Introduction

For months since Firaxis announced Civilization V, I have been eagerly anticipating it’s arrival. Soaking up any screenshot or bit of news about the game.

Yesterday Firaxis updated their website to show the introductions of the leaders. As I was clicking through all of them making sure to leave Persia for last, I was amazed at the quality and level of polish given to each leader. Ghandi especially stood out, no longer a cartoon caricature from past Civilization game’s this new Ghandi felt true to the real hero and sounded great (I even verified it with a Hindi-speaking friend of mine).

When I finally clicked Persia, there stood Darius, leader of the Persian Empire in front of his palace. Immortal soldiers carved in the wall behind him and double bull statutes flanking him. But I was confused. I didn’t understand a word he was saying. I clicked again to make sure I was hearing him correctly, but no he clearly wasn’t speaking Farsi.

My first reaction was anger. I couldn’t believe it!  The game was going to be released tomorrow. I loved everything I had read about the new hex layout, the new combat system, everything. To then to have this one small thing not be the way I wanted. Well, it made me mad. So mad I of course tweeted about it.

But I cooled down, and thought about it more carefully. I started checking the internet to find out what language Darius was really speaking. After 15 minutes looking through wikipedia and then stumbling on a video on youtube, it became clear that Darius was speaking Aramaic which I learned was the language instituted by Darius as the official language of the Achaemenid Empire.

After learning this I wasn’t sure what to think. On one hand it was amazing that Firaxis stayed historically accurate and even went as far as finding an Aramaic speaker (something I can’t imagine was easy). However as an Iranian, a part of me felt let down.

Let me try to explain.

Modern Persia

As an Iranian, it hurts to see the condition Iran is in today. I’m not just talking about the insane politics and human-rights crimes the government commits against it’s people. I mean the actual state of the country.

I try to go every year to visit family, and every time I visit it’s saddening to see how things get worse and worse. Tehran is a dirty, polluted, and overcrowded city, the streets packed with cars, giant neon signs advertising fast food, and lots of garbage. Everybody talks about how great Iran is or more often was, but nobody actually cares about the well being of their home.

Just take a drive and you will see the same people who talk about how much they love Iran just casually toss their trash out the window. On a two hour drive to my grandfathers orchard, the highway is lined with trash and the sky filled with the smoke of cement factories.

Yes, there are parts of the country that still contain the natural beauty and heritage of Iran. But like Iran’s ancient past they are quickly disappearing. I am always surprised when my cousins tell me they aren’t taught about the history of the Persian Empire. On a trip last January to the National Museum of Iran, I was disappointed how little attention and care was given to the exhibits.

Which is a shame, because the culture and history of Iran is so rich. Take the Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings, by Ferdowsi. A book full of poetry so beautiful that it can only be appreciated in Farsi. Besides being a literary masterpiece, the Shahnameh was written to save Iran’s most valuable treasure, the Persian language.

After the last Persian empire fell to the Islamic Empire, there were many attempts to eliminate the Persian language and replace it with Arabic. But with the help of writers and poets like Ferdowsi the language survived and is a point of great national pride for many Iranians.

When you consider the sorry state Iran is in today, then it should be no surprise that many Iranians cling to the glory day’s of Iran’s past. “Look how great we once were we,” we tell people, “do you know how great our language is!” we shout. We are a proud people.

Conclusion

When I originally began writing this, my aim was to convince myself why Firaxis should have had Darius speak Farsi. Even though I still wish he did speak Farsi, in the process of writing this I’ve realized that the decision is ultimately meaningless.

What does it matter what language an ancient civilization for a computer game speaks. Does it in any way change the crappy state Iran is in today. Or is it just another way to hide from the reality of Iran by clinging to the past.

I am proud of Iran’s grand history, proud of my Persian language, and proud to be Iranian. Instead of looking at the past, I think it is better to envision the future and do what I can today to bring about an Iran that I can be proud of again.

I’m not sure what that is right now (I have a few ideas), but for now thank you Sid Meier and the people at Firaxis for making Civilization. I never thought a game would lead me to reexamine myself and who I am.

End Notes

* Civilization 5 is a turn based strategy game that comes out on September 21st. You can bet I’ll be playing it very soon.

* I use Farsi and Persian interchangeably, I mean no disrespect.

* If your interested to learn more about the Shahnameh, check out Dick Davis translation of the book on Amazon.

This summer I’ve been trying to eat more fruit’s and veggies. I’ve been pretty good eating an apple and a banana a day, but I wanted to add oranges to that list.

The problem of course is that oranges are much tougher to open. Unlike apples which you can start eating right away or bananas which have a natural peeling device built-in, oranges require a tool to open (unless you have incredibly long nails). Usually people use a knife, but for a orange eating beginner I found myself butchering the poor fruit and leaving a juicy mess behind.

True more time and experience could solve this problem, but all the barriers to eating this fruit made it less likely I would pick one up. I know this sounds crazy but consider what eating an orange required.

1. Dealing with a knife (which I am not good at and cut myself with)
2. Dealing with a juicy mess (which I hate even more because I have so many gadgets)
3. Taking the time to learn how to peel an orange properly

On top of all that I wasn’t even guaranteed I’d get to eat the fruit!

