A group of game industry folks including Reigns studio Nerial, Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione and Streets Of Rage 4 outfit Lizardcube have launched Palestinian Voices in Gaming, an international volunteer network to support current and emerging independent Palestinian developers.
First convened in May 2024, the network are currently looking to connect Palestinian game devs with volunteers and funding partners. They’ll provide administrative help to any developer trying to get access to funding, and assistance managing resources and volunteer contributions, once secured. They aim to follow and boost each project from “production to announcement to publication”, and are already working with a range of smaller independent games, many of which explore recollections of pain and loss through speculative fiction and fantasy.
Dreams on a Pillow | Image credit: Rasheed Abu-Eideh
As you might expect, the network is a response to Israel’s on-going mass killing and dispossession of Palestinians in Gaza, which has now formally been defined as a genocide by a UN inquiry, together with the long-term killing, oppression and mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and inside Israel’s own borders.
“The dehumanisation of Palestinians is tied to their rare visibility in the cultural sphere,” the organisers note on their website. “This dehumanisation costs lives – as the world remains indifferent to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to the surge of violent oppression across the West Bank and inside Israel.
“We want to push against the dehumanisation of Palestinians, not simply through representation but also through professional and economic support, so that Palestinian game developers may tell their own stories and reach global audiences.”
Being 2 | Image credit: Iasmin Omar Ata / Delta
Among the Palestinian game developers PVG are working with is Iasmin Omar Ata, whose forthcoming sci-fi adventure novel Being 2 is set in a Palestinian space colony. “You would have to fix the space colony during a black out, which would lead to flashbacks/hallucinations allowing to see past memories of Palestine,” reads a summary from the developer’s portfolio.
Another partner developer, Yusra, is working on RiYafa (pictured in this article’s header), an underwater experience “that combines testimony and symbolism to tell the story of her family and community based in the West Bank”, in the words of a press release.
Yasmine Batniji’s Pomegranates is also set in the future. “Travel to the year 2048 and play as a memory keeper in the reclaimed and rebuilt Gaza City,” reads the summary. “You will be tasked with tracing echoes of the current war at the renovated Al-Ahli hospital.” You can find a version of it on Itch.io.
Image credit: Yasmine Batniji / Gabbah Baya
Lastly, there’s Rasheed Abueideh, creator of Liyla and the Shadows of War and the forthcoming Dreams on a Pillow. Nic interviewed Abueideh about the latter game last year – amongst other things, they discussed the absence of support structures for Palestinian game developers in the occupied West Bank. “You need to experiment many things, and you have to make many iterations to reach something that is beautiful and people can actually enjoy,” Abueideh told Nic. “And to do this, you need an ecosystem that helps you.”
If you’d like to apply for support from the network, you can do so via this form. If you’d like to sign up as a volunteer, you can do so here.
The games industry at large has a… complicated relationship with Palestine. While many large publishers halted game sales in Russia following the outbreak of a murderous invasion of Ukraine, there hasn’t been a similar wave of divestment from Israel, even given some well-supported accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
In particular, Microsoft and Xbox are the subject of a boycott in response to their alleged collaborations with the Israeli military to surveil and target Palestinians using cloud technology and generative AI. Nic and I recently interviewed a number of people participating in the boycott, amongst them a former Microsoft developer who called attention to Microsoft’s “double standard” toward internal discussion of Israel and Palestine. Microsoft declined to comment on this allegation when approached by RPS.