ISS 210 Society, the Individual, & Video Games (W4)

Indiana University Press

Chapter Title: From Kuma\War to Quraish: REPRESENTATION OF ISLAM IN ARAB AND AMERICAN VIDEO GAMES Chapter Author(s): Vít Šisler

Book Title: Playing with Religion in Digital Games Book Editor(s): HEIDI A. CAMPBELL, GREGORY PRICE GRIEVE Published by: Indiana University Press. (2014) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gz5dh.9

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Religion in

Mainstream Games

Pa r t t w o

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109

V i de o g a m e s i nc r e a s i ng ly r e c r e at e r e a l -wor l d e v e n ts and spaces, making tangible connections to the outside world. In doing so, they use real people, places, and cultures as their referents, open- ing new forms of representation.1 Since 9/11 there has been an increase in video games, mainly first-person shooters, produced in the United States and dealing with the representation of the Middle East, Islam, and Muslims.2 For example, in the popular Kuma\War (Kuma Real- ity Games, 2004), players can “replay” missions from the real military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. These missions navigate players through Iraqi and Afghani cities, including many Muslim holy sites and mosques. They also feature Sunni and Shia Muslim characters, who are portrayed mostly as enemies in the narrative framework of insurgency, international terrorism, and religious fundamentalism.3

Simultaneously, many video game producers in the Muslim world have started to produce their own games dealing directly with the repre- sentation of Islam and Muslims. By doing so, they attempt, first, to pro- vide their audiences with more culturally relevant representations and, second, to educate the outside world about Islam and Muslim culture.4 For example, the Syrian real-time strategy game Quraish (A fkar Media, 2007) allows the player to witness the origin of Islam and “replay” key battles from its early history, including the defeats of the Iranian Sassa- nid Empire and the Byzantine Empire. Although Quraish and Kuma\War similarly use what Ian Bogost in Persuasive Games calls the “expressive power of video game[s],” the images of Islam and Muslims these games offer are significantly different.5

From Kuma\War to Quraish R e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f I s l a m i n A r a b

a n d A m e r i c a n V i d e o G a m e s

f i v e

Vít Šisler

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110 V í t Š i s l e r

In Cultural Encounters in the Arab World, Tarik Sabry argues that in the twenty-first century, with the spread and “overabundance” of media technologies and signifiers of the Other, the role of place as a neces- sary element for encounters has been undermined. According to Sa- bry, witnessing or encountering other cultures now has little to do with physical space and has become more of a symbolic phenomenon.6 At the same time, video games have become a sociocultural phenomenon of increasing relevance. They constitute a mainstream leisure activity for broad levels of society and are increasingly becoming spaces where cultural encountering takes place. Today, there is a crucial need to criti- cally understand the symbolic and ideological dimensions of in-game representational politics – particularly in relation to Islam and Muslims.

In this chapter I discuss three American and three Arab video games and analyze the ways in which they (a) construct virtual representations of Islam and Muslims and (b) communicate these representations to their audiences. On a broader theoretical level, I aim to explore how Islam, both as an organized system of belief and as a lived reality, is in- tegrated into the video game medium and what ethical considerations this implies.

T h e R e p r e s e n t a t i o n a n d S e l f - R e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f I s l a m a n d M u s l i m s i n V i d e o G a m e s

Existing research on Islam and video games can be divided into three clusters: (a) the representation of Muslims in Western games, (b) the construction of identity in Muslim games, and (c) the communication of Islamic moral and ethical values.

Early research on the representation of Muslims in mainstream Western games was often entangled with research on the representation of Arabs. Ibrahim Marashi in “The Depiction of Arabs in Combat Video Games” has outlined the stereotypical modes of representing Arabs and Muslims in video games focusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Philipp Reichmuth and Stephan Werning in “Pixel Pashas, Digital Djinns” have described the exploitation of Oriental topoi in various genres of West- ern video games.7 Johan Höglund in “Electronic Empire” has discussed representation of the Middle East and Muslims in U.S. action games in

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F r o m K u m a\Wa r t o Q u a r i s h 111

relation to “war on terror” discourse. The results of this research indicate that the dominant mode of representation of Muslim cultures in West- ern video games (a) exploits stereotypical generalizations and clichés, (b) presents most followers of Islam as a threat, (c) most likely links Islam with terrorism, and (d) marginalizes the representation of “ordi- nary Muslims.”8

Sahar Khamis in “The Role of ‘New’ Arab Satellite Channels in Fos- tering Intercultural Dialogue” argues that although the distorted images of Arabs and Muslims in the West have existed and have been studied for a long time, new international developments necessitate readdressing this issue.9 In the post-9/11 world, polarized rhetoric of “us” and “them” has intensified in Western media, reinforcing simplistic ideas of a collec- tive self and its hostile Other. Arab and Muslim identities have become politicized through an ascribed interrelationship between Islam, Arab identity, and terrorism.10 As a result, most Muslims now find themselves misperceived as an isolated and excluded minority that resists integra- tion with other cultures and faiths, or as a group of “terrorists,” who vio- lently attack others and threaten their safety.11 In turn, since 9/11, many Muslims have made their identities more salient, mainly because they feel the need to educate people about Islam and also to justify being Mus- lim.12 Khamis suggests that the introduction of new digital technologies signified the start of a new era of self-definition and self-representation for Arabs and Muslims.13

Correspondingly, research on the construction of identity in Mus- lim games has focused on games produced in the Muslim world and on the issues of self-representation and identity. David Machin and Usama Suleiman in “Arab and American Computer War Games” have com- pared how two Arab and American games recontextualize and frame real-world events. Helga Tawil-Souri in “The Political Battlefield of Pro- Arab Video Games” has presented an ethnographic account of how Pal- estinian children play, comment, and make sense of Arab video games. In “Digital Arabs,” I have provided exploratory research on how Muslim and other identities are constructed and communicated to players in Arab games. The question of a specific Arab or Muslim identity and its construction in video games seems to be important to the majority of producers I interviewed in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.14 Most Arab

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112 V í t Š i s l e r

games available on the market today deal primarily with the identity of the main hero; they use different concepts and values, including Islam and its ethics, in the construction of that identity.

