What the war in Iran means for people who make and play games

The bombs tearing through Iran and the wider Middle East show no signs of stopping. As of March 26, nearly 3,000 people across the Middle East were reported dead, with more than 1,900 casualties in Iran alone (via NBC). Hostilities will almost certainly continue for the foreseeable future. However, while bombs may never reach people who live in the West, the aftershocks already have, causing widespread economic damage, political turmoil, and even shaking the foundations of the video game industry.

There is, of course, the obvious impact on game developers based in Iran, whose own lives, as well as the lives of their loved ones, are impacted by the war every day. But the war also impacts other people around the world who make and play games, in both large and small ways, from hardware prices, to increased pressure on video game workers, to the intensification of the close relationship between the games industry and the US military-industrial complex.

“A lot of us in the games industry… we live in these bubbles,” said Elaine Gomez, Chair of the Equity Committee for the United Videogame Workers union (UVW-CWA), a prominent labor union serving the video games industry across the US and Canada. “We think that what’s happening externally is not going to directly affect us, and that’s so incredibly untrue.”

She added, “The veil is slowly tearing apart.”