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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."
Seriously,
My fictionally perfect game that will sell WAY more than this title will have country-specific enemies. Marketed in the U.S? Russia. Marketed in Russia? U.S. Marketed in India? Pakistan. Marketed in Pakistan? Indians.
They'd sell more games pandering to country-specific deeply ingrained cultural enemies. Maybe the game engine doesn't support locales like that though.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I actually found myself facing a moral quandry when I got to this mission. So I opted to try not using my weapon at all... this was no problem until we faced heavy opposition from the security forces and I opted to apply my fire selectively for self defense. So all told I fired less than 50 rounds, didn't shoot a single civilian and mostly hid behind things.
That being said I have been waiting for this to hit the proverbial fan ever since.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
The game was supposed to draw parallels to Afghanistan without being that obvious (imagine your country being invaded all because of the acts of one person/small group of people). Its clearly criticism against he US government.
Oh well, the Russians aren't missing much. The plot was quite frankly kind of stupid, like it was written by Michael Bay. The snowmobiles/speedboats move at 150 mph too and don't feel even remotely realistic.
If you made a game with a "No English" mission, where you play as a Russian GRU agent who helps an American terrorist John Remington kill dozens of American civilians at a New York City airport, you will get the American version of game censorship: none of the major stores (Walmart, Best Buy or GameStop) would touch the game with a 6-foot pole. The only reason the federal government wouldn't try to censor the game is that US law currently doesn't allow it to do so.
But the Russian law does allow such censorship: propaganda of terrorist activities is explicitly illegal. And a game that allows you to participate in terrorist acts (as opposed to just passively watching them or reading about them) would probably have been judged to be propaganda of terrorism, if the game's Russian publisher had decided to go to court about it instead of proactively removing the mission.
As a Russian, let me share my opinion on this.
First of all, I'm generally irked by portrayal of Russians in U.S. mass culture, including films and video games, especially action ones. "Hordes of dumb evil rampaging barbarians" is so cliche. You can do better.
CoD series was never good at it in the past, either - e.g. in CoD5, all Soviet missions seem to emphasize brutality and human waves as much as possible, especially by character dialogue, while American missions seem more focused on "fighting the bad guys". This is clearly evident in two prisoner-taking scenes - in Soviet one, Germans genuinely surrender, but you have to execute them (or have your squad do so), and your only choice is between shooting them and burning them alive. Either way, it's clearly a war crime. In American mission, Japanese fake surrender, and you cannot shoot them until they try to overpower and kill your fellow soldiers restraining them (and then, of course, killing them is perfectly justified). I didn't see much difference in MW2 in that regard. If anything, the first MW was more ambiguous in that regard, since at least you had "good Russians" and "bad Russians"; in MW2, the former kind has apparently rapidly died out again, so we're back to good old stereotypes.
On the other hand, I actually have to thank Infinity Ward for MW2, for one simple reason: it's been a while since any American game depicted a proper, honest-to-God Russian invasion of U.S. soil, complete with shelled cute "American Dream" neighborhoods and burning White House, and the overall gloomy atmosphere of verging on defeat. At least it's markedly different from your typical drivel of a U.S. Rambo squad on rampage somewhere in Siberia, taking out Russian soldiers by the thousands. Just as unrealistic, too, but hey, at least you can appreciate how it looks from the other side now. I only wish there was an option to play for the paratroopers in the initial wave :)
Finally, regardless of my personal likes and dislikes of this and other games touching on the subject at hand, I firmly believe that any kind of political censorship is wrong; and this, especially, is one really stupid reason to ban a game.