A Grand Theft Auto III developer is making a video game about the 1979 Iranian revolution

By Dan Selcke | November 27, 2013 | 4:45pm

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In the years leading up to 1979, large numbers of Iranian citizens participated in a series of increasingly impassioned protests against Mohammad Reza, the Shah of Iran, whom many believed was a puppet of Western powers. The protests eventually boiled over into a revolution that would leave hundreds dead and change the face of the country forever. Later, in 2001, a video game called Grand Theft Auto III came out. It allowed players to steal cars and have implied sex with virtual prostitutes. It was incredibly popular. Now, one man is finally trying to bring these two things together.

That man is Navid Khonsari, a director and writer on several of the Grant Theft Auto games and now head of his own development studio, iNK Stories. The game, 1979 Revolution, is being developed for tablets and shows a pretty impressive commitment to historical verisimilitude. It has political and academic advisers on tap and has imported several concept artists straight from Iran. Khosari is raising money for the game via a very robust Kickstarter page. If you're interested in historically accurate virtual recreations of important events and/or video game violence, feel free to donate.