REPRESENTATION

Arab Representation in Video Games

More and more games are embracing Arab characters — here are a few of the most iconic examples

Growing up in the Middle East, video games played a significant role in my life. During the summertime, the temperature outside can reach up to 122°F (50°C). Therefore, almost everybody I knew owned at least one gaming console.

As a kid, I must say it never bothered me that there were no Arab video game characters. Video games were there just to have fun and to enjoy the journey in an alternative universe — so to speak. But today, as games have become a far more pervasive form of entertainment, one cannot ignore the medium’s impact on culture and media at large.

In my late teen years, first-person shooters (FPS) started becoming very popular in the Middle East and among my friends. There were plenty of FPS games before (GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Doom, Wolfenstein, and many more). But now, we can play against each other on LAN networks. All of a sudden, LAN-Cafés popped up everywhere (and are still popular). I used to spend a lot of time there with my friends playing Counter-Strike and its contemporaries.

In these FPS games, Arabs were mostly depicted as terrorists. My friends and I did not care for that…