It's a proud part of American mythology that people from all over the world get to come here and pursue their dreams. Navid Khonsari has one of those stories. The Iranian-American used to work at Rockstar Games as cinematic director, where he helped steer the vision on games like The Warriors, Midnight Club II and Bully.

However, for all the best-selling, critically acclaimed games Khonsari worked on, it wasn't until he went back to the Middle East that he really saw the surprising cultural impact of video games.

Khonsari spoke at this week's Games for Change conference about 1979, the real-world political action game that he's making through his iNKstories development studio. That game's set in Iran during the infamous hostage crisis that followed a violent regime change in that country. Part of that game's inspration comes directly from his resume.

During a visit to his homeland six months after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released, Khonsari found himself mobbed by teenagers in the small villager of Gombad after word spread that he'd worked on the PS2 hit.

There's not much retail infrastructure in Iran but that wasn't really an obstacle with regard to getting games. "Iran has no copyright laws," Khonsari explains. "It's all black market. So you can buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto for $1. You can buy anything for $1. And Iranians are hardcore gamers. It's a huge gaming community. What's amazing is that it's not gender-specific. I was talking to girls like 16 years olds who were throwing lines back at me from San Andreas."

It's a given that gamers in Gombad—a small community in Iran's northeast region near the Turkmenistan border—would seize on the opportunity to peer at American culture through the PC version of GTA: SA. But it was the things they enjoyed most that surprised Khonsari.

"What was amazing was they weren't necessarily drawn to what the media and the critics always attacked about GTA games. The sex, nudity or the violence… none of that stuff was a big deal to them," he relates. Instead, it was the more mundane parts of San Andreas that resonated.

"They said it was a great venue for them to just listen to music, which is harder for them to do. And they can't just hop into a car and go places, either," he continues. "So they were like, "I just drive around in my car and listen to music. And it's wonderful." They really got into the everyday kind of things you could do in the game, like being able to go and get your hair cut. We put these things in the game because we believe that these are part of our activities in our daily lives. We take for granted that these are part of our activities in our daily lives."

When I mentioned that such a level of personal freedom must seem like a fantasy to players like the ones he met in Gombad, Khonsari agreed. "For them, it's a hyper version of kids who live in the suburbs and what they think the city's like. In this particular situation these guys are going, 'I get to make choices.' And, on top of that, look at the power and strength I have as a woman playing as this character. It's not gender-specific. It's not limited by who I am. It's my journey because I get to control that journey. I might be the shell of this person that I'm playing, which is CJ. But my desire is what's shaping this experience."

"The fact that CJ was black had a huge implication over there, too," offers Khonsari. "Because it wasn't the white character that's being pushed forward. And they're like, "Wow, there's a sense of openness. They've taken their main character and they've made him black. That's amazing."

Khonsari says that his experience in Gombad drove home something he always knew in his gut, which is that games can make foreign countries and cultures feel alive in a way that other mediums can't achieve. I'll have more about how he hopes to do just that for Iran with 1979 tomorrow.

Conan O'Brien and crew debuted a fresh batch of new video games last night, and I'm not sure which ones I should pick up first. Which sounds better, Super Diabetic Mario Brothers or The Elder Scrolls: Skymall?

I'm all about Grand Theft Auto: Texting While Driving Edition myself, but only because the feature Conan's writers came up with, having messages appear on-screen while you drive, would actually be a pretty nifty way to connect with other characters in a real Grand Theft Auto game. You watching, Rockstar?

Oh, and watch out for the cheap shot at UFC at the end, it's ever-so-slightly not safe for work.

In addition to my job here at Kotaku, I work very hard on a bestselling, fictional series of video game novelizations. Last year, I published a gripping, lusty novel based on The Witcher 2. This year, I've been hard at work putting the finishing touches on my next novel based on Max Payne 3, tentatively titled Max Payne 3: The Flesh of Fallen Angels: The Novel.

Would you like to read an excerpt? You would? Okay! Here you go, an excerpt from chapter 9 of the book, in which one New Jersey mob boss hatches an insanely ambitious plan to kill Max. I hope you enjoy it.

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"They killed my son! They killed my boy!"

Boss Anthony DeMarco was furious, inconsolable. His son Tony was dead at the hands of some ex-cop deadbeat named Payne. In one instant, the DeMarco family line had been snuffed out, and Anthony had lost a son. Payback was going to be a bitch.

"We are gonna get this guy, this... Payne," DeMarco fumed. "We are going to make him pay, Tommy!"

Tommy Marcotti looked his boss. In his fifteen years serving as the DeMarco's top lieutenant, he'd never seen the old man like this. Boss DeMarco was so furious he was drooling on himself, so mad his hands were shaking.

"Okay, boss," Marcotti said. "We'll put all our boys on it. Let's come up with a battle plan. We've got some intelligence that Payne is visiting his dead wife's grave at a graveyard in Jersey." Marcotti pulled out a overhead map of the vast Jersey graveyard that the DeMarcos kept on hand.

"There may be another guy with him, some guy named Passos. So, two of them. We'll send out Bobby and those two boneheads he hangs out with to take Payne out at his wife's grave."

