Would Americans play a game in which the United States is the bad guy?

[Frostbyte666]

Hmm...Would the Fallout series count? The enclave are the remnant of the US government which wanted to kill off all non pure humans? Also VaultTec for the evil corporation. however we also know the Chinese were pretty ruthless and we don't know a lot about how the other countries acted in Fallout, they could have been just as bad or worse.

 

[MeatMachine]

American here, and while there have been a lot of popular examples given in this thread, as far as I can tell, they are all conditional to other factors. The Fallout series' Enclave is a post-Armageddon United States, for example, rather than the United States we all know and love and unconditionally look up to as a moral paradigm all other nations jealously strive to match.

I would say that if the United States, in its more or less current form, was clearly displayed as the antagonists or a force of evil, many Americans would we curious about it and would love playing it if the game was fun and the message was critical or insightful; however, I doubt such a straightforwardly objectionable premise would grant it mainstream popularity.

The inherent issue with creating a game, or rather just a story in general, with present America as the bad guys is that you have to get past one very important fact about America.

National identity.

(rest of snip)

It could be argued that the MacCarthyist era of popular anti-communist sentimentality led to some change in our willingness to be the good guys. Granted, most of our policy revolved around containment and obstinate support of non-communist governments/parties rather than direct military action, but the idea of pre-emptively striking the Soviet Union was not unpopular among common citizens.

It was an attitude of righteously confronting evil, but then again, that's the attitude that every evil organization considers itself to have.

 

[CyanCat47_v1legacy]

Do we ever see Britain or non-German Europe as the enemy?

While I can't think of any examples of the UK as a nation being the villain, it is quite common for a British character in games (and media in general) to be evil, particularly those that speak with a posh, upper class British accent. Bonus points if they start out allies, but end up betraying you along the way.

Not really sure why that is. Perhaps it is some holdover resentment from the American Revolutionary War or British colonial times that mutated into 'Brits make good villains' over time.

the entire helghast in killzone are british which is a bit probelmatic considering the fact that they dress like nazis

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

Yup, we're all backwater hicks who drive pick-up trucks to the gun rally where we burn effigies of Obama to our Lord and Savior Ronald Reagan. This nationalistic Kool-Aid is so delicious.

OT: Yeah, absolutely we would. The fact of the matter is most American's don't believe this country is an infallible pillar of liberty. Especially among the 20 something age group (of which I am a part) there's a lot of distrust and jaded feelings aimed at our government. A game about a guerilla war against a corrupt and evil US government would be pretty culturally relevant. Actually, take out the guerilla war and that's what we have now anyway.

Playing as a foreign faction would be fun too. Any country involved in all-out warfare with the US is going to have a pretty strong military which has the potential to lead to some exciting, large scale battles.

 

[CyanCat47_v1legacy]

The inherent issue with creating a game, or rather just a story in general, with present America as the bad guys is that you have to get past one very important fact about America.

National identity.

As much as people like to talk about how we become hypocrites when push comes to shove in hard situations, us Americans really do believe in the idea of us being "the good guys". That's our national identity, its who we want to be, we want to be heroes in rights and war and being a great example. If you want to see a war where those ideas are in full display then read up on the Spanish-American war.

The American people do not want to be villains, we don't want to just go conquering nations for our own gain. Even in the cases where our government wants to get us involved somewhere for personal gain they still need to reconcile our national identity to the public in order to do so.

This makes it so the only way to make America as a nation a true villain in a story would be to drastically change our past or engineer some sort of radical change in our politics to the point that you're no longer actually making a story about current America being the bad guy but some sort of bizzaro America.

You can make Americans be the bad guys on a small scale, atrocities in a small village, a government cover up of assassinations and political intrigue, but you can't make a story that has America invading countries or the world to conquer, plunder, and destroy their enemies and still have it actually be current America unless the other countries were doing terrible things too.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that America is the best thing ever, we have many faults, however, it's no lie that that is how we WANT to be.

How about this scenario to make the US the bad guys.

The US economy is in the drain (that is not a current observation, that's just a requisite for the scenario to work), and to get it going again the Senate (or Congress, I don't actually know who has the real power in the US, but it certainly isn't da Prez) need to find more oil they can claim.

