The Iranian city of Mashhad, home to one of the world's greatest Shia holy sites, may soon also become the capital of the country’s fledgling video game industry.


A video game development course will be launched in September for the computer engineering students at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM). This development was announced by Hassan Karimi Ghadousi, executive director of the Iran Computer and Video Game Foundation (ICVGF), during a meeting with representatives of Ferdowsi University’s video games society.


"If you consider the number of potential video game developers in Razavi Khorasan Province, along with the people who already study computer engineering at this university, the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad has every means necessary to lay the foundation for video game industry in the province," he said, according to Mehr News Agency.


He also declared that ICVGF intends to fully support the university’s video game development efforts, and that a game jam will be held there late in September.
"Anyone who wants to, [including] both teachers and students who are members of the university’s video games society, may take part in this program and help develop the video game industry," Sa’id Abrishami, a computer engineering teacher at FUM, added.


Meanwhile, Tasnim News Agency also reports that the video games developers at the Ferdowsi University intend to produce games that would be “morally” and “mentally” different from those manufactured by Western companies.

By Sputnik