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

[ManutheBloodedge]

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.

...*Cough*

Spoiler

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/2/2a/Fallout2front.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081229142345

A game where the main villain is the remnants of the US government, who kidnap the population of main character's village, the inhabitants of Vault 13, massacre a settlement of peaceful and intelligent Deathclaws, and want to kill all mutants. (Which to them is every single person that isn't them and people in Vaults) I don't recall anyone having a problem with this.

Well, to be fair, national identity looses some relevance after the nuclear apocalypse. I think what the OP meant where games in the style of Call of Duty from the viewpoint of a nation that faces America as an enemy. You know, fullfilling heroics while shooting american soilders en masse and ending the game with defeating Obama in his star-spangled bald-eagle mech. You have to admit, this kind of game is missing. If that is a good or bad thing is something everyone has to decide for themselves...

Does a game where you spend a good part of the game killing US Marines count? If so I think a have something.

Spoiler

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Half-Life_Cover_Art.jpg

Not really, no. For one thing, the Obama-Mech is missing. That thing is vital.
But really, just shooting american soldiers doesn't compare to the nebulous, evil, single-minded entity that the enemy country (mostly Russia and Germany) is portrayed as in some historical and modern shooters.
You are not shooting at US Marines in Half-Life because you disagree with them on an ideological level (apart from the fact that they want you dead and you disagree with that) or they invaded your country. The context is all different.

Really, most of the "America is evil"-plot revolves around some rouge part of the government or the government itself. America is not portrayed as a breeding ground for evil man with rifles. Which is a good thing, because that notion would be stupid. Problem is, it is not getting any less stupid when applied to other countries, real or fictional. Rather than treat the whole country of America as a villain, I would prefer the other countries in media be treated more like America in that regard.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I feel all the examples people are listing of games where it turns out some US higher-up was the real baddie all along, or it was all due to corruption in a subset of the US government or whatever probably shouldn't count unless the protagonist of that game is also non-American. Because otherwise you've still got the player character, a square-jawed clean-cut "real" American fixing all the mistakes of those nasty "fake" American who aren't in it for the freedom and liberty at all. Its more of a shades of grey thing than the black-and-white the OP is looking for.

Though speaking as a Brit, I'd have no problem with us being portrayed as the villains largely because we kind of were. The British Empire was one long era of us going round the world, using military supremacy, technological superiority or economic monopolies to basically stamp on everyone with our big shiny boots. Instead of a historical shooter set in WWII, set it during the Boer War and stop the Brits from annexing all of South Africa. Want something a bit more espionagy? How about the Opium Wars, try to stop 19th century equivalents to James Bond from sabotaging important Chinese defences and trade points. Tired of alternate history games taking the predictable route of "the Nazis winning WWII"? Here's one where the British Empire never lost a war and just kept growing and growing. Set something in the far future where we've starting building another Empire, only our monarchy has power again and also just happen to be Sith now or something.
If they were good enough games I'd enjoy the shit out of any of those

 

[gmaverick019_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.

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

oh wow, look at that yummy bait you threw out there! yum yum yum. Please, tell me more about the culture I grew up in, and how it's never wrong and we are always the good guys.


Oh wait, that's right, that's not how I grew up at all, thanks for using our piece of shit media as an excuse to make horrible assumptions about most of us. Most of us aren't this nationalistic "hur dur america is the greatest and never wrong!", and I'd greatly enjoy more games where the united states were the bad guys, there are plenty of conflicts where I think we are in the wrong, but there is nothing the majority of the public can do to stop that.

 

[ManutheBloodedge]

If I may, as someone who is an American and who was born in and lived in Deutschland for a fair few years, we tend to think of modern Germans as being pretty awesome. To many Americans that I've known, Germans have a similar sort of national spirit as Americans and a great number of us are descended from German immigrants. Though we are a nation who has strong English roots, most of the country's land mass was settled by Germans. But that's just an overview of how many Americans feel about Deutschland on the whole.

As to media, I certainly get your gripes but I don't think the bad guy driving German cars is meant to be a shot at Germany. We tend to see German and Italian cars as both exotic and a sign of wealth, which is why the uber-rich mastermind bad guys always drive those. It's not that the car is German specifically. It says more about what we think about German made vehicles than it does about Germans themselves.

