No Russian

urilukin

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May 16, 2011
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So if you haven't noticed the times of Joseph Goebbels are back with Anti-Russian propaganda, with games like MW2,BFBC2,COD:Black Ops,MW3 and many more.
Writing this i am watching the mission "No Russian" from MW2 and to tell the truth, in my opinion it is disgusting, and the amount of anti-Russian games coming out of the american game industry is quite worrying.
It seems that in almost every american game Russians are the enemy and not only that, the amount of stereotypes that get worked in to these games is also worrying because in the news stand at the Moscow airport in MW2 you can see magazines like "vodka today" and "Satanist dictionary" and my favorite "duck killer" What?! you thought that Russians read Tolstoy and Pushkin Fuck no, we read "vodka drinker".
And what if Russia brought out a game where you go around killing hyper-fat Americans and the magazines they were reading were "How to bomb brown people" and "How to get you IQ up to 73" and "The REAL way to clean a shotgun" well, you get my point.
So it is time for us to get rid of this insulting, lazy and old way of writing scripts it may have worked in "Rocky IV" but not in the 21 century...
 

DrStupid87

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Mar 17, 2011
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Unfortunatley, it's also an easy way to characterise an enemy in a game. People (that I know of anyway) don't tend to care much about who they're fighting as long as they are fighting and blowing shit up. Despite all this anti-russia video game stuff,I stil find Russia a fascinating place and would love to visit it after I've learned the language. Not even the vodka sterotype. but to see stuff like St Basils Cathederal and take in the culture. Don't worry about gamescreating steroetypes. Worry about the idiots that rely on those sterotypes for the truth. THough I would love to see an anti america game at some point.
 

Lazarus Long

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Wow. Godwinned within ten words. I wouldn't take it personally. From a simplistic (read: American) view, the fall of the Union created an opportunity to depict the kind of violent factions that pop up in a power vacuum. Actually, I had the impression that North Korea was the boogeyman du jour.
 

orangeban

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It seems that in America Russia hits that lovely balance between controversial enough to kill, but not controversial enough to *not* kill (see Medal of Honor and the Taliban fiasco). Though I suspect the reason is lazy writing.

Though I also have a theory that FPSes are moving through history slowly. They've just got out of World War 2, and are entering the Cold War now, though some are breaching the modern age and the War on Terror. I'm just glad they started at World War 2, and not further back, or I would be seeing games about crushing the nasty imperialist Brits everywhere.

Edit: Oh, and welcome to the Escapist!
 

88chaz88

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Jul 23, 2010
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Play MW2. Seriously if you just watch the No Russian mission then you take the entire game out of context. The CoD games have always been great at portraying things without a simple good/evil line. MW2 is no different.
 

pspman45

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Sep 1, 2010
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Te be honest, as an American I am sick of Russians being the bad guys as well.
Mix it up a bit games industry, lets have a robot takeover or a not shit alien invasion!
 

Gromril

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Yeah i'm with the op here, the middle east and asia as a whole get hit hard by american studios too. It seems due to a lack of america having no great opposite on an international scale any more, causing the studios to go for old stereotypes and relying on nobody questioning them for hostile factions you don't have much dialogue with.

Take homefront for example. Big bad asians coming in and being generically evil, as the easiest way to make an asian antagonist is just to base them on the very worst memories of the Japanese that ww2 has to offer. It's a shame the very worst is used rather than the very best when it comes to stereotypes.
 

DrStupid87

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I'd love to see (from a MW2 perspective) more of the SAS versus the American special forces like in the later missions of that campaign. Nothing like a bit of limey on yank rivalry.
 

ZeroMachine

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I don't entirely understand it either, but for the record, the "bad" Russians in Modern Warfare 2 are a splinter group of terrorist ultranationalists. If that helps.

Lazarus Long said:
From a simplistic (read: American) view, .
Talk like that only makes you sound worse than the very people you're trying to insult. Don't generalize.
 