As a result, research on the communication of Islamic moral and ethical values deals with Islam as an organized system of religion and its relation to video games. Krystina Derrickson in “Second Life and the Sacred” has explored how virtual worlds recreate Islamic holy sites and rituals. In “Video Games, Video Clips, and Islam,” I have analyzed how video games are appropriated by the emerging Muslim consumer cul- ture. In “Islamogaming,” Heidi Campbell discusses how video games are used to teach the basic tenets of Islam and to communicate Islamic moral and ethical values.

A ll of this research indicates that the appropriation of video games in the Arab world has, from the beginning, been “engaged” in the sense that it focuses on the issues of cultural and religious identity as well as on the educational aspects of video games. This must be kept in mind when exploring the different modes of representation of Islam in Ameri- can and Arab games. On one hand, we have a mainstream, commercial, A merican production designed with its consumer base and its tastes and expectations in mind. On the other, we have an emerging, enthusi- astic, engaged industry in the Arab world. It is this asymmetrical nature of the frameworks that led Campbell to label Arab and Muslim video games as “alternative storytelling” that counters the dominant cultural narratives about their religious community promoted by the dominant media cultures.15

P l a y i n g w i t h R e l i g i o n: M e t h o d o l o g y a n d A i m s

The scholarly work done to date on Islam and video games has mostly been written from the perspectives of Middle Eastern or Islamic studies, cultural studies, and communication studies. Despite the importance of the research in these fields (primarily in expanding boundaries and exploring new ethical dimensions), from the perspective of game studies the existing research provides mostly anecdotal evidence on the subject matter and rarely analyzes the content of these games in detail. In this

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F r o m K u m a\Wa r t o Q u a r i s h 113

chapter I attempt to fill that void (theoretically as well as empirically) by investigating the possible ways in which video games utilize their core representational layers: audiovisual, narrative, and procedural. (By the “procedural layer,” I mean how Islam is embedded into the rule systems governing the player’s interaction with the game.)

Each of the three following sections analyzes how the virtual rep- resentation of Islam is constructed in one of these layers. For content analysis in each section I have used one American and one Arab video game in which the representation of Islam or Muslims is central to the respective layer. Both games for each analysis have been chosen from within the same genre. As Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen and his colleagues in Understanding Video Games note, genres are to a large extent arbitrary. Yet they are useful as analytical constructs imposed on a group of ob- jects in order to discuss the complexity of their individual differences in a meaningful way.16 Games of the same genre arguably share similar expressive forms and thus a similar method of analysis may be applied to them. For the audiovisual layer, I have chosen the first-person shooter genre and a shot-by-shot analysis; for the narrative layer, the real-time strategy genre and a textual analysis; and for the procedural layer, the turn-based strategy genre and a rule-system analysis (see table 5.1).

Beyond playing the games in question, I have examined related booklets, manuals, and websites and interviewed two Arab game pro- ducers. Substantial portions of the materials were gathered during field- work trips to Damascus in 2005, Beirut in 2006 and Cairo in 2007. All the American games were played in English; the Arab games were played in Arabic. Interviews with producers were recorded in Arabic.

Table 5.1. Video Games Used for A nalysis of Each Layer

Layer Genr e Amer ican Game Ar ab Game Methodology audiovisual first-person Kuma\War (Kuma Special Force 2 shot-by-shot shooter Reality Games, 2004) (W 3 D T E K , 2007) analysis narrative real-time Age of Empires 2 Quraish (A fkar textual strateg y (Ensemble, 1999) Media, 2007) analysis procedural turn-based, Civilization IV Arabian Lords rule-system real-time (Firaxis, 2005) (Break Away Games analysis strateg y /Quirkat, 2007)

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114 V í t Š i s l e r

T h e A u d i o v i s u a l L a y e r : M e e t i n g V i r t u a l H e r o e s a n d E n e m i e s i n F i r s t - P e r s o n S h o o t e r s

As Jay Bolter and R ichard Grusin argue in Remediation, the desire for immediacy leads digital media to borrow from each other as well as from their analog predecessors, such as film, television, and photography.17 Video games have a long-standing connection to cinema, deploying sim- ilar visual syntax, grammar, and vocabulary in introductions, cutscenes, and in-game graphics. As technological capabilities have improved, many video games utilize photorealistic imagery in order to create a believable universe. This applies in particular to the first-person shooter genre with its emphasis on visual realism.18

Since 9/11, video games released by the U.S. gaming industry have increasingly sought to mirror real-world conflict scenarios, particularly the U.S. military interventions in Iraq and A fghanistan. One such game is Kuma\War, a tactical first- and third-person shooter game with down- loadable missions available for free online. Kuma\War was developed by Kuma Reality Games, which was set up in 2004 in New York by a group of retired military officers.19 According to the authors, Kuma\ War is “more than just a game; it is an interactive chronicle of the war on terror with real news coverage and an original video news show for each mission.”20 In recreating real-world events, Kuma\War uses information culled from Fox News reports, military experts, Depart- ment of Defense records, and original research. Each episode consists of a playable mission, extensive background text, satellite photos, and a multimedia library, often including interviews with event participants. The transcript in table 5.2 describes part of the trailer for the Mission 29: Fallujah: Operation al-Fajr game (2004), which aims to recreate the coalition forces’ ground attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004.