We really only connote modern Germans with Nazis in the rare case that we imply there might still be some Germans who support the ideology. While that's pretty far fetched with relation to the government certainly, it's also not entirely untrue. I was in more physical danger from the skinhead gangs in the area where I lived than I was the Turks, and I look German and have a German (based) last name.

OT: As others have pointed out, America is not rarely the bad guy in games but it is true that the protagonist is often American to make up for this. I'd be interested to play a game where I played as a foreign national fighting against an American PMC. I would probably be far less interested in a, "Kill the evil Americans because Americans are evil imperialists" simulator.

Interesting point with the cars, but I would not say that it is the only factor. For another example, the whole "made in" malarchy where products had to have a notification on them stating where they were made started as a way to, among other things, stifle the german economy after WWII.

I don't mean to say that modern Germany has no problems with Nazis. However, I would disagree with the fact that the only connotation of Germany with Nazis is made in this context though. If it were like that, I would have no problem, but I refer you to the Star Wars: Clone Wars example I made earlier.

 

[Gorrath]

Interesting point with the cars, but I would not say that it is the only factor. For another example, the whole "made in" malarchy where products had to have a notification on them stating where they were made started as a way to, among other things, stifle the german economy after WWII.

I don't mean to say that modern Germany has no problems with Nazis. However, I would disagree with the fact that the only connotation of Germany with Nazis is made in this context though. If it were like that, I would have no problem, but I refer you to the Star Wars: Clone Wars example I made earlier.

That may have been part of the original purpose of the "made in" label, I can't speak to that, but I can say we tend to think of German cars as masterfully built machines. The general trend in the American psyche is that Germans are great engineers and scientists. Which leads me to your point about that German scientist in Star Wars. This isn't a Nazi reference specifically. It is derived more from the idea of Germans being especially competent scientists than it is a reference to the Nazi's specifically. This is why we see this character trope on both the good-guy and bad-guy sides in a lot of movies. Need an evil scientist? He or she will probably be German. Need a good scientist who's kind of wacky? Probably also German. Need a scientist who's a protagonist but ethically questionable? Name him Krieger. The trope of the competent/ brilliant German scientist/engineer certainly has some roots in the wonder weapons of WWII, but it's not really tied to that anymore and manifests in lots of different ways.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler: I've been told that American map usually looks like this

The United States is a big place, and education varies depending on State, but this is the map I was brought up with.

Spoiler

 

[MrFalconfly]

As a Dane, I'd just like Denmark to get noticed a bit more.

"Western Forces" are always US American with a smattering of British troops. Where's all the Germans, the French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norwegians and so on?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

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.

 

[Jadedvet]

If the conflict has more nuance than the typical "We have the bomb; mua ha ha" US depicted in so many anime then yea, I wouldn't mind. Come to think of it, I've watched plenty of anime over the years with the US taking a villain role. My final opinion depended on the quality of the story overall.

The US would be a great opponent in some kind of war setting, as long as there is a believable reason us to be wrongfully stomping on someone. I'm not saying this is impossible or even difficult. I could easily see a misdirected US going after some innocent country or group - especially if something terrible has been done and blamed on that innocent party.

 

[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).

 

[Veldel]

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.

I hope that's sarcasm because I don't believe any of that.


Yea I would and I have in the past and prob will in the future

 

[AT God]

I would really like to see a video game address the incredibly messed up drone situation. I know its a complicated issue but I do feel that video games are pretty good at presenting complicated things in simpler terms, for better or worse. It would be incredibly easy to miss the point so I am at least glad no one has tried and failed to address it so far. I don't think it would be something that could be accurately construed by a western writer, having someone affected by drone strikes would need to at least write and direct the game. A bit tangential to the point but if a game attempted to depict drone warfare from the perspective of the victims, like This War of Mine does for the more general aspect of war, there could be some excellence there. And I think at this point a game where a military uses drones unethically would be obviously in reference to the US.

As for other genres and things, while it is definitely rare, many games have the US as the bad guy, but there are major caveats to that. Spec Ops The Line was largely about the US doing bad things, and even some of the more prominent video games have featured Americans as the ultimate evil, its just never directly associated with the United States government being entirely evil. Which actually applies to the other countries as well. While Russians are often the bad guys in military shooters, its never the proper Russian government being stereotypically evil, they are usually being deceived or simply reacting to a threat, its always fictional mercenaries that are the ultimate bad guys. Outside of games based on actual wars like WW2 or Vietnam, games rarely blatantly state that the enemy is the true government of a nation. Regardless of who the big bad is, there are way more games that have you fighting grunts from Russia or China than grunts from the US or even any English speaking nation. That's something that would be nice to see, Spec Ops attempted to address that when you were fighting the 33rd but that game was too busy making a different point about war to really address them.

