"The package starts with Peter Brinson's documentary videogame about U.S.-Iran relations; art director Kurosh ValaNejad, a Spacialist in the virtual sciences, discusses a game design that takes on psychology, history, conservatorship, and orthogonal math." Carrie Paterson, Worlds of Science, Artillery magazine, May/June 2009
Moving Forward by Looking Back:
Documentary Videogame Illuminated by Persian Miniatures
by Kurosh ValaNejad
The Cat and the Coup embraces the nature of videogames as participatory media to tell a dramatic biographical story of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran. Mossadegh was democratically elected in 1951 and overthrown the night of August 19, 1953 by a U.S.-engineered coup d’état. The documentary game focuses on an aspect of warfare that has little presence in videogame history - covert military interventions carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency - while implicating its players in the result.
Environment Study by Kurosh ValaNejad, Character animation by Hyunjung Rhee
Persian miniatures, applied to the medium’s interactive technology, elegantly lend themself to the telling of a more subjective story. Historically, this form of book illustration complimented works of poetry and occasionally instructional manuscripts. The most valued Persian miniatures accompany Ferdowsi’s national epic of Iran, the ShahNameh (circa 1000 AD). The Cat and the Coup will be designed to look like a page in the ShahNameh, suggesting Mossadegh’s story is part of the authentic history of Iran.
In the game you play the role of the cat, Mossadegh’s constant companion. Your shared story is told in reverse as Mossadegh lies in bed on the night of his death (March 5th, 1967), recounting his life. You use your cat charm and mischief to coax him back through time until you arrive at the revelation that you, yes you, played a significant role in toppling Iran’s democracy.
The game is written as a tragedy, evoking guilt and sadness while guiding its audience to a catharsis and healing. Like any good documentary it attempts to stay objective, noting milestones in Mossadegh’s life with headlines pulled from The New York Times. But like a good story it layers opinion and mood.
The general aesthetic principal of Persian miniatures, whereby all the empty spaces (HorrorVacui) are filled, provides opportunity for story embellishment: the bedroom where Mossadegh passes away is framed with angels and a budding tree with a bell represents the elementary school he started while under house arrest in the walled village of Ahmad Abad.
Because of their size and intricate detail, Persian miniatures are typically explored with a magnifying glass. The game encourages similar investigation. When the cat pauses, the camera slowly pushes in towards points of embedded drama - like Mossadegh signing a photograph of the oil refinery on the anniversary of its Nationalization. During the street riot the player can trace the roots of the coup in the tracks of the General’s tank. Some of the playfulness of this game is in reading between the lines to decode the narrative.
the General by Kurosh ValaNejad
Persian miniatures became a significant art form in the 13th century before artists knew how to draw in perspective. This way of representing space, known as isometric projection, is actually beneficial to scrolling games, like “platformers.” Since objects in the game do not diminish in size as they recede in space, scrolling up and down can also translates into back and forth movement within the game space.
Like illuminated manuscripts of Western traditions, Persian miniatures used precious metals, which increased their survival rate and state of preservation. A research and development effort for this project is to represent the reflective quality of gold on a computer monitor. Since reflection is dependent on point of view, this feature may be faked by calculating reflection coefficients using the location of the cat. This technology can be applied to other Persian miniatures, allowing their reproductions to behave more like the original when viewed through digital delivery devices.
After centuries the vivid palette of Persian miniatures fades. The digital medium of videogames presents an opportunity to easily revitalize the color and erase weathering. Therefore, a byproduct of this game is discovering ways technology can be employed to create more faithful reproductions of Persian miniatures than are currently available in printed books.
Persian miniatures are fascinating in their ability to represent spatial complexities. They also allow bigger questions to emerge about the perception of history. Typically historical videogames cover periods and topics that are known well, precisely because we know them well. The battles of WWII have the best representation because game developers can expect their players to come to the piece knowing the essential details. Such games are primarily meant to entertain by reinforcing well-believed truths. Making a game about a chapter of history that is presumably not known to videogame players – and may indeed conflict with the information they immediately have access to - necessitates an alternative aesthetic grounding. The Cat and the Coup capitalizes on the many affordances of Persian miniatures from within their cultural context, and gives back to the art form by developing technologies that may once again engender an appreciation for this graphic narrative device.
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The Cat and the Coup is a work-in-progress at the EA Game Innovation Lab of the Interactive Media Division, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. It is funded by a seedling grant to Instructor Peter Brinson by the USC Advancing Scholarship for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Kurosh ValaNejad proudly acknowledges the influence of Iranian political satirist Ardeshir Mohasses on his art direction for The Cat and the Coup.