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Russia Recalls Modern Warfare 2
eldavojohn writes "You may recall much ado over some questionable footage in the latest Call of Duty game. Well, that footage has led to a recall of Modern Warfare 2 in Russia. Seems the Russian government was none too happy about the portrayal of Russia in the game and decided to yank it from stores. Infinity Ward has responded with a patch that removes the 'No Russian' mission (the content in question) from the storyline. Before you overly criticize the Russian government, there may be some truth to the claim that the game's story line overly demonizes Russians as just terrorists as the Russian site GotPS3.ru alleges. Is cultural sensitivity becoming an overly played card in the gaming world? Not too long ago, Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany for containing Nazi symbols."
Its actually illegal to display swatika's in public in Germany and Austria.
RTFM is not a radio station.
Solution: Get PCs and play on a LAN...
Oh wait, no LAN for MW2... only matchmaking.
I played this mission. All the hype was saying you have to kill dozens of civiilans, but in truth, you didn't have to kill any. You were just along for the ride. If you chose to kill some, that was up to you, but it was not required. I am sick about all the misinformaiton about this game.
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While I confess I've never even visited Germany before, I had a teacher who did a while ago. I remember him telling us the Germans had a culture of denial, when it came to the WWII Nazi era. History textbooks would completely gloss over that part of history with only the vaguest mention of Hitler and his ambitions. At first, he tried to discuss and question it with people there, but he said it was almost like running into a brick wall. People would practically tell him to quiet down, because "we don't talk about that here anymore".
If that's accurate, then it goes a LONG way towards understanding why they'd ban a game like Wolfenstein, and why they're so adamant about banning sales of Nazi era items on eBay, etc. etc.
Are you trolling? You are spreading some serious misinformation here.
We have several Holocaust memorial days, there is probably a documentary on the Third Reich and World War Two once week on the TV channel. About a third of history education in school is dedicated to the Third Reich. I think a trip to a concentration camp is even mandatory for school classes.
The display of Nazi symbols is banned (with certain exceptions) not because of denial, but to fight right-wing extremists. And like every government, our government is being stupid and bans Nazi symbols even if they aren't being used by right-wing extremists but by ID software in Wolfenstein. We have a "department for youth protection", which is something like Jack Thompsons wet dream, which does all the censorship. German gamers hate it when their games are being censored, so don't confuse "what the German government does" with "what all German people think is good" like in the thread about the two murderers.
And since Germany is again soverign, I imagine they could change the law if they wanted to.
One could say the same of Germany under Hitler, or of s self-centered navel-gazing US Congress that seemed to actually believe that the US could remain neutral if Western Europe permanently had a big swastika flying over it.
At the end of a day, a country's behavior is defined by its leadership. I'm not saying that every poor soldier in the Red Army was responsible, of course they weren't, any more than every soldier in the German Army bore any responsibility, or the folks in the US living in districts of isolationist Congressmen were responsible (although the latter could be argued to be much more responsible for wanting to keep US out of the war).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
ah, I don't think that was really Patton, but George C. Scott in the movie that said that; but, still one hell of a line.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_S._Patton
Living in Chile
Not the US Government, no sir. Not the Federal or State divisions of government.
Citizen-run organizations such as the American Liberty League had large portions of their membership supporting and funding the Nazi party shortly before the war broke out, and before the US joined the war.
The American Liberty League was a large financial supporter of Fascist regimes, opposed FDR's presidential campaign and his New Deal that saved the country from the Great Depression, and had many large corporate leaders in its membership.
Standard Oil (Rockefeller), US Steel (J.P. Morgan) were among them, and perhaps not-so ironically targeted for anti-trust operations later.
There have been supporters of the Nazi party(which was a legally elected political party at the time, BTW) and Fascism within the US, but the US *itself has never lent Hitler money, or supported the Nazis.
And let's not forget that Russia was more than happy to divide Poland with the Nazis.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
While we Americans were sitting on our rears eating bon-bons
Self loathing and ignorant. How sweet.
