One of the people behind some of the most popular – and violent – video games has left the world of Grand Theft Auto and developed a game prototype based on the Iranian revolution. 

Since Navid Khonsari began work on the game, called 1979 Revolution, it has been labeled Western propaganda by an Iran government-run newspaper and some members of his team still use aliases to protect themselves from the repercussions of creating a video game based on a controversial event that has persistent reverberations today. Khonsari launched a Kickstarter on Wednesday, hoping to take the game from a prototype to tablet-ready, episodic series.

“I wanted people to feel the passion and the elation of being in the revolution – of feeling that you could possibly make a change,” said Khonsari, who moved from Iran to Canada at age 10, just after the revolution. He remembers his grandfather walking him through the early protests in Tehran....