The game closely mimics the visual style of TV news coverage. It provides a “real-world hook ” by offering privileged glimpses from the front lines (taken directly from video footage of landscapes in which the U.S. military has been engaged).21 This gritty realism centers on the authenticity of weapons, sounds, and combat scenarios. Yet the same principles of “realism” are not extended to the enemy as the Other.

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F r o m K u m a\Wa r t o Q u a r i s h 115

Virtual newsroom. We see a female reporter in front and images of a U.S. soldier, a military helicopter, and the U.S. flag in the background. The head- line says: “Kuma\War Jacki Schechner.”

Real-world footage from Iraq. U.S. Humvees move on road in a rural landscape.

Close-up of two Sunni militants in plain clothes, their faces wrapped in kufiyas, wielding machine guns and R PGs.

A group of Iraqi soldiers enters the city. Citizens welcome them and wave Iraqi flags.

Close-up of a masked Sunni militant firing an R P G .

Black-and-white photo of Zarqawi. Cut. A glimpse of real footage of Berg’s beheading.

A l Jazeera footage. Five masked militants, armed with machine guns and scimitars, read a statement to the camera. In front of them sits a civilian prisoner. His face is blurred. In the background, a black banner with the shahadah, the Islamic declaration of faith, in A rabic: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger.”

Virtual newsroom. Close-up of Schechner.

Close-up of Wilkerson. A com- puter screen and a map of Iraq are in the background.

Table 5.2. Transcript of Trailer for Kuma\War’s “Fallujah: Operation al-Fajr” (excerpt)

Jacki: “Hello and welcome. I am Jacki Schechner and this is Kuma\War.”

Dramatic music

J: “April 6, 2004. U.S. Marines launched a massive offensive campaign in Fallujah in an attempt to suppress the Sunni insurgents.”

J: “By the end of the month, political agreements bring an end to the assault. Marines withdraw, and the Iraqi Fal- lujah brigade takes over.”

J: “But the Iraqi unit quickly dissolves, leaving this key city under insurgent control.”

J: “In May Jordanian militant Abu Moussa Zarqawi, believed to be operat- ing out of Fallujah, beheads A merican Nick Berg.”

J: “The terrorist and his followers launched a campaign of beheadings, kidnappings, assassinations, and car bombings throughout Iraq.”

J: “General Wilkerson, what sort of resistance can U.S. troops expect to encounter?”

W: “Well, I think all of you gamers have been watching the news . . . and noticed that the innocent civilians and perhaps

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116 V í t Š i s l e r

The enemy is depicted as a set of schematized attributes which refer to Arab Muslims – head cover, loose clothes, dark skin color, and so on. Distinctive clothing and head covers are used when the enemy’s Shia or Sunni identity needs to be emphasized in connection with the real- world campaign. The in-game narrative then links these visual signi- fiers to international terrorism or Islamic extremism. Thus, the player is navigated through “insurgent-infested Fallujah” where “Sunni terrorists hide in mosques” (Fallujah: Operation al-Fajr); has to infiltrate Karabi- lah “where terrorists wage war . . . from homes and stores, mosques and schools – none of which are sacred in the eyes of the insurgents” (Mission 53: Operation Spear); and is confronted with “vicious killers” in a “violent urban assault, one that uncovers the resourcefulness, determination, and sheer brutality of the terrorists” (Operation Spear).

Virtual newsroom. Close-up of Schechner.

Close-up of A nderson. A software devel- opment studio is in the background.

Actual in-game footage. Close-up of a U.S. Marine in desert camo aiming an assault rifle. Cut. Close-up of two masked Sunni militants hiding behind a car and wielding machine guns and R PGs.

Close-up of Schechner.

some of the operative insurgents are all streaming out of Fallujah. With that, I suspect when the assault actually begins there might be less resistance than we have expected. A nd the end result will be not a standoff battle but rather the anticlimactic control of the city passing to coalition forces.”

J: “Thank you, General. Now, let’s talk to Dante A nderson, Kuma’s head of prod- uct development, about our recreation of the latest offensive in Fallujah.”

J: “Events are developing in Fallujah as we speak. W hat’s going to be the most challenging part of this mission for your development team?”

A: “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what is really real. We’ve built it, and we spent a lot of time also redoing things that we had done initially because we got better information. Our main chal- lenge is to get it out as quickly as possible when the operation concludes and to make sure that it is as accurate as possible.”

J: “Thank you, Dante. . . . For Kuma Reality Games, Jacki Schechner.”

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F r o m K u m a\Wa r t o Q u a r i s h 117

Marcus Power in “Digital War Games and Post 9/11 Geographies of Militarism” argues that the Arab Muslim culture in Kuma\War is portrayed as savage, terroristic, and uncivilized, constructing racialized meanings which in turn provide an ideological sanction for the war on terror.22 The link between terrorism and Islam is emphasized in particu- lar by the game’s audiovisual layer, for example, the appropriated footage of beheadings with Quranic verses played in the background during the game’s introduction or the photorealistic reconstructions of Iraqi mosques, which serve as terrorist hideouts in the actual game. As is the case with most Western video games, the representation of ordinary Muslim citizens is marginalized. In the game there is no possibility for civilian casualties caused by the U.S. war effort – because the Iraqi cities are mostly depicted as uninhabited.23 Kuma\War presents a clean, sani- tized, and enjoyable version of war for popular consumption, obscuring the realities, contexts, and consequences of actual war.24

The existence of such games and the (mis)representation of Islam they promote are of concern to many in the Muslim world. A prime ex- ample is the following statement by the Central Internet Bureau of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement: “The problem behind video games is that most of them are foreign made, especially American. Therefore, they bear enormous false understandings and habituate teenagers to violence, hatred and grudges. In addition, some cause humiliation to many of our Islamic and Arab countries, where battles are running in these Arab countries, the dead are Arab soldiers, whereas the hero who kills them is – the player himself – an American.”25 In response, the Hezbollah movement has produced several games based on “Arab and Islamic val- ues” that aim to foster national pride and glorify the movement’s struggle with Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. I will examine the first-person shooter game Special Force 2 (W3 D T E K , 2007), aka Al-wa’d as-sādiq (Tale of the Truthful Pledge), which is a sequel to the Hezbollah game Special Force (Al-quwwa al-khāsa; Solution, 2003). The new game retells a story from the 2006 war between Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah (see table 5.3).

