7056324
story
Comments: 548 +- Your Rights Online: Russia Recalls Modern Warfare 2 on Monday November 16, @01:12PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topiccensorship.gif); width:44px; height:55px;
censorship
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicgames.gif); width:68px; height:77px;
games
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicpolitics.gif); width:61px; height:43px;
politics
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."
Related Stories
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out
next morning it was someone else.
-- Will Rogers
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
Censorship is BAD, m'kay? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Before you overly criticize the Russian government, there may be some truth to the claim that the game's story line overly demonizes Russians
Oh, I guess that makes it okay, then. The Russian government has every right to make up your mind for you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just turn it around.
Indeed. Just imagine a game company publishing a game were you got to play some mad Islamic-fundamentalist terrorists that were out to rid the world of the 'root-of-all-evil' American civilians, and watch all hell break loose...
Re:Censorship is BAD, m'kay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uproar *from the people* is fine. The problem here is that, as I understand it, the ban is coming from the Russian government. There is no way the US government could get a game banned over content that portrayed Americans negatively. Any attempt would rightly be overturned as unconstitutional.
Parent
Re:Censorship is BAD, m'kay? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't care, and would still buy the game.
Its just a fucking game.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, there are even other games specifically developed where you can play as a terrorist [topshareware.com] the whole time. I see no limitations on them.
Swastika's are a legal issue. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Its actually illegal to display swatika's in public in Germany and Austria.
So if I recall the images from the Germany story that I linked to in the summary, it wasn't even swastikas. It was SS symbols on a dead soldier's lapel that they missed as they retextured much of the game. As I commented on that last story:
German law Strafgesetzbuch Section 86 [wikipedia.org]:
Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda: 1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a party or organization, as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a party; [...] 4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. [...] (3) Subsection (1) shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes. [...] Section 86a StGB Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever: 1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Â 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symbols of one of the parties or organizations indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 and 4; or 2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or abroad, in the manner indicated in number 1, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. (2) Symbols, within the meaning of subsection (1), shall be, in particular, flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting. Symbols which are so similar as to be mistaken for those named in sentence 1 shall be deemed to be equivalent thereto.
That part about "flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting" is what got them--not a big fat swastika but some more obscure symbols. It really makes you wonder how broad they purposefully wrote this law so that they can use their own discretion to censor
they purposefully wrote this law (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the Allied Powers wrote the law in 1945?
Re:they purposefully wrote this law (Score:4, Informative)
And since Germany is again soverign, I imagine they could change the law if they wanted to.
Parent
Re:they purposefully wrote this law (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I can see the headlines already, should Germany decriminalize the swastika: "Swastikas endorsed by German Government", "Germans are again flying SS symbols", etc.
I don't think there is a country in the world that works harder at self-flagellation than the Germans - nor is there any country in the world that is expected to self-flagellate that hard.
Parent
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
CoD6: Vietnam (Score:5, Insightful)
anti-nazi-nazis (Score:5, Funny)
Not too long ago, Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany for containing Nazi symbols.
Germans are anti-nazi-nazis.
Have they played the mission? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else see the hilarity in this? Not to mention their foreshadowing of American soldiers torturing an informant via electrocution! Each side of the geopolitical spectrum gets demonized in their own right.
But hey, lets just hate on the game that shows the gritty reality of the world.
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Have they played the mission? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Nowhere near as much as the massacre scene. It's very deliberately quite disturbing.
Parent
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.
Parent
America gets it far worse (Score:5, Funny)
The US military spends half the game trying to recapture a Burger King and the other half trying not to bomb their own White House. At least the Russians get portrayed as *competent* terrorists.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The "Terrorists" were actually Burger King workers. America has a grudge because Buger King stopped selling the Angery Whopper. Those Bastards!
My colon declared *me* a terrorist, after I ate one of those Angry Whoppers.
