The Cat and the Coup, my collaboration with Peter Brinson, was mentioned in the
NY Times. Astonishingly, the article doesn’t say anything about the role of the CIA in the coup.
Labs Where 3-D Is Just the Start
… a game called “The Cat and the Coup,” being developed by scholars at U.S.C., points vaguely toward a potential approach for future documentary films. The game follows Mohammad Mosaddegh, the prime minister of Iran who was overthrown in the early 1950s. The player, in a metaphor for an outsider observer of a distant political process, can affect the play only indirectly — by controlling the former prime minister’s house cat. “The cat can do things to coax Mosaddegh back through memories of his life,” explained Tracy Fullerton, the director of a game innovation lab at U.S.C.
One of the school’s principles is to carry lessons learned from one medium to another. The idea here is that the direct path to storytelling may not always be the best.