Maybe they shouldn’t make video games about ongoing conflicts? Pretty fucking tasteless.
Also the CIA has been making games for years. See every fucking COD game.
I know you may not mean it literally but I have to defend the beginning of Call of Duty, I may be wrong but I doubt the first two games were made by the US. The first two Call of Duty games weren’t perfect but they really impressed me because they let you play as a soldier in the Red Army. I had never seen a game that showed the Soviet perspective first-hand and positively at that. I don’t think the US would fund a game doing that, especially since the later games vilify Russians.
That being said, the US definitely started funding Call of Duty games eventually though!
The early CoD games actually helped inoculate me against the soy brained “the Nazis and soviets are the same” bullshit. Sure, there was some enemy at the gate nonsense. That doesn’t mean a game whose strongest narrative arc is on the eastern front and revolves around the degree of dedication and sacrifice that was found there isn’t neutral at worst. You literally start a mission working in a tank factory and the tutorial is you, the soon to be hero of the Soviet Union and former factory worker, being like “oh shit, Nazis here let’s get in the tank I just finished working on”.
The first game is a bit cringe when it comes to ussr but cod 2 and especially world at war are just incredible. Was there anything particularly problematic about the depiction of the ussr in world at war? I just remember reznov being exceptionally cool and storming Berlin and having much fun doing so. Been a really long time since i played any
It was made by the people who made Medal of Honor: Allied Assault under EA Games. EA rushed the launch of that game and then stopped bothering with it after a month or two of patches (EA didn’t know what they had. There was still a highly active multiplayer community like 10 years after release in spite of it being a glitchy mess)
To my understanding, the devs got more time and freedom with CoD at a different studio, which led to it being a far more polished game and then successful franchise than MoH.
It probably started around the cod 4 timeframe. Every game after modern warfare 1 was very pro America and when the Russians were depicted they were shown as vengeful (understandable from our perspective but you can tell the message was intended to be a negative one) or as villains. Also cod 5 (World at War) specifically was about the Marine raiders, the Special Operations component of the marine corps. They were disbanded after WW2 but were revived around the time of World at Wars release (within a couple years) so it was pretty obviously propaganda to join the marines.
It would be interesting to have a game that explores asymmetric warfare. Although now I’m realizing I’m basically wishing for Terrorism Simulator 3000 from the perspective of the imperial core, which wouldn’t fly. Red Faction: Guerilla has a bit of this I guess.
I have wanted this for years but no developer has the balls/ovaries to do it except from the occupier side. I think the best I’ve found (besides some board games) is actually a text based game by Tarn Adams, one of the devs who made dwarf fortress: Liberal Crime Squad - “To some a dream come true, to others an offensive piece of crap.” you essentially play urban terrorists loosely based on the Symbionese Liberation Army complete with police shootouts and kidnapping and psychic torture with LSD. It’s pretty funny with surprisingly satisfying gameplay.
lol LCS is a blast from the past. Wonder how it holds up politically. I played it when I was a radlib and looking back the game title is pretty accurate. The games is basically a radlib adventurism simulator. I don’t recall any solid politics or theory grounding, just vibes. But it had it’s heart in the right place - the overall goal is antifascist after all.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
We forget so quickly.
It’s actually kinda fucked because I remember playing this game and thinking it was pretty good. If the US actually put AAA type money and time into a game it would beat COD in sales. Thankfully they don’t and keep pumping out Slava Ukraini trash and regular cod games which are being regarded more and more as trash.
IIRC the original game was free, but I didn’t even realize until looking at the NATOpedia page how many sequels they made that people had to actually pay money for.
The Real Heroes program used videos, photo albums and blogs on the Real Heroes website to depict the lives of nine U.S. Army, Reserve, and National Guard Soldiers featured in the program. Soldiers’ likenesses and biographies were incorporated into America’s Army game and used to create action figures sold at retail stores and distributed at Army events.
(CIA and KGB agent joke)
Why the fuck would you be deep behind enemy lines that’s literally the entire point of unmanned vehicles is you don’t have to do that
Also love to “recover goods” by dropping incendiary grenades on them
these are tiny drones like in the graphic. Not predator drones. you still have to be close to them.
Why not be close to them not in enemy territory.
If it’s far enough in enemy territory that the operator has to be behind enemy lines that means you can’t reach where you are from friendly territory, which would mean you couldn’t resupply or communicate.
A game about a guy flying a drone with zero intelligence and 2 grenades would be pretty short lived.
The entire point of these drones is you can do asymmetrical warfare where you’re not taking enemies on directly but the trade off is that you’re in far less danger.
I wonder if a patriotic Russian military game would be allowed to exist on Steam
Given the shit they allow, so long as it’s not literally a federal offense you’re good. Steam isn’t immune to the lack of quality control a free (to enshittify) marketplace results in.
Gamedevs IOF hexbear, hmu if you ever want help making an azov annihilator sim. I’m really good at sledgehammer physics /s
There is a Russian RTS set in the war in Syria, supporting the Syrian Arab Army and the Russian support in the war.
