Russia Recalls Modern Warfare 2 548
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."
I just got MW2, and am disappointed. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm a casual gamer, and me and two other buddies play for an hour 2-4 nights a week. Its a great way to keep in touch.
Anyways, here's what I REALLY don't like:
* auto-aim across a map. Takes all the skill out of a good shot. Zoom. Fire. Zoom. Fire. Zoom. Fire.
* Works with pistols. At a 1000 yards.
* Disabling party chat on open-gaming. Now we HAVE to listen to the stupid chatter of the 14 year olds. We're in our 40s. Good god shut it off. Yes, I know I can mute all but friends. And since when can a game disable a console feature? I paid for party chat with my XBL sub!
* Can't play co-op mission.
* Can't play spec-ops with more than 2 people. (there's 3 of us, remember?)
Damn, its SOOO close to being perfect its not even funny. Amazing how a few minor changes make me wish I hadn't bought it. Looks like we'll be getting more play time on WaW. Those last two points SUCK BIG TIME for the 3 of us!
Truth in Gaming? (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that it portrays them in an objectively false way, you still have to demonstrate that censorship is a good idea.
I propose that it's a lousy idea, that games are art, and that inaccuracy isn't a reason to suppress art.
Consider the Russian government "overly" criticized by me!
-Peter
What goes around never comes back? (Score:2, Interesting)
Would you play the Jihad Freedom Fighter game that one day demonizes the US?
Having played through and beaten the game. I don't think anyone comes away with their hands clean. The games name is "Modern Warfare" and it's dirty, gritty and cold blooded.
Grand theft Auto I - IV never left me questioning anything I did because of the comedic gameplay. This game did.
I don't think they should mess with the content but I do think they should have said something about it. Politely, formally, respectively. I mean this is Russia: if they can't pirate it, who will?
While they're at it... (Score:1, Interesting)
...the Russian government should probably pull all the Red Alert titles from the shelves too. Using FMV to portray actors with terrible Russian accents is an affront on everything the Russian people hold dear.
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
If you shoot the civilians in the german edition of the game the mission fails. Police is a valid target though.
This way it's just half the fun :(
They Couldn't See this Coming? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I think a lot of Russians died in what was ultimately the defense of Western Europe. The invasion of Russia was, from a purely military standpoint, completely idiotic, and the German General Staff knew it, but Hitler's hatred of Communists and Slavs, even ones that he had signed a nice little pact that Stalin seemed contented with, drove him to one of the greatest military blunders in history.
If Germany had not had an Eastern Front, it could have dedicated its land forces and airforce exclusively to the invasion of Britain and to complete dominance in the Mediterranean. D Day would have been all but impossible because all those divisions dedicated to destroying Bolsheviks would have been sitting on every vulnerable bit of coastline from Denmark to Southern France. What's more, even if an invasion of Britain was as much a disaster as a Russian invasion (and it would very likely have been), the British Isles are the only potential point Allied forces could have reasonably launched an invasion from.
they purposefully wrote this law (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the Allied Powers wrote the law in 1945?
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:1, Interesting)
as Nazis we're already coming and attacking.
You might want to reconsider that apostrophe.
Re:Germans and Wolfenstein .... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't say that modern Germans are 'in denial'-- really, people's reactions run the gamut. But what is true, is that everyone there has a strong opinion on the matter. Many people have a deep sense of shame about it-- after all, in many cases the people who perpetrated the atrocities of WWII were parents or grandparents. Some people had nothing to do with that part of the past, or are descendents of victims, and they feel that the German people are wrongly villified. A minority-- and unfortunately, these people are growing in number-- think that the whole Holocaust thing is revisionist history. It's not that people don't talk about it, but it is a very sensitive issue, even among Germans, and so you'd understand if they don't want to talk to you about it.
Interestingly, when I was in Germany, many people I hung out with constantly complained about "repressive American political correctness" while also failing to notice that American 1st Amendment freedoms are much stronger than the German equivalent. There's definitely a bit of a different philosophy at work there (e.g., most Germans I met are not as optimistic as Americans when it comes to populist regimes), but with regard to how, exactly that differs, I have not been able to put my finger on it. Maybe a German reader would care to comment.
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm afraid your analysis misses the point. It was never Hitler's intention to conquer Western Europe or the Mediterranean. It was always his intention to try and conquer land in the East. His actions in Western Europe were holding actions intended at preventing Germany from having to fight a two-front war. He didn't have any designs on Western Europe beyond preventing them from interfering in the struggle that was about to unfold in the east.
