Author Salman Rushdie has been chatting about videogames lately, praising their storytelling potential and choice. He’s also suggested they could be crucial in the liberation of archaic countries like Iran, suggesting that a healthy dose of gaming might drag them into the modern age.
“They don’t want to live according to the rules that the old gray-beard mullahs set for them, so I think if we want to look at the Muslim world you have to look at it in those ways,” says Rushdie, talking about young Muslims trapped under old regimes. “You have to look at it as a world in conflict. And what we need to do is to support, I think, that modernizing positive way of being a Muslim, which involves living in the world as it is.
“I often think that the best way to liberate Iran is just to drop Nintendo consoles from the air. And Big Macs.”
I reckon you could give the most hardcore, progression-hating, woman-stoning, rape-encouraging, acid-flinging, beard-growing Muslim extremist a quick play of Kirby’s Epic Yarn and he’ll take the stick out of his arse within seconds.
And as for Rushdie believing that games offer “much greater agency that the player has to choose how he will explore and inhabit the world,” all I have to say is that I’d love for him to actually write a gaming story and explore the things that interests him about the medium. We could do with more real writers in gaming, thanks!
Salman Rushdie Proposes Dropping Nintendos On Iran Instead Of Bombs [Game Informer]
