — as sectarian extremists, and to rehabilitate figures like Soleimani, a navy commander related to brutal crackdowns. And it has thrust Iran’s once-thriving video games trade into the midst of a battle over Iranian identification.