I don't know as if you can say that Barbarossa was one of the "greatest military blunders" in history either. If the dice rolls had come up just a little bit differently it's entirely possible that Germany could have won the war. If Italy hadn't needed to be rescued in the Balkans (the invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece delayed the start of Barbarossa for several weeks) or if the British had sought a negotiated peace it's probable that the Germans would have won and the Cold War would have been fought between the United States and the Third Reich.
As it happened the Russians only managed to hold the line by drowning the German invaders in Russian blood. Go look at the casualties on the Eastern Front. Even when they "won" battles the Soviet Union usually lost two or three times as many men as the Germans did.
Not following (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Story sources (Score:3, Interesting)
If you trace the the story back it all originates from a forum post on a Russian game site. Despite this, the story has been picked up by the Guardian UK, PC World, Gamespy, to name but a few. Yet not a one of them has done anything to verify the report. How hard is it to call a Russian retailer or "My Gosh!" someone in the gov't. This is just another example of the incestuousness of today's news where the reporter's job entails nothing more than reading newspapers and websites.
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:3, Interesting)
Question - do you find it a moral quandary to run over people in the GTA games? Or play a thief stealing from people in any number of games?
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you made a game with a "No English" mission, where you play as a Russian GRU [wikipedia.org] 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.
Germany Recall (Score:0, Interesting)
Well, the Germany recall has nothing to do with being politically correct. There is a law in Germany that forbids the use of the National Socialist Party symbol and any type of Naziism period. If there is a mention of any type of Nazi principles toward government organisations, those people are able to be apprehended by the police. So, nothing new there. It comes down to the laws. If people don't pay attention to the laws they will unfortunately pay the price.
Does this have anything to do with antiquated thinking and beliefs... totally. Do people have to grow up and realize it is a part of life... sure. But, that is not the issue. The law is no Nazi affiliation or symbolism is allowed in Germany.
The fact that Infinity Ward decided to "demonize" the Russians or a faction of Russia... that's their own fault. They should have stuck with non-descript or fictitious governments.
Re:Censorship is BAD, m'kay? (Score:3, Interesting)
The game wasn't kind to the Russians, the Brits or the Americans. All three were responsible for massive civilian casualties at different points in the game. The only difference is that there's an entire (optional and clearly labeled) level where you are directly responsible and at that time you're part of a Russian terrorist team.
Remember Six Days in Fallujah (Score:2, Interesting)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/fallujahkonamicancel.html [latimes.com]
"Reports claim that up to 6000 civilians died throughout the operation." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah [wikipedia.org]
That being said, I realize that the situations are only relatively similar but they clearly favor the argument stating that such a game made about America wouldn't make it financially speaking. As for it being outright banned or recalled, doubtful.
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:CoD6: Vietnam (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Germans and Wolfenstein .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh really? What about the notion that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 [wikipedia.org] is the true cause for the Revolutionary War? I had never heard that in school, and only learned of this theory much later in life.
And in case you're unfamiliar, the theory goes that England wanted to stop the killing of the Indians and lessen their desire for war, so they limited expansion. The Colonials saw this as unacceptable and continued to kill Indians anyway. This open defiance is what was eventually codified as an actual Revolution.
It is an interesting theory, and puts things like the Trail of Tears [wikipedia.org] in a COMPLETELY different light. If the plan was genocide from the very beginning, then a lot of the alleged bad faith in the treaty making and breaking was really just part of the scheming. They wanted the land all along, and wanted to kill the people on it.
As a Russian (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Censorship is BAD, m'kay? (Score:3, Interesting)
You just pointed out the root problem: the world needs a big old dose of buck the fuck up. People will stereotype you, pigeon hole you, label you, etc. Who cares? Is it really reason enough to silence those people? Hardly.
Why is there so much outrage these days? Every source of debate seems to be summed up as "Your tone, it's all wrong!" Lighten up, sheesh. Legit problems should be the focus, not things related to personal egos.
Re:And yet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As a Russian (Score:2, Interesting)
Well to be fair, there's a reason for their portrayal in a WW2 game. The USSR didn't seem to give two shits about its citizens and spent them as expendable assets quite readily. The US had about 400,000 military deaths, about 1,700 civilian. The UK had about 380,000 military deaths, 67,000 civilian deaths. In both cases you are talking about a total of less than 1% of their population.
The USSR? About 10,000,000 military deaths, about 14,000,000 civilian deaths, about 14% of the population in total. They did simply send human waves against the enemy.
Stalin was not a nice guy, he was totally unconcerned about the lives of his citizens and the military strategy in WW2 showed this.
Re:Russia was a part, but not the sole factor (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh and by the way, we didn't get a whole lot of help from the Russians in the pacific theater. You like to take a lot of credit over the Nazis and you forget that the Italians and Japanese were allied with Germany and someone had to deal with them, and it sure wasn't the Russians.
