''The Cat and the Coup'' is a

puzzle video game Puzzle video games make up a broad genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles can test problem-solving skills, including logic, pattern recognition, sequence solving, spatial recognition, and word completion. H ...

by Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad. The game follows the life of

Prime Minister of Iran The Prime Minister of Iran was a political post that had existed in Iran (Persia) during much of the 20th century. It began in 1906 during the Qajar dynasty and into the start of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1923 and into the 1979 Iranian Revolution ...

Mohammed Mossadegh Mohammad Mosaddegh ( fa, محمد مصدق, ; 16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967) was an Iranian politician, author, and lawyer who served as the 35th Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, after appointment by the 16th Majlis. He was a member of ...

, and his subsequent downfall through a

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

and

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

engineered coup during the 1950s. On June 15, 2011, the game was released on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

Development and release

''The Cat and the Coup'' was developed over a three-year period and was funded in part by The Advancing Scholarship for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and th
Game Innovation Lab
at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

. Over the course of its development, it received multiple awards, including

IndieCade IndieCade is an international juried festival of independent games. IndieCade is known as "the video game industry's Sundance."Fritz, Ben"IndieCade, the video game industry's Sundance" Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2009, accessed July 21, 2011. ...

's documentary game award; it was a finalist for the Nuovo award at the

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

and Runner Up for the Knight News Game award at

Games for Change Games for Change (also known as G4C) is a nonprofit organization. The organization provides support, visibility, and shared resources to individuals and organizations using serious games for social change. It also runs the G4C Student Challenge ...

. ''The Cat and the Coup'' is considered an example of "eccentric history" by Steve F. Anderson in his book ''Technologies of History: Film, Television and the Eccentricity of the Past'' (Dartmouth 2011), which features an image from the game on its cover. He writes, “What makes ''The Cat and the Coup'' exemplary from a historiographical perspective is its striking adherence to, and departures from, the historical record." The game is noted for "using factually grounded sources such as

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

headlines,” while also positioning players in the imaginary role of Mossadegh's cat, whose inability to control the course of history serves as "a metaphor for the uncertainty of historical outcomes."

References

2011 video games Indie video games MacOS games Puzzle video games Video games about cats Video games developed in the United States Video games set in the 1950s Video games set in Iran Windows games {{Puzzle-videogame-stub