ali_arkani

As revealed by an official study, the five most popular games in iran are: Clash of Clans, Pro Evolution Soccer, FIFA, Counter Strike & GTA V. The cultural differences between Iran & U.S is almost the same as most other eastern countries. We are more sensetive about violence, sexual, anti-religous & drug use contents. But this doesn't mean we don't watch Game of thrones or play Witcher 3! We are just a bit more careful, or we like to think we are!

Internet speed is relatively good here. I have a 4mb ADSL connection with a relatively low price & good online ping. The main problem is firstly the U.S sanctions which prevents Iranian gamers from accessing digital contents such as games. In order to buy a legal copy of a game, we have to buy gift cards and use VPN softwares which could result in acount bans & deactivation. The second problem is national censorship which is already spoken about above.

To tell the truth, yes, they are. But one cant separate the culture of an artistic work from its content. Western media is a part and side product of Western culture. We cant isolate ourselves from the world just because it's not the way our culture wants, we try to learn the good teachings of any culture and carry on.

Yes. As said above, sexual and violet content are censored here. For example the GTA series are marked illegal by national videogames foundation. But as the statistics show, gamers dont care much about national censorship and play games the way they like. The game developers on the other hand have to obey the national laws or their games wouldn't get publishing permission.

Financial & Technological shortcomings are one of the greatest problems in Iran's gaming industry. Both gamers & developers can't afford paying much for buying or creating games. This in turn makes creation of AAA games quite difficult; because our indie developers cant attract many investors and this causes the final game to be small. Such indie games cant compete with international AAA games and this treatens the return of investment.