Oddly enough, since many of the Sandbox games take place in fictional US cities, if a virtual death toll was available for innocent civilians killed, it the USA would probably be the highest. Most GTA games and "GTA Clone" sandbox games take place in the US, but often in fictional cities. GTA, Saints Row, Mafia, True Crime, and Watch Dogs all took place in the US. The only GTA-esq game that wasn't in the US in the last decade or so was Sleeping Dogs to my knowledge. Far Cry and Assassins Creed are sandboxy and take place elsewhere but those games aren't really as popular as rampage simulators like GTA is. Its an interesting line of thought.

To answer the OP, as an American, I wouldn't be put off by a video game where it was clearly established the the US was the bad guy, however I think if a game came out that was about how the US Government was blatantly being evil and doing bad things, I can see that not going over well here because of how sensitive some parts of US culture is to any form of criticism, especially with regards to our behavior in war.

 

[Lightspeaker]

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

Brits are routinely 'bad guys' in basically every form of media. Something to do with the accent I think.


Even when companies explicitly state they don't want to make the Brit's "baddies"...they basically do it (see Assassin's Creed 3's portrayal).

Not that I'm particularly against that. It keeps British actors in jobs.


As far as America goes...few game companies are going to take the risk of making Americans unambiguously the antagonists. It'll always be a rebel, or a traitor, or a secessionist; typically opposed by other 'true Americans'. Because to do so would be sales suicide. You'd get absolutely crucified by the US media and the backlash and boycott from particularly patriotic people in the US wouldn't be worth the effort of doing something different.

Far safer to just make a bland, brown-haired, chisel-jawed, 'true American' protagonist and sell well.

 

[Something Amyss]

From the OP I'm guessing they mean the US as a foreign enemy, rather than internal civil strife or the rogue general/merc/big business corporate asshole trope.

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

 

[Qizx]

I'm neither German or Russian, but I'm always annoyed that Germans in WWII area usually called nazis. Newsflash, most of them weren't.

Wow, nice to seem someone else care about that. I gave up that battle a long time ago. I am just happy if no one is called a Nazi TODAY without reason.

Ehhh,
as a German living in America I have been called a nazi before. Granted it was in highschool and highschool children aren't the best to measure things with.

 

[COMaestro]

All I want is a good story. If they make a good story where America is the bad guy and you are fighting against it, then I'd be all for it.

 

[EternallyBored]

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

Brits are routinely 'bad guys' in basically every form of media. Something to do with the accent I think.


Even when companies explicitly state they don't want to make the Brit's "baddies"...they basically do it (see Assassin's Creed 3's portrayal).

Not that I'm particularly against that. It keeps British actors in jobs.


As far as America goes...few game companies are going to take the risk of making Americans unambiguously the antagonists. It'll always be a rebel, or a traitor, or a secessionist; typically opposed by other 'true Americans'. Because to do so would be sales suicide. You'd get absolutely crucified by the US media and the backlash and boycott from particularly patriotic people in the US wouldn't be worth the effort of doing something different.

Far safer to just make a bland, brown-haired, chisel-jawed, 'true American' protagonist and sell well.

That's true of most countries though, the U.S. Isn't making games where Canada or Britain are the unequivocal bad guys either, and vice versa. The British accented bad guys so common in media are often just the same as American bad guys, in any realistic setting they are evil business men, rogue agents, or lone traitors, I can't even think of a game where Britain itself is a bad guy, since strategy games taking place during the revolutionary war tend to play Britain pretty even handed.

By the same token, I don't exactly see any non US game makers clamoring to use themselves as the bad guy, they have the same general issue as the U.S., very few people want to make their own country the bad guy on purpose, or any country they want to market to. Japan is pretty much the only larger games market that will sometimes make the U.S. Itself the antagonist, and even the I can only think of a rare couple of examples, most of which were not released overseas. Businesses are risk adverse, and avoid setting any country they want to have a market in as the antagonist of their games. That's why Russia as a country has fallen out of popularity as antagonists since the west is breaking into their markets more, and why China has pretty much died as an antagonist as game makers try to sell games there, which leads to silly things like North Korea being a global military threat.

terrorists and nazis are pretty much the only common enemies left with soviet russia being a stand in on occasion, even CoD has moved on to evil corporations and PMCs, their one sort of recent attempt at a geopolitical enemy was just mashing all of South America into one nation and going to great lengths to avoid calling out any currently existing country by name.

