Navid Khonsari has been a legal resident of the United States for 17 years. He’s worked on games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Resident Evil 7, and an interactive story about the Iranian Revolution called 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. These days, though, he doesn’t feel entirely welcome in the US or Iran, and…
Iran’s Supreme Council of Virtual Spaces, which is a real thing and not the dystopian government from a sci-fi TV show, has announced that Pokémon Go has been banned in the country.
Former US marine and game developer Amir Hekmati is suing the state of Iran, alleging that he was tortured during his five-year detainment period. Hekmati had been convicted of espionage among other charges. He was released from captivity in January.
Amir Hekmati, U.S. born one-time game developer jailed in Iran since 2011 for allegedly engaging in espionage for the CIA, has been given a 10-year prison termfollowing a secret retrial which took place in December. He had originally been sentenced to death, a ruling overturned in 2012.
Usually, it's the characters in the video games themselves that have the code names. Agent 47. Solid Snake. The Illusive Man. But, here in real life, a young Iranian artist working on a game has fled his homeland and hides his identity, all so he can do the thing he's always dreamed of.
Last month, Kotaku published images of Taiwanese special forces. They were totally frightening. But Taiwan doesn't have a monopoly on scary troops. Other countries are ready to terrify you, too.
League of Legends' female characters wear revealing outfits—too revealing for Iranian hardliners. And thus, too revealing for an Iranian eSports tournament.
The United States government commemorated the one-year anniversary of Iran's imprisonment of American-citizen/former-Marine/former-game-developer/accused-spy Amir Hekmati by asking for his release.
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwā against Salman Rushdie, calling for the assassination of the British Indian author of The Satanic Verses. Seeing as Rushdie is still alive, it didn't go so well. Now a state-sponsored Iranian student organization plans on correcting that oversight with …
What does it take to be accused of espionage? For Navid Khonsari, all he had to do was start making a game about his homeland.
Iran's mastery of the Unity engine may not have gotten the attention of the United Nations Security Council, but games like Gando (pictured above) sure have spooked 'Murica, according to Iranian government sources quoted in a report published by Iran.
It's a proud part of American mythology that people from all over the world get to come here and pursue their dreams. Navid Khonsari has one of those stories. The Iranian-American used to work at Rockstar Games as cinematic director, where he helped steer the vision on games like The Warriors, Midnight Club II and …
There is new hope for the survival of an American sentenced to death in Iran for spying today, as Iran has overturned the death sentence for Amir Hekmati.
Defending his preference for peace in an in-depth interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama updates the tried-and-true 'war is not a game'.
Amir Hekmati, the U.S.-born game developer sentenced to death in Iran for allegedly engaging in espionage for the CIA, has asked the Obama administration to do whatever it takes, including a prisoner-transfer, to save him from execution.
When Iranian state TV aired the alleged confession of a homegrown spy on Sunday night, Amir Mirza Hekmati's recitation of supposed wrongdoings included the standard claims of working as mole for the American Government along with a less common twist: that he'd supposedly worked for a video game company that was…
There are sections of EA's blockbuster Battlefield 3 in which the player controls an American soldier fighting on the streets of Tehran. It went down pretty well in most places, but Iran isn't most places.
To be clear, the legal sale of Battlefield 3 in Iran has never exactly been widespread. But as is the way of the world, "street vendors" had been selling the game anyway, and according to reports that's resulted in a crackdown from Iranian authorities
Last week I found myself in a back row of one of Gamescom's business hall with a few minutes to kill. Turning a corner I discovered a sizeable booth set up to showcase the computer and video games of Iran.