They know there's oilfields under the Arctic sea, but unfortunately that territory belongs to the kingdom of Denmark.

So the US government makes up a story how the current regent of Denmark is a despotic royal (not true, at all just to make it clear), and badabing badaboom, there's your "righteous good-guy" motive for invading a benign country (which in this case is actually an ally of the US).

EDIT:
Or maybe we could forget about the oil, and just go with a fiercely uber-republican USA that wants to eradicate all "undemocratic royal families" (regardless of the wishes of the citizens in the respective countries).

we non-americans like to think of you as villains and as such wouldn't mind exaggarating a negative aspect of your society in order to make you the bad guys. you people take the same liberties with russians. the russians see themselves as the defenders of the world against nazis, in fact putin claimed that ukrainian fascists were planning to eradicate the russian minority in ukraine. nobody ever see themselves as the villain but if anything we are brought closer to being agents of atrocity when we se ourselves as flawless saviours. how many have suffered because the majority in a country believed that the minority needed to be "saved from themselves"?

 

[MrFalconfly]

The inherent issue with creating a game, or rather just a story in general, with present America as the bad guys is that you have to get past one very important fact about America.

National identity.

As much as people like to talk about how we become hypocrites when push comes to shove in hard situations, us Americans really do believe in the idea of us being "the good guys". That's our national identity, its who we want to be, we want to be heroes in rights and war and being a great example. If you want to see a war where those ideas are in full display then read up on the Spanish-American war.

The American people do not want to be villains, we don't want to just go conquering nations for our own gain. Even in the cases where our government wants to get us involved somewhere for personal gain they still need to reconcile our national identity to the public in order to do so.

This makes it so the only way to make America as a nation a true villain in a story would be to drastically change our past or engineer some sort of radical change in our politics to the point that you're no longer actually making a story about current America being the bad guy but some sort of bizzaro America.

You can make Americans be the bad guys on a small scale, atrocities in a small village, a government cover up of assassinations and political intrigue, but you can't make a story that has America invading countries or the world to conquer, plunder, and destroy their enemies and still have it actually be current America unless the other countries were doing terrible things too.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that America is the best thing ever, we have many faults, however, it's no lie that that is how we WANT to be.

How about this scenario to make the US the bad guys.

The US economy is in the drain (that is not a current observation, that's just a requisite for the scenario to work), and to get it going again the Senate (or Congress, I don't actually know who has the real power in the US, but it certainly isn't da Prez) need to find more oil they can claim.

They know there's oilfields under the Arctic sea, but unfortunately that territory belongs to the kingdom of Denmark.

So the US government makes up a story how the current regent of Denmark is a despotic royal (not true, at all just to make it clear), and badabing badaboom, there's your "righteous good-guy" motive for invading a benign country (which in this case is actually an ally of the US).

EDIT:
Or maybe we could forget about the oil, and just go with a fiercely uber-republican USA that wants to eradicate all "undemocratic royal families" (regardless of the wishes of the citizens in the respective countries).

we non-americans like to think of you as villains and as such wouldn't mind exaggarating a negative aspect of your society in order to make you the bad guys. you people take the same liberties with russians. the russians see themselves as the defenders of the world against nazis, in fact putin claimed that ukrainian fascists were planning to eradicate the russian minority in ukraine. nobody ever see themselves as the villain but if anything we are brought closer to being agents of atrocity when we se ourselves as flawless saviours. how many have suffered because the majority in a country believed that the minority needed to be "saved from themselves"?

I think you've misunderstood something.

I'm not a US citizen. I'm a Dane.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

American here, and while there have been a lot of popular examples given in this thread, as far as I can tell, they are all conditional to other factors. The Fallout series' Enclave is a post-Armageddon United States, for example, rather than the United States we all know and love and unconditionally look up to as a moral paradigm all other nations jealously strive to match.

I would say that if the United States, in its more or less current form, was clearly displayed as the antagonists or a force of evil, many Americans would we curious about it and would love playing it if the game was fun and the message was critical or insightful; however, I doubt such a straightforwardly objectionable premise would grant it mainstream popularity.

The inherent issue with creating a game, or rather just a story in general, with present America as the bad guys is that you have to get past one very important fact about America.

National identity.

