Iran Bans Arma 3

[nexus]

It should be said that "Bohemia Interactive" isn't just a regular games developer. They are a games developer that also has a division contracted by the United States Army to make "war simulators". The "simulations" are pretty much run the same as the engines from Arma or Operation Flashpoint.

What has the US Army been doing this past decade? Oh, invading middle-eastern countries. Yea.

Haven't seen many games in the US where a western nation is portrayed explicitly as the "bad guy". Involving modern-era (unchanged), and doesn't have some hokey dystopian sci-fi plot. Also "splinter-faction" conspiracy games don't count, we've had those for years. I'm talking "Imperialist Invasion" style games which is what the "bad guys" usually are in western shooters. Has that ever happened, in the history of ever, for modern gaming? Not that I can recall.

So while it may seem silly and fun to poo-poo Iran; it's also passé and makes you look culturally defunct. Iran isn't going to invade anyone. America and the "west" just may invade Iran and other countries. Total Orwellian language and disinformation here, time for you to decipher it and adapt.

 

[nexus]

Like it or not, in the real world, the Americans are the good guys.

So, I guess this explains the disinformation-slash-propaganda edge I've been picking up on from your articles lately...

In the real-world, the US has killed hundreds-of-thousands of innocent civilians, in dozens of countries. Using various means; such as misguided munitions (or guided intentionally depending on your perspective), gunfire, drone-attacks, assassinations, etc.

In fact, the US is the capital of the first-world for exacting capital-punishment. This has been going on for quite some time. Don't even get me started on the US' fascination with internment/detainment... they're sort of the capital of that too... and they capitalize on it too.. on their own people even!!

 

[sagitel]

isn't this probably a bit like banning MacDonalds in Ethiopia or something ?

they have sanctions up the wazooo; do people really think any substantial number of Iranians are going to have gaming rigs capable of running Arma 3 ?

i mean this is the next Crysis in terms of "holy shit, my graphics card just packed up and left!" y'know...

that's utterly stupid. i know you have no idea of what is going on in Iran and all. and i say you would be surprised to find out what kind of gaming rigs you can find here. (a 4GB graphic is normal) yeah i know we are under sanctions but we have our ways!

 

[Atrocious Joystick]

Why is it that all 20 minutes into the future war shooters basically re-create the Cold war and make it go hot? Or they invent some fictional "bad guy" superpower country and pit it against the us. (Frankly, superpower Iran or North-Korea annexing china, or Russia helping itself to half of Europe like it ain't no thang are as fictional as the Galactic Empire). And then they pit them against the US.

If we're going with fiction, can't we have interesting fiction? Why not pit the US against the European Union? Or a European Union civil war. US against Canada. Australia against the World.

It's 2054, you're playing as a German peacekeeping Soldier in France after an invasion by the UK and the Netherlands to remove a fascist regime. You fight loyalist rebels, shit gets real, futuristic weapons, action and cheesy one-liners ensues.

 

[Legion]

Well there goes 12 sales. Anyone else getting sick of hearing about these 3ed world countries getting upset, rioting, banning and killing people over trivial matters like free speech and video games.

Iran's not getting upset about Free Speech, because Free Speech doesn't exist there. It's not a legal privilege. And you know what, Iran's free to ban whatever they please until their own leader makes laws that tell them otherwise.

Iran is just another country filled with people who whine. Just like America is filled with people who whine. And Britain, and Australia, and Europe, and Canada, and every other place on the planet.

A group of human beings somewhere in the world is getting pissy. But since it's a group of Islamic fundemantalists in the Middle East, that makes it news. A group of Christian fundementalists in the US could set a bus on fire and nobody would bat an eye.

Actually this is a gaming website and this is news of a country banning a game. That's why it is on here.

Go to a website where Christians setting a bus on fire is relevant to the site itself and it will be there. If they burnt down a gaming store because of some reason or another you can guarantee it'd be on the front of this site.

 

[Zeckt]

So a country that murders diplomat's over something they had no part in and has its police murder US soldiers are being portrayed as bad? oh my, what a travesty!

 

[Andy Chalk]

Germany is constantly portrayed as the bad guys.

Only in games based on real-world events in which they were in fact the bad guys.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Tell that to the Afghanis / Iraqis / Iranians / Chinese. The Americans are no more the "good guys" than any of these people are "bad guys" -- I wish we could get away from this Manichean world view, things really aren't that simple.

Of course they are, when you're speaking in broad geopolitical terms, which we are. In the simple "good guy/bad guy" context, Western democracies beat totalitarian dictatorships and primitive theocracies hands-down. Arguing otherwise is silly.

 

[Lieju]

Germany is constantly portrayed as the bad guys.

Only in games based on real-world events in which they were in fact the bad guys.

Isn't that even worse? Taking real wars and making them entertainment with clearly defined good guys and bad guys?
The Nazis might have been horrible, but the Germans were just people, and even people who did horrible things had a bit more complicated reasons for it than 'they were inhuman monsters'.
Ignoring the underlying reasons for why the Nazis got to power and why basically good people would stand by or do horrible things means you're not learning from the mistakes of history.

