The developers behind the upcoming Palestine Skating Game have faced physical and emotional challenges since the beginning of the war in Gaza. But even with one of them living in a war zone, they are more determined than ever to make their game a reality.
The project lead for Palestine Skating Game, who requested and was granted anonymity out of concerns for his safety, told me he was sorry that more of the team couldn’t join us when we spoke on the phone.
“I let the rest of the team know that this call is happening,” he said. “I think most people are just busy and or not quite functioning.”
The six-person team working on Palestine Skating Game is scattered across the world. While the project lead, who isn’t Arab, is currently in Paris, one of the team’s Arab members is based in Gaza, and another has family in southern Lebanon. On October 7th, Hamas, a political and military organization that is the de-facto government of the Gaza strip, attacked Israel in an act of terror, with casualties of around 1,200 people. In response, Israel has been targeting densely populated civilian areas in Gaza, and has also extended its targets to southern Lebanon. So far, the death toll for Palestinians is at least 10,000. Around half of those casualties are children.
The war in Gaza has had impact beyond just the casualties in Israel and Palestine. Anti-Arab and antisemitic hate crimes have both surged in the US. University students have lost job offers for expressing support for Palestinians on social media, and a sports reporter in Philadelphia lost his job for tweeting “solidarity with Palestine” in response to a tweet expressing support for Israel. A New York public defender was asked to resign after tearing down a poster that she said contained handwritten text advocating for killing civilian Palestinians. The only Palestinian American congressperson, Rashida Tlaib, was censured by her Republican colleagues for her comments on Israel and Palestine. The measure that was passed stated that Tlaib’s statement, which called for the end of “the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance,” was a defense of terrorism.
This chilling effect on speech has also touched the video game industry. While some Roblox players were able to attend pro-Palestinian rallies on the platform, players are now saying that games that express support for Palestinians are being taken down. Last week, at the Golden Joystick Awards, developer Meghna Jayanth pulled out of presenting an award at the last minute, saying that the organizers “would not permit political statements.” Jayanth said on Twitter that she had planned to use her time to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
We endure simply because we have to; it's not like we have any other real choice.
All of this creates a fraught environment for Palestine Skating Game and its developers. Palestine Skating Game is about skating around Bethlehem, spraying graffiti and avoiding enemies such as soldiers that patrol the area. In an early prototype of the game on Itch.io, you play as a woman rollerblading around Bethlehem, spraying graffiti on the separation wall. The team hopes to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the game around Christmas.
The project lead said that the initial inspiration for Palestine Skating Game came from the television show We Are Lady Parts, which follows the formation of an all-female Muslim punk band in the UK. It also came from a visit to Israel and Palestine where he saw graffiti artist Banksy’s installation in the West Bank, called the Walled Off Hotel. The Walled Off Hotel is a working hotel (which is not taking reservations at this time due to the violence in the region) that’s located in Bethlehem, next to the wall that cuts through the occupied West Bank. All of the rooms in the hotel face this wall.
“Three months later I had a vision of just like, essentially a woman standing around, in some sort of futuristic version of Bethlehem basically,” the project lead said. “Immediately, I was like, ‘I need to make this.’”
He said that originally they planned to portray a past and future version of Bethlehem, but that direction has shifted since October 7.
“Everything that happened recently has made it so that we have to have, like, a prior to October 7 period in the game, and then post October,” he said.
The game’s production has changed as well. One of the programmers working on Palestine Skating Game is based in Gaza, and is currently living through the war. (Aftermath is withholding her name for her safety.)
“The situation here is catastrophic, and no words in any language could adequately describe it,” she said in a message passed through the project lead. “We spend our days under heavy, random bombings, trying to secure our very basic needs like water and food. Unfortunately, there are still people who can't secure those fundamental human needs.”
“We endure simply because we have to; it's not like we have any other real choice. We draw strength from our belief in God and our right to live in this land,” she said. “We believe that the day when the right will be returned to its rightful owners has to come, no matter what.”
For the team, one of the focuses of the game is to introduce Arab and Palestinian culture to the world, something that feels even more important these days.
“The idea is that if you immerse Westerners in that kind of art and music from the region, you'll start to actually see people from the region as human beings,” the project lead said. He hopes to pass management and direction of the game to an Arab developer, and focus on 3D art.
Tony Hawk and Jet Set Radio are other inspirations for the game, especially its soundtrack. The song “Fi Hadal Habs” by the Palestinian hip hop artist Asifeh can be heard in the demo. The project lead said that for him, getting the soundtrack right is a crucial part of this game.
“I've been trying to find a soundtrack essentially rivals [the first Jet Set Radio],” he said. He went on to describe the team’s “soundtrack wishlist:” “It’s all Arabic, not necessarily strictly Palestinian. There are at least three Palestinian rappers on it. There’s DAM, a big group that’s been around for twenty years. And then this guy named Asifeh, who released the perfect Arabic funk rap, then descended into minimalist hardcore stuff forever.”
For the programmer based in Gaza, the war has only made Palestinian Skating Game more important to her.
“This game has become more important now than at any other time. Many people around the world are witnessing what is happening in Gaza, and they have many questions about Palestine and the Palestinian cause—why all of this is happening there,” she said. “I hope I can help introduce our cause to many more people. In short, this is my way of resisting the injustice we have faced and continue to face for decades.”
