Paolo Pedercini

Pedercini was born in Italy and moved to the United States in 2007. He is an associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, teaching game design. As of 2026, he lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, a graphic designer.

In 2003, Pedercini launched Molleindustria, a platform for politically active video games, along with a manifesto. The manifesto described Molleindustria as the "theory and practice of soft conflict – sneaky, viral, guerrillero, subliminal conflict – through and within videogames."

In June 2007 the game Operazione: Pretofilia (transl. Operation: Pedopriest) inspired by the controversial BBC documentary Sex Crimes and the Vatican, was removed from Pedercini's site after a point of order in the Italian Parliament called "Countermeasures to the religions' offences".

In April 2009, Pedercini initially bowed to complaints from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference by removing Faith Fighter from their site, but later put up a new version that gives the player the choice between a full and a censored version. Pedercini has later started producing a mock sequel that sarcastically pretends to promote religious pluralism and tolerance. Both games have since been put back on the website.

In September 2011, Pedercini released a game entitled Phone Story for smartphones that was banned from the Apple iTunes Store. Phone Story focused on what Pedercini considered the "dark side" of smartphone manufacturing. When Apple banned the game, he released the game for the Android market.

For the tenth anniversary of Molleindustria, his original manifesto was translated into English for the first time.