A lthough the video is completely rendered through 3D, in-game computer graphics, it closely approximates the visual style of “real” pro- motional and propaganda video clips used by the Lebanese Hezbollah

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118 V í t Š i s l e r

movement. Correspondingly, the emphasis on Islam is central to the au- diovisual layer of the game. The mission starts with basmala26 followed by verses from the Quran taken from the sūra A l-Anfal (“The Spoils of War”). The introductory videos are accompanied by Takbir (the call “A llāhu Akbar”) or a religious nashid (hymn) in the background. Simi- larly, the Muslim identity of the main hero is emphasized by the visual

Table 5.3. Transcript of Trailer for Special Force 2

W 3 D T E K company logo appears on a green background.

Text (in A rabic): “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. A mong the believers are men who have been true to their covenant with A llah; of them some have completed their vow and some wait, but they have never changed in the least.”

Text (in A rabic): “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of A llah, and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom A llah doth know. W hatever ye shall spend in the cause of A llah shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.” Background changes to red flames.

In the distance, an Israeli military truck moves fast on a road in a hilly landscape. It is followed by a typical Israel Defense Forces jeep.

Suddenly, the jeep explodes. Close-up of its wreckage and the dead bodies of Israeli soldiers.

The backs of Hezbollah soldiers running toward the road. A jeep arrives, and the soldiers get in. The jeep continues to the site of the explosion and then disappears.

Dramatic music

Music reaches a climax: drums, male chorus

Dramatic music

Crescendo. Male chorus repeats: “A llahu A kbar! A llahu A kbar!”

Male voice: “A llahu A kbar! Oh Invincible Lion! The Truthful Pledge!”

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F r o m K u m a\Wa r t o Q u a r i s h 119

signifiers used in the game, for example, the Quran, a prayer rug, posters of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and so on.

At the same time, the game borrows from its American counter- parts. It simply reverses the polarities of the narrative and visual stereo- types observed, for example, in Kuma\War. It substitutes an Arab Mus- lim hero for the American soldier and substitutes the Israeli forces for the enemies. But unlike the American games, where the hero is usually individualized, Special Force 2 promotes a higher obligation to a collec- tive spiritual whole.27 By situating the player in the immersive simulation of real conflict in Palestine and Lebanon, and by framing this conflict in primarily religious terms, the game contributes to the notion of a global Muslim identity. The focal point is defending Muslim ummah against outside aggression, with emphasis on the just and moral cause of the fight and the glorification of the Muslim fighters. By schematizing com- plex and diverse conflicts into a single, bipolar scheme of good and evil, these games mirror their Western blueprints, including the collectiviza- tion and functionalization of enemies, the exclusion of civilians from the virtual battleground, and legitimizing the authors’ point of view through highly selective references to real-world events.

Despite their fundamentally different ideological backgrounds, Kuma\War and Special Force 2 share many similarities in the audiovi- sual layer. Both games are unrealistic, yet still cinematic. They don’t reproduce the real-world experience of war; instead, they theatrically romanticize war. Death and bodily dismemberment have been banished from both games. Both Kuma\War and Special Force 2 thus reinforce the image of a clean war with clear battle lines; no moral questions are put forward, and no consideration is given to the reality of taking a life.28 The way Islam as a religion is depicted, however, is significantly different. W hereas Kuma\War presents Islam as a threat and schematizes Muslims as religious fanatics and “enemies to democracy and freedom,” Special Force 2 honors the Muslim identity of the hero and links Islamic values to the heroic and legitimate defense of rights.

Regarding our understanding of religion and digital gaming, analy- sis of the audiovisual layer shows that both American and Arab games construct their virtual representations of Islam by using signifiers bor- rowed from their media predecessors, particularly T V news coverage and

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120 V í t Š i s l e r

propaganda video clips. This observation fits with Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation mentioned earlier. More important, in order to create a believable universe for their audiences, these games appropri- ate not only the visual imagery, but also the schematizations and clichés surrounding Islam in their respective media cultures. The visual “real- ism” of these games legitimizes these schematizations, simultaneously recreating the real world and obscuring it.

T h e N a r r a t i v e L a y e r : E n c o u n t e r i n g I s l a m i n R e a l - T i m e S t r a t e g i e s

A number of games, especially those in the adventure genre, contain strong narrative elements. Even in genres where stories are not part of the gameplay, such as strategies or simulations, fictional worlds prompt players to imagine that their actions take place in a meaningful set- ting.29 Several real-time strategy games present the player with complex and well-elaborated storylines, which are typically told in the cutscenes between missions and amended through the in-game scripts. The Ameri- can game I have chosen for my analysis of the narrative layer, Age of Em- pires 2 (Ensemble, 1999), goes back to the roots of narrative since it tells the story by framing its campaigns with recorded voiceovers and a few sketched images. The “Saladin Campaign” offers the player the opportu- nity to “encounter” Islam through the eyes of a Crusader knight impris- oned by the Saracen army. Saladin and his Muslim warriors are depicted in an unusual way in the realm of digital entertainment. As the opening scene states:

Egypt. A month since I entered the Holy Land. . . . A nd I was dying. I wan- dered the cold desert for four nights before the horse archers found me. . . . They were Saracens, the rulers of the Middle East. I had ridden to the Holy Land with the Crusaders from France and Normandy, so I was by all rights these Saracens’ enemy. Yet they gave me water and a spindly horse and led me back to their leader. A nd that was how I met Saladin. The paintings in Europe show Saladin as demonic, barbarian. Yet he is more chivalrous than any knight I’d met before and prefers the palaces of Damascus to slaughtering Normans in the desert. I had not expected hospitality from Saracens – we Normans execute any armed A rab we capture. But Saladin left me free to explore this camp.