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: (Score:3, Funny)
It doesn't say why? (Score:3, Insightful)
The article isn't specific on whether the infamous airport scene is being removed because of its portrayal of Russia, or whether it's being censored because it's an unpleasant part of the game. Most other countries have had uproar about this scene and I'd expect to see it refused classification in some places (e.g. in Australia where Left 4 Dead 2 recently encountered problems). A national classification body refusing to allow a game to go on sale does, effectively, constitute the government disapproving of something - but it's a very different situation to central government stepping in and banning something directly for political reasons. Maybe this is happening behind the scenes but the article *doesn't say*.
It's certainly suggested that the Russian gaming public weren't all overjoyed to see the portrayal of their country in the game. That's hardly surprising, though - I expect most gamers from other big markets such as Europe, the US and Japan would also be quite easily offended if their unpleasant past was dredged up. People don't like to think of their country ever being the villains and yet pretty much every country in the world has been villainous in the past, often surprisingly recently.
And yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah but I think Americans also distinguish between criticism of their Government by other Americans and criticism by foreigners. There is also the distinction between criticizing the Government and the System.
Pretty much every American seems willing to accept that their Government is not perfect and needs constant correction to keep to the right path; that its capable of corruption etc.
Pretty much every American I have met or talked with seems to think that in general their government system is the best possible option over other systems - and many seem to assign almost religious overtones to the US Constitution, like it was handed down to them from the hands of Jehovah himself.
If a game came out that portrayed the US Government as a malevolent system that dominated and abused its population, that portrayed the Constitution as a scheme/tool that permitted that domination, and which showed the US Government rounding up civilians both at home and abroad and slaughtering them in concentration camps - and encouraged you to support this view of the US by participating, I think that US gameplayers and the US Government might have some objections (although some would love it of course). I agree that they would likely founder on the rights of free speech mind you, but someone would be speaking up. There is a distinction between portraying individual Americans as evil and portraying the system as evil.
Now, I don't think that the US Government or the US Constitution are in fact evil. I do think that Corporations are inherently immoral, and that they have far too much control over the machinations of the Government (in some ways they appear to be the Government effectively). The truth of the situation is somewhere in between I think.
Parent
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.
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:As a Russian (Score:5, Informative)
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% [wikipedia.org] died in the camps, and that's ~1/5th of total Soviet military deaths. Western Allied POWs were much better off.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Solution: Get PCs and play on a LAN...
Oh wait, no LAN for MW2... only matchmaking.
Not so fast.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh boo hoo. Russia has a bad history, it should expect criticism
While we Americans were sitting on our rears eating bon-bons, more Russians died than in all of America's wars combined fighting Adolph Hitler. Love them or hate them, forced by circumstances or not, the Russians did more to save Western Europe from Nazism than anyone else.
Parent
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the Russians have to take a lot of responsibility for that, because right up until the morning of the Nazi invasion they were shipping steel to Nazi Germany. In fact, Operation Barbarossa was specifically delayed until after those final steel shipments. It's one of the great ironies of the War that a lot of equipment thrown into the invasion of Russia was made using Russian steel.
Beyond that, one of the chief reasons that Germany was initially so successful was because of Stalin's purges of the Army in the 1930s had eliminated a good deal of talent in the Red Army. While Hitler was content to overlook some of the opinions of his most important officers in the Navy, Army and Luftwaffe, Stalin's paranoia and megalomania drove him to wipe out a good portion of the very people that would have been key in organizing military defense.
So Russia was by no means innocent of its own woes, as Churchill reminded Stalin at times when Stalin would freak out about not enough armament shipments were getting through or when he felt the US and Britain weren't doing enough to relieve pressure in the Eastern Theater.
Parent
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:5, Insightful)
but we should always be grateful for how much blood the Russians shed fighting our common enemy (far, FAR more than we did).
You mean the common enemy that they cut a deal [wikipedia.org] with and allowed to conquer Western Europe without so much as firing a shot? Heck, it's worse than that -- they invaded several innocent and neutral countries (Finland, the Baltic States) while Hitler was enjoying his free hand in the West.