Stalin just loved killing. Soviet or National Socialist, Stalin was happy to have either dead. Praising the Soviet body count without looking where it came from suggests you value quantity over quality, and you don't even care where the quantity comes from or why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_military_unit
SPOILER WARNING:
If you played the game then you know it DOES associate the US with terrorism. An undercover CIA agent slaughtering innocent people to maintain his cover is not noble or acceptable to the vast majority of Americans. A General of the US Army going rogue, after creating a situation that led to the war in the first place isn't exactly good either.
Personally I don't think Russia was vilified by any means. They declared war in response to a percieved terrorist attack on hundreds of unarmed civilians, armed security guards, and the killing of several dozen police officers. The one comment in the game that could be construed to be a vilification is an offhand comment by a character who deals with pretty grim/dark stuff on a daily basis: "And the Russians are killing a hundred Americans for every dead Russian". When you think about it without being a total spas you'll realize this comment is 100% in character with the person who says it. It probably has nothing to do with the opinion of Infinity Ward.
Personally I'd think that they'd be more flattered than angry about the game but I guess being portrayed as a nation that is capable of quickly cracking an American ACS module to gain safe entry into US airspace and pull off a massive invasion, decimating American leadership and infrastructure (again in a short amount of time) isn't any good anymore. A few generations ago it would of been seen as praise and it would of been "un-American" of Infinity Ward to portray the US in any of the light it does.
In short: the entire game is grim and intense and not for everybody. Of all the reasons to complain, this is the stupidest. If it was a movie instead of a video game we wouldn't be having this conversation most likely. And I bet it would win a few Oscars...
From the same article - read the headline "Post-war commentary regarding the motives of Stalin and Hitler", as a Finn I'd like to point out that our situation was quite troubled throughout the WW2, ranging from being "sold to soviets" to being an ally of Nazi Germany (thought not not succesfully invaded by either of two in any point, and after the Continuation War there was an aftermatch agains retrieving Germans in Lapland (which was a requirement of the peace treaty with the Soviets) - and this contributed partly to Finlandization later on.
While there is no big symphaty to Russians still among the older people in Finland because of the two wars the latter can be (in a way, how much is depending on who you ask) described as a war of an agression from Finlands part with the support of the Nazi Germany.
So overall, Russians did a great job at stopping Hitler (many times at a gunpoint from theri own lines) but the politics involved especially between Hitler and Stalni regarding Finland and Baltic countries are very interesing and still open to interreption. And the different outcome of the war has affected both Finland and Baltic countries up till today, as close neighbours as for an example Finland and Estonia are they both have a very different set of skeletons in their closets and relationships to Russia are still not an easy thing - even compared to the cold war betweeen the US and USSR. The history is very interesting and hopefully we can learn from it - and to bring this just a little closer to slashdot - a videogame should not be seen as a part of politics, yeah, it can raise issues but if me must discuss those issues through videogames we can shut down the UN and play the game instead...
Did you even play the first game? Half of the plot is fighting in a chaotic (no longer Saudi) Arabia taken over by Muslim terrorists.
They did simply send human waves against the enemy.
It's a very popular myth of the "everyone knows that... " kind, but also wrong. USSR didn't employ human wave attacks, except for a few isolated cases.
Of course, if you can find any reliable sources to prove otherwise, go ahead.
Regarding casualties: first of all you really have to look not at raw casualty numbers, but at rate vs enemy casualties. So for U.S., it's about 1 death for every 5 dead Axis soldiers; for Britain, it's actually slightly worse than 1-for-1. For the USSR, it's slightly worse than 2 for 1. Still bad.
That said, of all those countries, only the USSR had to repel a full-scale ground invasion on its own soil. It was also the one against which the most brutal warfare tactics were used - e.g. mass murder of Soviet POWs - 60% died in the camps, and that's ~1/5th of total Soviet military deaths. Western Allied POWs were much better off.