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F r o m K u m a\Wa r t o Q u a r i s h 121

In a classic narrative scheme, the main hero becomes attached to his jailers and adopts their culture and manners. The game deliberately incorporates hints of Arab and Muslim cultural heritage and their con- tribution to world civilization: “Although I am still a prisoner, Saladin and his generals dine with me. Over meals we discuss mathematics and astronomy. I never imagined a race of desert folk could be so wise. Bagh- dad, the Saracen capital, is the most civilized city in the world, with free hospitals, public baths, a postal service, and banks with branches as far away as China.” Nevertheless, as the game progresses and the violence of the war increases, the “once noble Muslim warriors” become cruel and fanatical. Here, for the first time, the game introduces the concept of jihad: “In reaction to European hostility and fanaticism, the Saracens have steadily become more resolute . . . more bloodthirsty. Their love of art is replaced by a love for battle. Now, in answer to the Crusade, they have adapted their principle of Jihad for warfare.”

Finally, in a fierce battle over Jerusalem, Saladin subdues the army of his rival, R ichard the Lionheart. The game finishes with both adver- saries signing a peace treaty and the end of the Third Crusade. Yet, as the narrator predicts, the “war that has been fought over religion and land” is not over.

The narrative of Age of Empires 2 resembles medieval travelogue and constitutes something of an exception in the dominant representations of Islam in historical and fantastical video games. These games typically construe the “Orient” as an exotic and ahistorical entity and schematize Muslims in the framework of arbitrary cruelty, barbarism, and religious fanaticism.30 Yet when we examine the story of Age of Empires 2 closely, as it is presented in both the cutscenes and the gameplay, we see that it remains to a certain extent within the cultural stereotypes that sur- round the Crusades in European popular culture. Choosing Saladin, oft en de picted as “the noble prince of Islam,” to be the virtual Muslim representative does not in fact contradict Orientalist tendencies. The characterization of Saladin as “far nobler than any competitor” can be easily incorporated into the narrative of European knighthood.31 Other Muslims in the game remain within the typical scheme, for example, Sal- adin’s Mamluks, who mock the “Franks” as “the infidel dogs of the West,” or the “treacherous Egyptians,” who betray the player’s noble master.

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Perhaps it was the unusually positive framing of Islam and the rich- ness of the story in Age of Empires 2 that inspired Arab developers (the Syrian company A fkar Media) to craft Quraish, released in 2007. The latter is a real-time strategy game dealing with pre-Islamic Bedouin wars and the early Islamic conquests (Al-Futūhāt al-Islāmīya). The game is clearly inspired by Age of Empires 2 and it similarly utilizes introductory sequences, which are narrated in classical Arabic and accompanied by simple visuals. The first campaign, Al-Jāhilīya (“First Encounter”), can be played from the perspective of pagan Bedouin chieftains Hani and Abu Qatada, and narrates a story from a war between two Arab tribes, the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids. More important, as the name sug- gests, it revolves around the “encounter” of the pagan Arabs with Islam. It starts with the young hero, Hani, being appointed by his father as the new leader of the Shaiban tribe in a time of famine and on the brink of tribal war:

My father pointed to me as he clenched the reins of his horse, which had been provoked by the running of the other one and begun hitting the ground nervously. . . . The sound of his hooves mixed with my father’s voice. “O Hani! O people of Shaiban! Keep your promise, your promise!” I have never imag- ined being the leader of Shaiban so quickly, and under these circumstances. . . . Now I am responsible for a thousand mouths to feed and guard during a sharp drought where the goats are all dry. Moreover, the A rab tribes are fighting each other because of hunger. “O Lord of Mecca, what do you want? W hat’s your order? If there is no other choice, so let it happen as you wish.”

The narrative style of the game bears a striking resemblance to clas- sical Arab literary genres, including the Ayyām al-Arab (“The Days of the Arabs,” stories of the tribal wars) and Muhammad Ibn Ishāq’s Sīrat rasūl Allāh (“Life of Allah’s Messenger,” a biography of the Prophet Muham- mad). Through the unusually long and well-developed introduction, many concepts of pre-Islamic Arab culture and early Islamic history are communicated to the player, for example, sharaf and ’ird (Bedouin honor codes), thar (retributive justice), and muruwa (manliness). The game navigates the player through many real-world events and historic places (including the cities of Ukaz, Mecca, and Medina) and recounts a complicated story designed along the lines of classical Arab oral and literary heritage, including scenes of poetry contests, blood revenge, oaths, and tribal alliances.