 

[Jute88]

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.

America does have potential for an enemy in a war game. Huge military, national pride etc. But the game would probably end in a situation where the evil, American leaders are overthrown and peace and love will win the day. How about instead of returning to a status quo (and rebuilding), USA is divided into different areas governed by "the good guys?" Like what happened to Germany after WWII? The possibility for sequels would be great.

The problem there is it really stretches your ability to suspend disbelief. The US as a bad guy? Sure. Beating them on your turf? Tough, but ok. Beating them on their turf? That's... ok, maybe. Actually controlling the US through military force? No fucking way. It's Homefront all over again.

The biggest problem in Homefront's premise (haven't played the game) is that North Korea simply doesn't have enough muscle to conquer that big of a land mass. Even conquering South Korea would probably be pretty problematic for them.
But back to the topic. If we can play games where nazis won the war and conquered (I guess?) the entire globe, then surely invading and conquering America isn't that big of a stretch.

And honestly, the reason for conquering or dissolving USA comes from the same reason why people like zombies. It's a reset button. Something that's always been there suddenly disappears and people like to see a world where the survivors try to cope without it. Also, it's something new. What would replace America? Who would fill that power vacuum? It's just an interesting thought process.

 

[The Enquirer]

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.

All the Imperial officers in Star Wars?

There's actually a more mundane explanation for that.

Lucas had a lot of British actors and an almost entirely British crew working on A New Hope, possibly because this appealed to his sense of independent filmmaking. This also meant the movie was subject to British union rules, which at the time stated there had to be a minimum number of speaking parts for British actors, so a lot were cast as Imperial officers. A lot of minor rebels parts were actually played by British actors too, but were latter overdubbed by American actors.

The franchise as a whole also has a lot of characters with UK accents on the good side too, like Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness & Ewan McGregor), C-3PO (Antony Daniels), Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson), Mon Mothma (ehm, drawin a blank) and rey (Daisy Ridley). So Star Wars doesn't entirely conform to the Evil Brit trope.

I actually never knew that (the bit about the actors union). But all good points regardless. Though with the exception of Daisy the others British accents seem a little less pronounced and diversified. With the officers they all have the same or very similar accent. Guess that's what threw me off.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Hell, Modern Warfare 2 alone ends with two British dudes (assisted by a Russian) wiping out an entire American special forces company and then killing its general.

Small nitpick ...

Taskforce 141 was an multinational group, so that doesn't really count. And it was way bigger than a company.

I thought Taskforce 141 was wiped out by Sheppard? I actually didnt know it was multinational (sans Soap and Price. Price was kinda drafted into the group and i figured Soap was in it because it was the only non-russian group going after makorov). Multiracial, sure, but i thought it was american.

Truth be told, I have no idea how big a company in the military is, all i know is that Sheppard's troops was called Shadow Company.

Just to set some things straight on Modern Warfare 2:

-General Shepherd led both Task Force 141 and Shadow Company.

-Task Force 141 is a multinational group. Most seem to be British, Canadian, Australian, and Russian. There are Americans that were part of the group, but comments by Ghost in MW2 seem to indicate they make up a very small portion, and very few TF 141 members wear an American flag. TF 141 exists at least through the events of MW3, though they aren't really official on account of being labelled terrorists.

-Shadow Company is all American and funded (perhaps unknowingly) by the American government. Most of them were presumably killed when Price and Soap raided their base in Afghanistan, with the rest disbanding after Shepherd was killed. Chances are, Shepherd's death also meant the end of the funding for Shadow Company, given that they were funded by America's "blank check" to Shepherd.

-In general, MW2 had a lot of anti-nationalism undertones. A lot of the new death quotes were criticisms of nationalism. The enemies, both Russian and American, were ultra-nationalists, while the multinational organization was seen as the "good guys". While the game doesn't paint America as evil, it hardly paints America as sacred. Then again, anyone familiar with the IW Call of Duty games (with the exception maybe of CoD2) would know that that was a running theme throughout their games.