"What about if he gets past them?" DeMarco asked, his voice still edging into a scream. "Then what?"

"Take it easy, boss," Marcotti said. "We've got all kinds of contingency plans." He pointed to a spot on the map. "We'll have five guys backing up Bobby's three guys, so there'll be eight guys at the first part of the cemetery. Then we'll have five more guys backing them up, and Tony B. will be on triple-backup in a car, in case they get through those first guys."

"Okay," DeMarco said, "but what if they get by all of those guys?"

"Past the grave is a rotunda," Marcotti explained, tapping a circular shape on the graveyard map. "So, we'll stack up Benny and his boys near stairs leading up to it. Benny's got a huge grenade launcher, and he's got six guys with him with four more for backup. So in addition to the fourteen guys we first sent after Payne, we'll have eleven guys with Benny at the rotunda."

"Twenty-five guys.," DeMarco said, his shoulders loosening a bit. "Keep going."

"We'll have ten more guys pull up behind the rotunda and fan out from there, with five more guys behind them."

"So, a total of forty guys so far?"

"Yeah, give or take."

"I don't want you to underestimate this fucker," said DeMarco, standing up. "He's pretty dangerous."

"We ain't gonna underestimate him," said Marcotti, reassuringly.

"I do have one question," said DeMarco, who seemed reassured. "What's to stop Payne from just running out of the graveyard in a different direction?"

"That won't happen," said Marcotti.

"Okay," said DeMarco, lost in thought. "You've convinced me. Go on."

"There's another rotunda after the first one," Marcotti explained, "So we'll send Junior and his boys there. He's got eight guys, all armed to the teeth, so between the nine of them they can probably hold the rotunda. We'll have a backup team of five in place, though, in case something goes wrong."

"After that," he continued, pointing to a building on the map, "there's an approach to a mausoleum. I'm gonna plant Frankie up top with a high-powered sniper rifle, so he can take Payne out if he gets past the fourteen guys at the second rotunda. But just in case, we'll put eight of his boys down in the building below."

"But what if Payne gets past them?" asked DeMarco.

"Well, we'll have three more guys hiding inside the building in case Payne and his friend go inside. Which brings me to the next part of the plan. We'll catch 'em at the Mausoleum and bring them to you, just like you wanted. Piece of cake."

"Good," said DeMarco, his eyes widening. "This is the good part. I wanna watch those fuckers beg."

"So," continued Marcotti, "while all our guys were fighting at the grave, and the first rotunda, and the parking lot, and the second rotunda, and the mausoleum, you and me set up the gravesite like you wanted. It'll be real dramatic. Once the boys at the mausoleum capture them, they'll bring them to us there, and you can make them dig their own graves."

Marcotti laughed. "It's gonna be some poetic justice, boss." DeMarco looked pleased.

"Just in case you leave them alone and they somehow escape," Marcotti continued, "we've got another contingency plan." He drew his finger down the map towards the southern end. "We'll have five guys stationed in the parking lot outside of the main building, which is where they'll come if they escape the gravesite. Then, we'll plant some guys in the Morgue beneath the main graveyard building. Seems fittin', no?"

"What seems fittin'?" asked DeMarco.

"The morgue. It's fittin' because if they go to the morgue, they'll die there. Geddit?"

"Wait," said DeMarco. "Why would they go into the morgue? Why wouldn't they just run for it?"

"Stop overthinking this, boss," said Marcotti.

"Once they're in the morgue," Marcotti said, "we'll have three guys try to head them off in the operating room. If they make it past those three, they'll probably head into the chapel to make a phone call. That's when we hit 'em with the big guns—we'll send in about fifteen to twenty more guys to take them out."

"So, ninety-four wiseguys to take down these assholes, then," concluded DeMarco, counting on his fingers.

"Yeah, boss," said Marcotti. "It seems like a solid plan to me."

"Maybe," said DeMarco, standing up. "Maybe. Don't forget: This is Max Payne we're talkin' about. He's one tough sonovabitch."

"We pull this off," Marcotti said, allowing a smile onto his face, "and there'll be nothing standing between us and the Punchinellos."

"Easy now," said DeMarco. "We're just one family. We ain't the goddam National Guard."

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Will the DeMarcos emerge victorious? Will Max and Passos somehow survive the attack and live to fight (and fight, and fight) another day? Will Max Payne's enemies ever run out of dudes for him to shoot? Fine out in the next chapter of Max Payne 3: The Flesh of Fallen Angels: The Novel. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Ever since reviewing Max Payne 3 a while back, I've heard from commenters and others that Max "feels" different than he used to in his older games, which were made by Remedy Entertainment.

Max's words sprang from the mind of writer Sam Lake, who also served as a model for the renegade cop. What's most interesting about the Max Payne comics published by Marvel, then, is that they represent a partnership between Sam Lake and Rockstar's Dan Houser, the men responsible for Max Payne's past and present. They're damn good comics, if you ask me.

The series so far represents a blend of both men's sensibilities, which feel less disparate than some would say. It's a bit of Lake's quirkier, more literary Max as he becomes the rundown wreck he appears as in Houser's more cinematically-minded Max Payne 3. It's a great use of comics as an interstitial tie-in.