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Finally, in the last mission, the main hero’s tribe is asked to fulfill their oath and help the Quraish tribe in their war with a newly emerged power – Muslims led by a prophet called Muhammad. The game mod- els the historical Battle of the Trench (627 C E) in which the outnum- bered Muslim forces successfully defended the city of Medina, partly because of the trench they dug around it. The game’s main narrative fol- lows these historical events, so after an unsuccessful charge the leaders of the Quraish tribe decide to withdraw from the battle. The player then has the choice to accept Islam and join the Muslim forces of Medina in their victorious battle. If he accepts, the campaign ends and makes way for the second part of the game, based on the history of early Muslim conquest.32 The final narrative sequence then describes the religious conversion of Abu Qatada to Islam:

Thank God, the mighty and omnipotent, who let his poor servant, Abu Qatada, live and embrace Islam, and see the Shaiban embracing Islam in huge numbers. The Bedouins who fought for a poem, a date, or a horse saw the revealed message of A llah descended to Man from them. He came to complete their ethics and convert them to believers who didn’t prostrate except to one mighty God. They changed from worthless shepherds to great leaders of all nations. At night, they read the holy book Quran and by day they are knights to free mankind from the tyranny and falsehood of other creatures.

Regarding religion and digital gaming, I find it significant that the narrative layers of both the American and the Arab game appropriate traditional literary genres in order to present the concept of Islam to the player. Thus, we have on one hand a European medieval travelogue, and on the other Arab prophetic literature (sira). In comparison to the audiovisual layer, the narrative layer offers more space for developing the plot and presenting Islam. It thus arguably provides a more multifaceted image of the latter.

Yet again, the traditional narrative figures and schematized concepts associated with these literary genres are passed to the games deriving therefrom. Despite structural similarities, the two games present Islam in fundamentally different ways. W hereas in Age of Empires 2 Islam is initially presented as the Other, then humanized through the character of a noble Muslim ruler, and finally problematized again through the acts of violence conducted in its name, in Quraish Islam begins as the player’s enemy, but in the end the player’s avatar embraces Islam.

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T h e P r o c e d u r a l L a y e r : I n c o r p o r a t i n g I s l a m i n t o G a m e R u l e s

A lexander Galloway in “Social Realism in Gaming” suggests that it is no longer sufficient to talk about the visual or textual representation of meaning in game studies. Instead, computer-enabled simulation and its rules, which both facilitate and limit a player’s actions and choices, have to be studied. Similarly, Gonzalo Frasca in “Videogames of the Op- pressed” argues: “Video games not only represent reality, but also model it through simulations. This form of representation is based on rules that mimic the behavior of the simulated systems. However, unlike narrative authors, simulation authors do not represent a particular event, but a set of potential events. Because of this, we have to think about their objects as systems and consider what laws govern their behaviors.”33

There exist only a few games that deliberately embed Islam into their game rules. One of the few American games dealing procedurally with Islam is Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. The Civilization series (1991–) consists of turn-based strategy games that allow players to act on the part of various civilizations and engage in building cities, establishing trade routes, and interacting with others on a diplomatic or military basis throughout thousands of years of virtual history. The fourth in the series incorporates seven world religions into its gameplay. It enables players to “found” these religions, build the religions’ holy sites, and spread the reli- gions through missionary work. The most important aspect of the game’s representation of religion is that all the religious systems available to the player – Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Confucianism, Taoism, and Islam – are procedurally equal and generally presented in a “neutral” way. As Civilization IV’s Manual states: “Through religion, man has sought to make sense of the universe around him and to determine his place in it. Religion has always played a critical part in human history. Religion has inspired, enlightened and ennobled man; in its name men have erected beautiful buildings, written books of great wisdom, and made music of surpassing beauty. In its name men have also murdered and enslaved their fellows.”34

Essentially, all religions in the game have the same effects; the only difference is their technological requirements. Thus, Buddhism

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is founded when the first player invents “meditation,” Christianity is similarly linked with “theology,” and Islam with “divine rights.” Gen- erally speaking, religion is deeply embedded in the game rules and is represented via a complex system of effects and bonuses. Once found- ed, a religion spreads automatically between cities connected via trade routes. However, players can also spread it actively through the use of missionaries. The player can adopt a particular religion as a state religion, boosting its positive effect on her cities’ culture and happiness. The state religion also has further implications for in-game diplomacy. Civilizations that follow the same official religion tend to have friendlier relations. The game also allows for forced conversions since the player can threaten weaker civilizations, coercing them to adopt the religion of her choice.

From the way religion, including Islam, is implemented in the game rules, it is clear that the authors strived to be religiously sensitive, while maintaining challenging and balanced gameplay. As they state: “Given the importance that religions have had in human development, we didn’t want to just leave them out of the game altogether; instead we have tried to handle them in as respectful, fair and even-handed [a] manner as pos- sible. . . . We offer no value judgments on religion; we mean no disrespect to anyone’s beliefs. We’re game designers, not theologians.”35

As a result, religion as presented in Civilization IV is essentially a database of effects, bonuses, and penalties; religion is about relations between quantifiable processes, where everything is a question of the acquisition and allocation of resources and their proper management. As McKenzie Wark argues in Gamer Theory, games in the Civilization series erase the difference between the everyday and the utopian and embrace all differences by rendering all space and time quantifiable. The Civiliza- tion IV algorithm can produce every possible combination of resources mapped in the database, dividing everything into manageable chunks of data. Wark suggests that this insistence “on the reality of the pos- sible, on what resides within resources, is the American dream.” In other words: “W hen playing Civilization . . . , it doesn’t matter if the civilization you choose to play is Babylon or China, Russia or Zululand, France or India. W hoever wins is America, in that the logic of the game itself is America [sic].”36

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126 V í t Š i s l e r

It has to be emphasized here that all simulations intrinsically trans- code historical realities into specific mathematical models, thus making any axiological judgments problematic. As I argued in “Digital Arabs,” despite the possible contradictions in the ideological setting of Civiliza- tion IV, the game is one of the rare exceptions in which Muslims are not functionalized as enemies nor depicted in an Orientalist manner. Rather, the game constitutes a possible representation of the player’s self.37 In this respect, it is crucial to explore the ways in which Islam is embedded into the game rules of Arab games. As far as I know, the only Arab game that deals with Islam on the level of game rules is Arabian Lords.