As always I turned to the internet for a solution and narrowed my finds to four different types of orange peelers.

• The Oxo Good Grips Citrus Peeler
• The Tupperware Citrus Fruit Veggie Peeler
• The Noname Citrus Peeler
• The EziSit-Rus Citrus Peeler

All the peelers work the same, they have a small sharp nub used to easily cut the orange without fear of cutting too deep. But I really wanted the EziSit-Rus Peeler.

As the video shows it is by far the easiest and fastest way to cut and peel and orange without a mess. It even comes in four different colors! Sadly this iPod of the orange peelers was only available in South Africa, and I could not find any to buy online.

I ultimately went with the tupperware one because it was the cheapest at a buck a piece (or at least it was when I bought it a month ago). You can see my first attempt to use it in the first video. I can’t imagine it’s as nice as the EziSit-Rus peeler, but it has accomplished what I wanted from it.

Who knew there was such variety in orange peelers? Also if you really want to up your orange peeling apparatus, get yourself one of these bad boys.

Interesting post by Sebastian de With of the Cocoia Blog about the past, present, and future of Real Time Strategy game UI.

Of course, only time can tell where we will be taken in the future when it comes to interface design. However, it’s interesting to note that we’re gradually making the experience more tactile. While giving users a controller that resembles a gun to play a shooter game doesn’t work very well and feels rather gimmicky, making a realistic landscape that the user can reach out to and touch seems like the natural evolution for strategy games. It shares some of the best characteristics from the origin of strategy games: the board game.

Also check out this sweet trailer for Ubisoft’s upcoming strategy game RUSE, do yourself a service and watch it in HD. As a side note though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such hansom and trim gamers. In fact the guy with the black hair reminded me of actor Gael García Bernal of The Science of Sleep and Y tu mamá también fame.

Cocoia Blog » The future of RTS.

Ars Technica article on Blizzard’s decision to remove LAN play from StarCraft 2

Blizzard was so loved because it was a gamer-friendly company that gave us more than we asked for, and surprised us with things like a free online service and the spawned installs. Now, if you want to hook up a few computers in your basement without an Internet connection, you may not be able to play against each other at all. The LAN party is a dying thing in the world of built-in voice chat and high-speed Internet connections, but it’s not dead yet… especially among those who grew up playing StarCraft.

I doubt many PC Bangs in South Korea are too happy by this.

But it is a shame to see  LAN play go the way of the Dodo, since I imagine it is such an easy technology to implement. I have many found memories of me and my friends scrabbling to get all our computers setup to play StarCraft over LAN – I remember lots of cat5 cable and a lot of shouting about not having the latest update.

It’s funny that even today me and my friends will still have the same problems when we want to play. Wireless routers have made the process less messy, but it should also be a testament to how easy Blizzard made LAN play that last semester a few students were still able to get the game up and running on all the Macs in the Hampshire College computer lab.

Still, LAN play was one of the reasons StarCraft became such a huge hit, and it’s demise will be felt by this old gamer.

The pillars of PC gaming: why StarCraft 2 LAN play matters – Ars Technica.

Jono from Not The User’s Fault explains his room-cleaning theory to software design. Comparing where to add features in an application to cleaning up your room.

Look at some software and it’s obvious that the designer had a list of desired features, and they went through trying to find a place to put each one.

The room-cleaning theory « Not The User’s Fault.

Inspired by Sebastiaan De With’s blog post on the new UI details in iPhone OS 3.0 I found two small but interesting UI changes.

The first one, which I expect many have seen but is easy to pass by is the new third-party app camera support. When I first noticed this I thought the app developer had just changed it for their own app, but it’s actually system wide. The new interface not only obstructs less of the image to be shot, but because is nearly the same as the standard Camera app will fit much naturally to the users who are already accustomed to the interface.

Comparison between taking pictures on iPhone OS 2.2.1 and 3.0

Comparison between retaking pictures on iPhone OS 2.2.1 and 3.0

This one is pretty hard to notice unless you regularly use a car audio adapter or the apple iphone dock to listen to music. But now when you insert the iPhone into adapters that use the bottom port to output audio, the volume control will slide away in the iPod app. The reason it makes sense to have the volume control disappear is because it doesn’t control the volume anymore if it is outputting audio through the bottom port.

Comparison between iPod app connected to car on iPhone OS 2.2.1 and 3.0

I took this picture about a year ago at the Umass Library. It was some ungodly hour of the morning and Vib and I had gone crazy from discussing UI ideas and features for a webapp. I remember we were so excited about the possibilities for the future that a library monitor had to come by and ask us to quiet down.

But I don’t post this image to reminisce of a memory. But rather to point out two observations.

1. Get in the habit of making good notes and mockups, because otherwise you will lose great ideas from “aha!” moments like this one.
2. Remember to use a black marker when writing on a white board…

Why Salam Dunya?

Two reasons:

1. I am Iranian-American and proud of it
2. I am a programmer

I leave the rest for you to figure out.