(rest of snip)

It could be argued that the MacCarthyist era of popular anti-communist sentimentality led to some change in our willingness to be the good guys. Granted, most of our policy revolved around containment and obstinate support of non-communist governments/parties rather than direct military action, but the idea of pre-emptively striking the Soviet Union was not unpopular among common citizens.

It was an attitude of righteously confronting evil, but then again, that's the attitude that every evil organization considers itself to have.

Hhm, this is actually a good point. The Cold War is probably the best time period to have America be a villain without significantly changing things, although if I were to point out any issues here it would be that most of the atrocious things that happened then were within our own country and any conflict with a foreign nation would have been either super top secret spy work or attempts to keep Russia and America from nuking everyone so I don't think you could have a big armed conflict then without having to then deal with the nuclear fallout, but maybe that would make the scenario more interesting.

 

[sXeth]

You mentioned "vague Arab country", and it could certainly be argued that vague representations of the US have popped up in any number of games as the enemy.

The British state, if oft unnamed, pops up decently often in sci-fi based around 1984/V for Vendetta homaging.

Explicitly and in AAA, the last time I remember the US government being the specific enemy was in Saints Row 3 when the army moves in to the city and takes over the antagonist role for most of the 2nd half. Granted, the general involved eventually gets disassociated as a rogue agent.

 

[Disco Biscuit]

So, Metal Gear Solid?

Didn't bother me when I played it.

And for all peoples' whining about them, the Modern Warfare games aren't really all that "pro-American". They glamorize military prowess but not much else.

First thing I thought of too. In fact a lot of Japanese games, anime, etc don't exactly cast Americans or American allegories in a great light. The issue is whether they're fun, or good, and often they're both.

The inherent issue with creating a game, or rather just a story in general, with present America as the bad guys is that you have to get past one very important fact about America.

National identity.

As much as people like to talk about how we become hypocrites when push comes to shove in hard situations, us Americans really do believe in the idea of us being "the good guys". That's our national identity, its who we want to be, we want to be heroes in rights and war and being a great example. If you want to see a war where those ideas are in full display then read up on the Spanish-American war.

The American people do not want to be villains, we don't want to just go conquering nations for our own gain. Even in the cases where our government wants to get us involved somewhere for personal gain they still need to reconcile our national identity to the public in order to do so.

This makes it so the only way to make America as a nation a true villain in a story would be to drastically change our past or engineer some sort of radical change in our politics to the point that you're no longer actually making a story about current America being the bad guy but some sort of bizzaro America.

You can make Americans be the bad guys on a small scale, atrocities in a small village, a government cover up of assassinations and political intrigue, but you can't make a story that has America invading countries or the world to conquer, plunder, and destroy their enemies and still have it actually be current America unless the other countries were doing terrible things too.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that America is the best thing ever, we have many faults, however, it's no lie that that is how we WANT to be.

How about this scenario to make the US the bad guys.

The US economy is in the drain (that is not a current observation, that's just a requisite for the scenario to work), and to get it going again the Senate (or Congress, I don't actually know who has the real power in the US, but it certainly isn't da Prez) need to find more oil they can claim.

They know there's oilfields under the Arctic sea, but unfortunately that territory belongs to the kingdom of Denmark.

So the US government makes up a story how the current regent of Denmark is a despotic royal (not true, at all just to make it clear), and badabing badaboom, there's your "righteous good-guy" motive for invading a benign country (which in this case is actually an ally of the US).

EDIT:
Or maybe we could forget about the oil, and just go with a fiercely uber-republican USA that wants to eradicate all "undemocratic royal families" (regardless of the wishes of the citizens in the respective countries).

we non-americans like to think of you as villains and as such wouldn't mind exaggarating a negative aspect of your society in order to make you the bad guys. you people take the same liberties with russians. the russians see themselves as the defenders of the world against nazis, in fact putin claimed that ukrainian fascists were planning to eradicate the russian minority in ukraine. nobody ever see themselves as the villain but if anything we are brought closer to being agents of atrocity when we se ourselves as flawless saviours. how many have suffered because the majority in a country believed that the minority needed to be "saved from themselves"?

I think you've misunderstood something.

I'm not a US citizen. I'm a Dane.