Comics based on video games can be really, really bad. Sure, they might be able to replicate the look or expand on the worlds seen in titles like Gears of War, Mass Effect But it's a hard proposition to recapture the appeal of those games in a static medium.

It's great, then, that the art by Fernando Blanco manages to make Max's shoot-dodge look like it does in that games, but slightly more toned down. Blanco also recreates the gritty, smoky noir-inflected feel of the games, but pays special attention to the emotions on these game characters' faces.

These comics actually serve as pretty good primers for Max Payne 3, if you're coming in cold. Readers who haven't played the first two Remedy-developed Max titles get the basics: Max was a tough-guy cop who busted sellers of a drug called Valkyr but lost loved ones along the way. But, the best possible reading experience here comes after finishing the story mode of Max Payne 3 and seeing where the panels fit in with the gameplay.

You see one character from the Hoboken flashback levels of Max Payne 3 in some less explosive moments, which retroactively adds a nice bit of tension to what eventually happens in the game. And some sequences get lifted wholesale from the games, too. But it doesn't feel lazy. Instead, Max's depressing solo drinking feels even weightier

I liked Max Payne 3 mostly it felt like a character study of a man in deep decline desperately clinging to the only thing he's ever been good at: shooting. (Mind you, I don't love the game's story.)

After the Fall and Hoboken Blues feel like part of a larger whole and prove to be vital parts of a portrait of what it looks like when a man falls into the worst pats of himself. They're free so definitely take a look.

Only rarely do they ever see each other in a game, so it's nice to see the stars of every Grand Theft Auto title (at least the ones that had a star) find the time to catch up.

Swap stories, talk about beatings, car chases and unfair checkpoint structures.

If you're wondering who the brooding chap on the far right is, that's the mysterious "star" of the Grand Theft Auto V trailer.

The piece is by artist Patrick Brown who, uh, we've featured here once or twice before.

Grand Theft Auto Legends 2012 [DeviantArt]

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Max Payne 3 developers Rockstar have come up with a tidy solution to the problem of dealing with online cheaters: throw them in the same room together and let them kill (or at least annoy) each other.

Here's Rockstar's explanation:

Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a "Cheaters Pool", where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants.

The sight of cheaters trying to out-cheat other cheaters is something Rockstar should film then distribute. I know I'd watch it.

I know Battlefield 3 is too big a game to do the same, but boy, in my dreams this is something nearly all developers could implement.

Taking Aim at Cheaters in Max Payne 3 [Rockstar]

In the midst of all the shoot-outs, drinking, and pill-popping, Max Payne is just another guy, you know? He wants to lounge on a pool chair and kick his feet up on the table.

Except he does it in slow, bullet-time motion.

Max Payne 3: Dramatic Chilling Simulator [YouTube via Reddit]

One of my favorite things about Remedy's first two Max Payne games was their winking, self-aware style. That vibe was perhaps best encapsulated by the scene in which Max has a drug hallucination and realizes that he's the protagonist of a video game.

Rockstar's take on the character is much more gritty and dark, and often feels weighed down by over-seriousness. But occasionally, the game will toss a nod to the series' roots by making an absurd reference.

My favorite of these is the moment in the video above, when Max discovers a trashed, out-of-tune piano in a run-down building in Brazil. The piano could be a metaphor for Max—beat up, broken, but still playing that same old tune. I particularly love how the game's actual soundtrack (which is astonishingly good in its own right) plays a lead-in chord to the piano solo, with Max resolving the unresolved cadence.

And what does he choose to play? Why, what else but the classic theme from the original game.

"And, for a few seconds, came harmony. Finally."

Max does a lot, in Max Payne 3. He shoots guys, tries not to be shot by guys, shoots other guys... you know, like you do.

But behind all of the action, making Max Payne tick, are dedicated voice and motion capture actors whose performances, with digital skins on, make the game. Rockstar has posted a behind-the-scenes glimpse at a piece of the process, showing how Max Payne came to be.

Actor James McCaffrey performed both the voice and the body work for the titular antihero. And when Rockstar needed to fill a virtual São Paulo with plausible Brazilians, they went to Brazil to cast and record the roles. Over a number of extensive voice acting and body-scanning sessions, Rockstar recorded everyone from a Ju-Jitsu world champion to a pageant queen to a local rapper.

It's a neat look at just how much work it can be to fill a video game with the wide cast of extras you'd expect to find on a normal city street. When every aspect of your story's world has to be crated from scratch, assembling your actors can be an ordeal indeed.

From NYC to São Paulo: Behind the Scenes of Max Payne 3's Voiceover, Mo-Cap & Scanning Sessions [Rockstar blog, via Game Informer]

It's no secret that it's fun to get in trouble in Rockstar's open world Grand Theft Auto series.

Even this machinima director couldn't resist the urge to get his hands dirty in the midst of filming. Which is fortunate for us, because now we get to see massive explosions and cars flying through the air.

Grand Theft AWESOME [YouTube via Reddit]