Lazarus Long

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ZeroMachine said:
Lazarus Long said:
From a simplistic (read: American) view, .
Talk like that only makes you sound worse than the very people you're trying to insult. Don't generalize.
Perhaps I should have specified. I'm trying much harder to refer to my own mostly-ignorant view of international politics than to make any sweeping generalizations.
That said, Americans not paying much attention to anything outside of America is a stereotype much closer to the truth than "Vodka Today."
 

Harkonnen64

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I'd hardly say a few examples from one franchise and one example from another is completely representative of Americans' view on Russia.

Oh, and in MW2, they are attacking us because they have been manipulated by an extremist conspirator.

Also, there are several friendly Russian forces throughout MW1, they even SAVE YOUR ASS at the end.
 

AmrasCalmacil

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Battlefield is made by Swedes, not Americans.

Just saying. Come to think of it though, I'm not exactly sure what the discussion in this thread is. The OP just makes an angry statement and that's that.
 

TheYellowCellPhone

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Remember last year, when it was revealed that Medal of Honor would have you able to play as the Taliban in mulitplayer and shoot American soldiers?

Remember the media outburst and large amounts of butthurt Americans that followed? Yeah, it's annoying and I feel it can hold games back. As much as I want it, we never will have a game where America is treated as the enemies like we villianize Russia.
 

proandi

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Jul 26, 2011
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For a while games have listed their main antagonists as being unnamed terrorists from the far east of the world. The moment it really kicked in for me was Resident Evil 4, not only was the game totally action orientated and a complete change from previous titles but the last hour of the game was all shooting and gunning enemies (las plagas) while they tried to shoot and torch you. It was completely out of the Resident Evil style of gaming and came to me as such as sucker punch that games were (even if unintentionally so) buying into the whole terrorists as the enemy idea which only leads kids to believe all far eastern people are like this. At least on some subconscious level.

What the hell was wrong with zombies!?
 

Soviet Heavy

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If you want a game featuring nuanced Russians that don't cling to stereotypes, play the Stalker games with the Russian Language variant.
 

Lionsfan

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Jan 29, 2010
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It's like YellowCellPhone said, we're never going to have a game that makes the US the primary bad guys, whether it be multiplayer or story wise.


But about your post OP, I dunno what to say. Yeah Russia has been the latest fad of generic evil enemy, but probably because the games we're talking about are Full-Scale War games. Unless an Alliance started between a couple Western European Nations, then Russia is the only country in the world that can go head to head with the US in a No-Nukes War.[footnote]Well there's China too, but most people are that aware of how powerful China is becoming. And I don't think they want to antagonize them too much; after all, there is a chance we'll be owned by them in a couple years or so[/footnote]
 

GigaHz

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Jul 5, 2011
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You understand that No Russian was probably made solely to gain notoriety by the general public? It was an ingenious way for Infinity Ward to get increased exposure for their game, thus having a greater chance to sell more copies.

I call it the 'Rockstar' approach. Design something ridiculous enough to stir up controversy, have concerned parents take note of it, then before you know it, news outlets are claiming that it will turn your kids into serial killers. Kids and adults who were previously unaware or uninformed of the games existence and edginess, are now at least aware of it.

As for the level itself, it's something you have to take with a grain of salt. It was a level solely designed to shock or offend you, and the developers made their intention obvious because you can choose to skip it entirely.

With the existence of this thread, and several concerning news articles, it seems as if they have done their job.
 

redisforever

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Oct 5, 2009
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It's because America demonized the Russians during the Cold War, and this mindframe has stuck. Russians are an easy target.
 

theSHAH

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Jul 31, 2011
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The fact of the matter is for a truly realistic experience, someone is going to have to be "offended". Take it as a compliment, who wants to play a game where America is pitted at war against Sri Lanka? Russia is a powerful country that makes sense as a modern enemy. The only other possible option is maybe China, but that may leave some sort of political problems.
 

Mariena

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Sep 25, 2008
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Interestingly, how many Russian games can you think of that have you murder Americans?

:p

Same goes for WW2 games and nazis. British vs Germans, Americans vs Germans, Soviets vs Germans.. Even Americans vs Japanese. Where's the other side?

Red Orchestra 2 will feature a "nazi" campaign. Playing from the German side on the eastern front. That should be interesting.