Arabian Lords (Sādat as-sahrā‘) is a PC strategy game inspired by the R ise of Islam (during the seventh to thirteenth centuries) and de- veloped by the U.S. company Break Away Games in close collabora- tion with the Jordanian company Quirkat in 2007. From the beginning Arabian Lords was intended to be shipped primarily to regions in the Middle East and is available in Arabic and English. According to the developers, maintaining appropriate content, historical accuracy, and cultural sensitivity was crucial for the game’s design. As the introduc- tion to the game states:

Before the birth of Islam, A rabia stood at the crossroads of trade between A frica, Asia, and Europe. Its desert was a harsh place but its people knew how to navigate caravans between the oases so they benefited from the trade that crossed their land. These people were the nomadic A rabs, the merchant lords of the desert. During the seventh and eighth centuries Islam grew and Muslims spread north into Syria, West to the Atlantic, and East to the river Indus. W herever Muslim armies went traders followed. . . . At its height in the ninth century the Islamic world rivaled the great empires of the past. Now it is your time to help expand the rule of Islam between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. Can you succeed as a merchant lord during this rise of wealth and power?

Surprisingly, although the game invites the player to “help expand the rule of Islam,” most of the gameplay revolves around harvesting re- sources, building, trade, and city management, that is, activities typi- cal for the strategy game genre. Islam is integrated into the game rules only through the existence of a single building, the Mosque, and a single unit, the Vizier. The only procedural action a player can perform in-

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volving religion is donating money to the Mosque, which increases the player’s popularity and her chances of producing a Vizier. The Vizier then provides the player with several bonuses, for example, speeding up the productivity of nearby workers, improving nearby units’ statistics, and so on.

W hen comparing Arabian Lords and Civilization IV we find that the fundamental difference in the way Islam is included in the game rules evolves primarily from the scale of the model. The procedural role of Is- lam in Arabian Lords is seriously limited. This could be the result of the cultural sensitivity of the game’s developers. As they state:

We knew that culturally religion played a major role during this time span covered in the game, and that it still does today. We wanted to make sure to include this in a way that would honor its significance, while being sensitive to all religious and cultural concerns. At one point in the design we had included an “Imam” unit that players would be able to control. Because this seemed inappropriate to a number of our experts, we made significant changes to the design in order to remove it so as to not offend. In general, we always tried to error on the side of caution when it came to cultural issues.38

The cultural and religious sensitivity of the game, manifested in the very limited presence of Islam in the game rules, can thus be perceived both as a token of respect for Islam and as a pragmatic step aiming to ease the acceptance of the product in the more conservative societies of the Arab world. As we have seen, similar caution regarding the repre- sentation of religion was expressed by the team behind Civilization IV. Yet in both games religion is essentially schematized as a mere system of advantages and bonuses. By forsaking a deeper integration of Islam and its ethics and moral values into the rules, both games deliberately fail to utilize the strength of the medium. In other words, both games miss out on gameplay that would allow the player to experience ethical dilemmas related to religion and draw her own conclusions.39 It re- mains an open question whether this is the result of the developers’ inner constraints and religious and cultural sensitivities or the inherent limitations of the strategy and simulation game genre. As far as I know, no game today offers players a fully procedural representation of Islam, integrating its ethics and values into the game’s rule system.40

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C o n c l u s i o n: G e n r e , R e m e d i a t i o n , a n d P r o c e d u r e

This chapter has analyzed how mainstream American and Arab video games construct the virtual representation of Islam and Muslims. I have examined three representational layers of video games and analyzed two different games of a similar genre (one American and one Arab) for each layer.

In the audiovisual layer, examined in two games of the first-shooter genre, the representation of Islam was seen to be schematized and mono- lithic. It doesn’t change throughout the game. W hile the American game, Kuma\War, presents Islam as a threat, the Arab game, Special Force 2, links Islamic values with heroism and a legitimate defense of rights. Both games offer racialized representations of enemies and schematize com- plex, real-world events into a bipolar frame.

In the narrative layer, examined in two games of the real-time strat- egy genre, the representation of Islam was seen to be more multifaceted and, following the traditions of storytelling, it evolves throughout the game. In the American game, Age of Empires 2, Islam is initially por- trayed as the Other, then humanized through the character of a noble Muslim ruler. Islam ultimately becomes once again problematic through acts of violence conducted in its name. The Arab game, Quraish, presents Islam in the beginning as the enemy, while in the end the player’s avatar embraces it.

Finally, in the procedural layer, examined in two games of the strat- egy genre, Islam was seen to be embedded in the games’ rule systems. Yet both in the American game, Civilization IV, and in the Arab game, Arabian Lords, religion is represented as a mere system of advantages and bonuses. The games’ authors abstained from a deeper integration of Islam and its ethics and moral values into the gameplay.

On a more theoretical level, the analysis presented in this chapter can be summarized in the following remarks:

First, a game’s genre seems to fundamentally determine the way Islam, and perhaps religion in general, is presented in the game. Since most of the Arab games examined here utilize genres established by their successful American counterparts, their authors had to appropri- ate the existing patterns of representation and refashion them along the

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lines of Islamic principles. In other words, although contemporary Arab games vary significantly in their background, aims, and design and of- fer multifaceted concepts of Islam and of Muslim identity, they do not transcend the patterns established by a global, in most cases American, video game industry.