What a doubly awkward use of "you people" then, when he was off by a continent.

 

[FalloutJack]

I would only do it if they did it accurately. Evil US is a country that can bring the entire world to its knees, having first played every country for patsies, and then ruthlessly pushed all the great powers into the defensive while stealing all resources readily available for itself...after annexing Canada and Mexico, of course. If the going theme for an Evil America is "Holy shit, we are fucked", where any morality the country has is GONE, then yeah I would play.

 

[CyanCat47_v1legacy]

The inherent issue with creating a game, or rather just a story in general, with present America as the bad guys is that you have to get past one very important fact about America.

National identity.

As much as people like to talk about how we become hypocrites when push comes to shove in hard situations, us Americans really do believe in the idea of us being "the good guys". That's our national identity, its who we want to be, we want to be heroes in rights and war and being a great example. If you want to see a war where those ideas are in full display then read up on the Spanish-American war.

The American people do not want to be villains, we don't want to just go conquering nations for our own gain. Even in the cases where our government wants to get us involved somewhere for personal gain they still need to reconcile our national identity to the public in order to do so.

This makes it so the only way to make America as a nation a true villain in a story would be to drastically change our past or engineer some sort of radical change in our politics to the point that you're no longer actually making a story about current America being the bad guy but some sort of bizzaro America.

You can make Americans be the bad guys on a small scale, atrocities in a small village, a government cover up of assassinations and political intrigue, but you can't make a story that has America invading countries or the world to conquer, plunder, and destroy their enemies and still have it actually be current America unless the other countries were doing terrible things too.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that America is the best thing ever, we have many faults, however, it's no lie that that is how we WANT to be.

How about this scenario to make the US the bad guys.

The US economy is in the drain (that is not a current observation, that's just a requisite for the scenario to work), and to get it going again the Senate (or Congress, I don't actually know who has the real power in the US, but it certainly isn't da Prez) need to find more oil they can claim.

They know there's oilfields under the Arctic sea, but unfortunately that territory belongs to the kingdom of Denmark.

So the US government makes up a story how the current regent of Denmark is a despotic royal (not true, at all just to make it clear), and badabing badaboom, there's your "righteous good-guy" motive for invading a benign country (which in this case is actually an ally of the US).

EDIT:
Or maybe we could forget about the oil, and just go with a fiercely uber-republican USA that wants to eradicate all "undemocratic royal families" (regardless of the wishes of the citizens in the respective countries).

we non-americans like to think of you as villains and as such wouldn't mind exaggarating a negative aspect of your society in order to make you the bad guys. you people take the same liberties with russians. the russians see themselves as the defenders of the world against nazis, in fact putin claimed that ukrainian fascists were planning to eradicate the russian minority in ukraine. nobody ever see themselves as the villain but if anything we are brought closer to being agents of atrocity when we se ourselves as flawless saviours. how many have suffered because the majority in a country believed that the minority needed to be "saved from themselves"?

I think you've misunderstood something.

I'm not a US citizen. I'm a Dane.

I was trying to comment the guy you were commenting. sorry about that

 

[Leg End]

Would any of you Americans play a game in which you are the evil ones and need to be stopped?

In a motherfucking heartbeat. Give me a game of a modern civil war in the states or an outside force(preferably Japan because muh weeb and they owe us a favor for Binary Domain) having to stop Murica from doing something stupid to be determined at a later date.

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

You should take a vacation here sometime.

You say Americans wouldn't want to play a game where America is the bad guy, but if there's one thing Americans seem to love it's to distrust their own government. Hence the whole 'we need guns for when the Man decides to do something I don't like'. And in movies and games it's usually always the American government that's up to shadey shit.

'Murrica: the greatest country in the world. You can't trust the elites, the corporations, the feds or the police, and you may need guns to rise up against any or all of them, but we're the best.

we non-americans like to think of you as villains and as such wouldn't mind exaggarating a negative aspect of your society in order to make you the bad guys. you people take the same liberties with russians. the russians see themselves as the defenders of the world against nazis, in fact putin claimed that ukrainian fascists were planning to eradicate the russian minority in ukraine. nobody ever see themselves as the villain but if anything we are brought closer to being agents of atrocity when we se ourselves as flawless saviours. how many have suffered because the majority in a country believed that the minority needed to be "saved from themselves"?