The USA was a machine during the war, of that, you can't argue. The Japanese scrounged up maybe 13 aircraft carriers and the USA cranked out 26 awesome Essex class plus more jeep carriers than we can count. By 1944, the USA could put more aircraft in the air just from carriers than Japan had in their entire air force. That's just awesome, and the planes were better.
In the ETO, it is pretty fair to say that the Russians could have beaten the Nazis by themselves simply because of two things: a) the Russian economy was much stronger than the German economy, and b) the Russians had more people. People think of Germany as an economic powerhouse and Russia as weak but in the 1930s and 1940s the situation was actually in the Soviet favor. Germany and Russia were both state run, centrally planned economies, but Germany was just crushed from losing World War I and the French occupation did Germany absolutely no favors. By 1941, Russia was producing more and better tanks, had their own capable ground attack aircraft, far more artillery than their German counterparts. Just look at how many T-34s the Russians were producing per month. I mean, yeah, the Russians did lose 20 million people, but a lot of those were civilian deaths. If you go soldier for soldier, Russians butchered as many hapless Germans in 1944 / 1945 as Germans butchered hapless Russians in 1941/1942.
And, in any case, the United Kingdom cannot be underestimated. They knocked the Italian navy nearly out of the war, grabbed control the Mediterranean, blocked even the threat of any German attempt to invade the main islands and within a year or so had waves of lancasters firebombing the shit out of German cities.
I mean, when Great Britian, with a fraction of the population, produces more aircraft, more warships and has vastly superior electronics than Germany does, you really begin to understand just what a disadvantage a totalitarian regime has in war.
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Why shouldn't we have been sitting on our rears eating bon-bons? You think it's the job of the United States to intervene in foreign wars? We did that in WW1 and got nothing out of it -- our supposed Allies ignored Wilson's plan for a just and fair peace and imposed draconian terms on Germany that set the stage for WW2. Then they defaulted on their wartime debts to the US. With that bit of history in mind perhaps it's easier to understand why the US had a strong isolationist sentiment in the 30s?
The United States didn't 'intervene' in the Great War, per se. Although the, "Our poor English friends!" rhetoric was quick to come out once war had been decided upon, it really didn't have much to do with the decision itself.
The US entered WWI because Wilson put American credibility on the line in threatening Germany over the issue of submarine warfare. Wilson had made very blunt and very public statements over American deaths in German submarine attacks---sufficiently blunt that his Secretary of State resigned over the likelihood of war. Prior to the use of unrestricted submarine warfare, popular sentiment in the US had been mixed---and before the war itself, most politicians considered war with Britain to be reasonably likely, but war with Germany unthinkable.
The Germans, for their part, considered the American threat credible, but didn't view abandonment of the submarine war as a viable option. It has to be recalled that the U-Boats very nearly did drive the British out of the war in 1916. At one point, Britain only had food reserves for a few days.
By the time the Americans entered the war in 1917, the Germans knew everything was riding on the events of the coming spring---that they would either break the Entente powers' wills, or they would be forced to surrender. To give an idea of how bad things were in Germany, by the time the Americans entered, the only bedsheets available legally on the German civilian market were made of paper.
So the Germans called Wilson's bluff, knowing he'd make good on his threats, but also knowing it wouldn't affect the outcome of the war one way or the other.
So, to get back to what you said: "...our supposed Allies ignored Wilson's plan for a just and fair peace and imposed draconian terms on Germany..." And why not? The war was decided before the first American boots set foot in France, and the Entente powers knew it. America was a day late, a dollar short, and in it for her own interests, not because the British and French were our allies---they weren't. Wilson tried to strongarm the British and French on the strength of the loans the US had made, tried to capitalize on the fact that his country, unlike theirs, was virtually unscathed.
By the by, those wartime debts they defaulted on---that was during the Great Depression. And the reason they defaulted was because Germany default on the reparations payments to them. Interestingly, the French and British made an offer to President Hoover in, I believe, 1930. They offered to forgive Germany's reparations debts to them, if the US would forgive their debts. The German debts to France and Britain were several times larger than the French and British debts to the US. Hoover refused the offer (on laissez-faire grounds; they had mostly been made by private banks,) and continued to put the squeeze on the still war-torn British and French, who continued to put the squeeze on the Weimar Republic. Unable to repay the US without the German reparations, the British and French squeezed till Weimar was dry. And when Weimar was dry, crippled, and bleeding, they defaulted.
So if you'd like to lay blame for WWII on the feet of the Versailles reparations---feel free, but remember that the British and French saw what was happening and tried to stop it. It was Herbert Hoover who, ultimately, put the screws to Weimar.