Second, video games seem to borrow a lot from their media prede- cessors. The audiovisual layer in the American first-person shooter genre appropriates the cinematic representation of war known from Holly- wood movies and the hyperrealism of T V news coverage. Meanwhile, an Arab game of a similar genre appropriates the language of Hezbollah’s video clips and martyr videos. In the narrative layer the American and Arab games similarly borrow from their cultures’ traditional literary genres, that is, travelogues and prophetic literature.

Third, it seems that the schematized images of Islam associated with the remediated genres are passed on to video games. Erkki Huhtamo in Media Archaeology describes how topoi (clichés found in any form of lit- erature) spread to all spheres of life addressed by literature and to which it gives form. As he argues: “No matter how dominant ‘media culture’ may have become in the contemporary world, it does not constitute an all-encompassing realm. It coexists with and may even be embedded in other cultural formations. One may therefore expect topoi from other realms, including ancient ones, to reappear within [a] media-cultural context.”41

The quasi-historical representations of Islam found in the narrative structure of Age of Empires 2 are similar to the Orientalist discourses of European novels and nineteenth-century paintings, whereas the au- diovisual representations of Islam and Muslims found in Kuma\War follow the hyperrealistic schematizations of the U.S. military-entertain- ment complex. W hile the American game presents Islam as a threat, flat- tens out diverse Muslim identities, and reconstructs them into a series of social stereotypes, the Arab game uses a distinctive Islamic narrative to frame its gameplay and communicate Islamic principles and moral values to the players.

In the games’ procedural layer, which is not directly appropriated from other media, Islam as a belief system and an organized religion is transcoded into a mathematical model, seemingly taking into account

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130 V í t Š i s l e r

no ethical considerations. In Huhtamo’s terms, there are no topoi as- sociated with Islam in the procedural level. Therefore, arguably, no cli- chés or schematizations of Islam are communicated to the player in this particular layer. Nevertheless, the very rules of the simulations I have analyzed, which model the world as consisting of quantifiable variables and offer everyone an equal possibility to “win” the game, bear culturally significant meaning. In this respect, Wark poignantly argues that the rule system in Civilization stems from the ethics and values of Protestant America.42

As Huhtamo suggests, topoi are not limited to literary traditions, but can also manifest as designs.43 Regarding our understanding of religion and digital gaming, it is of crucial importance to study video games’ rule systems and investigate how they are shaped by their developers’ cul- tures and religious traditions. Moreover, rule systems migrate between cultures and significantly influence local production. As we have seen, many Arab game designers have been directly inspired by particular American games and have appropriated their patterns. We can conclude that the way Islam, and perhaps any other religion, is represented in a video game is fundamentally shaped by (a) the power relations in global cultural exchange, (b) local religious and cultural topoi and media tradi- tions, and (c) the video game’s rule system, which is used to convey such representations.

N o t e s

1. Bogost and Poremba, “Can Games Get Real?,” 12–21.

2. Šisler, “Digital A rabs.” 3. Ibid. 4. Šisler, “Video Games, Video

Clips, and Islam.” 5. Bogost, Persuasive Games, 45. 6. Sabry, Cultural Encounters in the

Arab World, 11. 7. Reichmuth and Werning, “Pixel

Pashas, Digital Djinns,” 46–47. 8. Šisler, “Digital A rabs.” 9. K hamis, “The Role of ‘New’ A rab

Satellite Channels,” 39.

10. Witteborn, “The Situated Ex- pression of A rab Collective Identities.”

11. el-Nawaw y and K hamis, Islam Dot Com, 3.

12. Witteborn, “The Situated Expression of A rab Collective Iden- tities.”

13. K hamis, “The Role of ‘New’ A rab Satellite Channels,” 41.

14. Ibid.; Šisler, “Video Games, Video Clips, and Islam.”

15. Campbell, “Islamogaming.” 16. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, and

Tosca, Understanding Video Games, 41.

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17. Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 9. 18. Halter, From Sun Tzu to Xbox. 19. Sims, “W hen Reality Is Just an

Illusion.” 20. http://w w w.kumawar.com/about

.php (accessed July 30, 2012). 21. Power, “Digital War Games.” 22. Ibid., 208. 23. In a few missions, civilians are

present as “hostages, whose fate lies in your hands,” since they have been “ne- glected, beaten and left to die” by the insurgents (Operation Spear).

24. Power, “Digital War Games.” 25. http://web.archive.org/web

/20050105091655/w w w.specialforce .net/english/indexeng.htm.

26. The phrase bismi-llāhi ar-rahmāni ar-rahīmi (“In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful”) constitutes the first verse of every sūra (chapter) of the Quran (but one) and is often used as an opening phrase in letters, books, and public speeches.

27. Machin and Suleiman, “A rab and A merican Computer War Games.”

28. Power, “Digital War Games,” 210.

29. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, and To- sca, Understanding Video Games, 171.

30. Šisler, “Digital A rabs.” 31. Stanley, Saladin. 32. A lthough the player is given the

option to reject Islam, it seems the last mission is then impossible to win, and there is no campaign prepared for that case. See Šisler, “Digital A rabs.”

33. Frasca, “Videogames of the Op- pressed,” 21.

34. Civilization IV’s Manual, 77. 35. Ibid. 36. Wark, Gamer Theory, 73. 37. Šisler, “Digital A rabs.” 38. http://w w w.arabianlords.com

/Public/public_master.aspx?Site_Id =2&Page_Id=922&Path=66.

39. Newgren, “Bioshock to the Sys- tem,” 145.

40. However, a few such games are in development. See Šisler, “Video Games, Video Clips, and Islam.”

41. Huhtamo, “Dismantling the Fairy Engine,” 35.

42. Wark, Gamer Theory. 43. Huhtamo, “Dismantling the Fairy

Engine.”

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