I honestly read this and think that such a game in this instance is a perfect idea because, the US is already seen as the largest and most successful villain in the world.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I'm not sure it'd make a huge difference, given the level of American paranoia revolves around the gummit being corrupt and untrustworthy.

I think it does, there's a difference between the gubmint tekin away mah freedomz and portraying the United States as a whole as a the foreign aggressor.

 

[LysanderNemoinis]

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

I would play the heck out of such game, tho.

As an American, I'd like to know exactly where the hell that happens. All I've heard my entire life, especially in school and in the media/culture at large, is that America is the worst place in the world and filled with the worst people ever, and all we ever do is kill innocent people because of their higher levels of melanin. Hell in most movies and some video games I can always tell who the bad guy is because he's always the guy who is the most pro-American or says the word "patriot." The last time I encountered anything in the media that made me feel patriotic in the slightest was the movie 300, and that wasn't even about Americans.

 

[Fox12]

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

I would play the heck out of such game, tho.

Which is why Spec-OPs The Line, Fallout 3, and Bioshock Infinite were total critical and financial failures.

 

[Allspice]

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

I would play the heck out of such game, tho.

As an American, I'd like to know exactly where the hell that happens. All I've heard my entire life, especially in school and in the media/culture at large, is that America is the worst place in the world and filled with the worst people ever, and all we ever do is kill innocent people because of their higher levels of melanin. Hell in most movies and some video games I can always tell who the bad guy is because he's always the guy who is the most pro-American or says the word "patriot." The last time I encountered anything in the media that made me feel patriotic in the slightest was the movie 300, and that wasn't even about Americans.

Yeah, that's basically been my experience too. If someone has something positive to say about us, it always takes me by complete surprise because it happens so rarely. I admit it gets under my skin sometimes...no one likes to be told they are essentially worthless purely because of where they live over and over.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

Pfft. The self hate in the good old US of A is ridiculous.

OT: I'd play it as long as the game doesn't humanize the enemy.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm an American in that I was born here and can't afford to travel out for a short amount of time, let alone permanently...and anyway, yes I would absolutely love to play a game in which the US is the enemy! It would be a great change to finally fight against an insane American collective that finally went full on Dolores Umbridge.

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

I would play the heck out of such game, tho.

This is very true...I've pissed off a bunch of teachers by refusing to "stand for the pledge" [sub](I'm sure you already know but if you don't, every morning before classes start from Kindergarten up through the final year of school...pre-college, students are REQUIRED to stand, place their right hands on their hearts and pledge their allegiance to the flag via monotone chant)[/sub]. Anyway, That could easily be a neat hook of the narrative. Every time you have to go through a loading screen you see American newspapers talking about you and/or your forces and how smelly and evil you are with small puff-pieces in the margins about how great American things are and how people caught watching Soccor are being detained, etc...

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Uh, we've already had plenty of games like this.

-Basically any Red Alert game (since you can play campaigns as the Soviets, Japanese, or Yuri, and America and it's allies are 'the villain").

-Prototype 1 and 2: You spend most of the game fighting the US Military.

-Half-life: See Prototype.

-Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction: See Prototype.

-Spec Ops: The Line.

-Any Fallout game where the Enclave is the villain.

I bet they don't. They live in a culture that teaches them since an early age that 'Murica is the best country and is never wrong and their soldiers are good guys.

Ouch!! Sorry, I cut myself on your edginess.

 

[M0rp43vs]

As someone else mentioned it, Bioshock: Infinite was a prime example of America gone wrong; enabling it to be the antagonist towards the player.

Like someone mentioned earlier, I'd argue that doesn't count because they broke off from the US and were trying to build massive zepellins to firebomb the US. Also, it's less America is the bad guy and more "racism and blind extremism" are the badguys.

OT: I would love to see it but not for any political or "those Silly americans" reason. I used to watch and read up on experimental US warfare and thought "Wow, imagine going up against that". I would LOVE a alternate universe where America tries to take over the world (either humanise them by making them think they're doing the right thing or don't and go full cartoon) and the other countries try to stop them. America is very nationalistic and full of neat weapons, they would make the best "empire" to go against the rebel "underdogs".