If the video above is blocked, you can view it here.
Commercial video games often show Middle Eastern people as the villains — if they can tell the difference between different countries and languages at all. Prince Fahad Al Saud is aiming to help change that.
Fahad Al Saud grew up with games, but felt alienated by the portrayal of Arabs he often saw in the commercial medium. In response, he founded NA3M (New Arab Media), which pledges to make games that Saudi Arabians can relate to — the group’s upcoming Saudi Girls Revolution wants to create social impact for young women in particular.
In the video above (or here, if you can’t play the video in your region), Al-Jazeera‘s report from the recent Games for Change conference (I gave a keynote at the event in 2013) highlights Fahad Al Saud’s work as part of a creative community aiming to address negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern people. Also in the video is Dutch-Egyptian developer Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, whose in-process project Gamedev.world hopes to remove language barriers from the massive database of game development knowledge, tools and articles online.