I generally don't like games where you kill normal humans, it makes me feel bad. (Unless it's over-the-top enough, like Saint's Row 2)

 

[dyre]

When a game gets released that depicts some country like Iran, Russia or China as a horribly evil invader then nobody has any problems with it, but when they release a game that depicts the west as evil then all of the sudden lots of people flip.

I don't recall anyone "flipping out" when a Western nation has been portrayed as the bad guy, but then I don't recall any games that portray Western nations as the bad guy either. The trouble is that in order to have a well-defined bad guy, you need to have a well-defined good guy, and while the US, UK and other nations have done some pretty deplorable things, they've done absolutely nothing even remotely close to what Iran, China, the Soviet Union, North Korea and the usual gang of idiots have pulled over the years. Yes, the Iran-Contra affair was ugly; on the other hand, the Americans never gassed thousands of their citizens.

In order to make it work, you'd have to craft an entirely fictional scenario - the US runs out of water and invades Canada, for instance. (And gets the stupid slapped out of it in the process, btw.) Which could work, but not as a "real world" shooter. Like it or not, in the real world, the Americans are the good guys.

Why do you need a well-defined good guy to have a well-defined bad guy? Just because there's a threat-of-the-hour doesn't mean those who oppose that threat must be shining white knights. They could just be a bunch of countries defending their geopolitical interests but also happening to be on the "lesser evil" side of things.

Plus, you don't really need a fictional scenario to have the US invade a sovereign nation that really did nothing that warrants invasion.

edit: Also, when did Iran gas its own citizens? I think you're confusing it with Iraq, whose leader gassed both its own citizens and Iran's citizens. One might add that the US, in the wake of the Iranian revolution, gave a lot of diplomatic support to Saddam Hussein and actually pushed for the war. We may even have sent them chemicals used in their poison gas.

 

[Phoenix8541]

Notice that the government has a problem with the portrayal yet its citizens do not.

 

[sagitel]

i think the best course of action Iran could take was that they make a game based on arma3(copy the game) and make you play as an Iranian not an American and fighting by the side of Iran. being the good guy and all and then distribute the game in the whole world.

 

[sagitel]

and as my history teacher used to say in history or in our life people are not black and white. they are all gray. different shades of gray but all gray. no one is pure and no one is evil. in games we really like to forget that.especially the modern shooters we see Nazis/Russians/Iranians/north Koreans/ and other enemies portrayed as assholes who only kill and kill and rape and kill. and then there are the good guys. normally Americans who never kill anyone but the enemy who never do anything bad and are pure good. and we see that in Arma3. its not right. yes the Iranian government was a bit extreme on banning (who cares about bans anyway? battlefield 3 was banned and everyone i know has played it)it but you cant blame them either. anyone gets tired of being the bad guys for 30 years. especially if they believe they are the best guys in the world. in my opinion both are wrong.

 

[Mint Rubber]

Like it or not, in the real world, the Americans are the good guys.

First I would like to apologize. It's not my intention to start an argument - I rarely post, but this time I'm compelled to respond.

Andy, I like your articles and I respect you as a gaming journalist, but this comment is youtube level.

For starters: I love my country and I get upset when it's bashed in the news for whatever reason. But to think that it's an unilateral force of good, no I don't think it is. No country is truly black or white.

You have to realize that it's not about good vs evil... no, it's about us vs them. The rest is empathy or lack thereof.

Now... picture yourself (this goes for all of you) - you probably think that you're a good person - not a saint, but an ok fellow (most of us do). You wake up in the morning, eat breakfast then you go to work/school/etc. You do you stuff: you check emails or write reports or whatever it is that you do and then you come home. You play some video games or watch some tv and go to bed. Now imagine that during all of this some guys in some far away country (let's say Iran) are hating you and your countrymen. You ask yourself why... you've never met them and you've done nothing to wrong them - why would they hate you?

Let's try the same exercise of imagination from a different point of view. Again picture yourself as an ok person who never harmed anyone willingly (like most of us like to think of themselves). You do the exact same things: you wake up, go to work/school, you do the things you usually do and then you come home, eat dinner with your family and you go to bed. During all this another group of people form another far away country (let's say America) are hating you and your countrymen. Again you ask yourself why... they have no real reason to hate you as far as you know.

During this exercise neither side realizes that they're an exact mirror of the other side.
Problem is...it's not a mental exercise - it's "the real world" as you put it.

This petty crap is really getting to me... it's bringing the entire human race down.
By now we should be exploring Mars, building colonies in the solar system, researching durable, renewable energy. But no... we have political leaders, media and religious leaders yelling "These guys are our enemies, they hate us so we must hate them!". This is circular logic at it's finest: you've got reasons and the other guys also have reasons - who's got the better reasons? Who's got the real reasons? Who has monopoly over the truth when it comes to relations between countries? Is it the guy with the bigger stick? Thought so... as long as the answer is yes I'll be in the cryogenic freezer.