If the Russians had allied with the Western Allies in 1939 Germany would have been crushed and the Great Patriotic War would never have happened. Let's try not to forget that.....
Parent
Re:Not so fast.. (Score:5, Insightful)
While we Americans were sitting on our rears eating bon-bons
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?
Love them or hate them, forced by circumstances or not, the Russians did more to save Western Europe from Nazism than anyone else.
The Russians made their own bed when they cut a deal with Hitler to slice up Eastern Europe. Had they joined forces with the Allies in 1939 it's probable that Germany would have been crushed and the Great Patriotic War would never have happened. The French had long sought an alliance with the Soviet Union to counter the threat of Germany but Stalin wasn't interested. He wanted the European powers to beat the stuffing out of each other to strengthen his own position. He even supplied Germany with the raw materials (ranging from grain to steel) required to keep her war machine running.
The West owes Russia no debt for her actions in WW2.
Parent
Russia was a part, but not the sole factor (Score:4, Insightful)
Russians who believe they single-handedly took down the Nazis are as foolish as Americans who think they single-handedly took down the Nazis.
As any reasonable historian will tell you, it was a combined effort. The Nazis lost because they were outnumbered. Had the Nazis not invaded Russia (or at least waited until the UK fell) or Japan hadn't bombed pearl harbor, the war would have been quite different. It's a testament to both the Russian and US soldiers for what they had endured, but to say simply that the only factor was how awesomely great one army was over the other discounts the thousands of factors that go into modern warfare.
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3)
You do not think in a full picture either. USA/UK took a lot longer to come to far, because they had to mobilize their units. Russia didn't really have time for that, as Nazis we're already coming and attacking. They had to fight with lots of casualties to keep them away, and if they didn't the whole war and world could be a lot different now. Nazi's would had a lot more power if they had crushed Russians before US/UK came to war.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What does this have to do with history?
If you have played the game, its clear it makes Americans seem as the true, innocent heroes fighting against bad bad Russia. Even after so long after Cold War Americans still have the type of thinking that Russians are The Evil.
The war is started by Makarov's set up, but its clear the whole game romanticizes Americans.
Re:Waaaaahh (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't the story here be about censorship rather than game content? Make a game that portrays Americans in a negative light and sell it here -- I doubt our Government will feel the need to prevent our people from buying it.
I really doubt there would NOT be any problems to release a game where you're an Iraqi fighting against the invading your country by American soldiers, trying to protect your country from the "bad". To give some extra perspective to the game, the American soldiers could be raping your families and completely destroying your country (interestingly that's not even made up story, as it's real [bbc.co.uk]). Or where you would be designing terrorist attacks against USA. Do you really think that would be allowed?
But there's no need to think what would happen. It would be banned for obscene material and the creators sent to jail, like in earlier case [slashdot.org]:
Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zicari, also known as Rob Black, 35, and his wife, Janet Romano, aka Lizzie Borden, 32, pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet and got over an year in jail time.
Parent
Re:Waaaaahh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious what America's response would be to their people being demonized. I'd love to see a game set in Iraq or Vietnam where America invades your country, kills your people and attempts to rest control of your homeland away from you.
You mean like a game where you play as a suspected American terrorist who murders hundreds of civilians in an airport of a superpower and then that superpower comes and fucks your country up? I played it this morning, it's called Modern Warfare 2, and we reacted to it by buying millions of copies. Any more questions?
Parent
Thin skins are not the problem; terrorism is (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs had with the mission is not with how the Russian villain is portrayed (although that probably didn't help the game get a positive reception), but with the fact that the mission is about killing innocent Russian civilians. It does not matter whether the villain is Russian or French or American or Martian - killing civilians at an airport is, according, to a Ministry spokesman, "propaganda of terrorism" and hence illegal.
See http://www.gotps3.ru/article/call_of_duty_modern_warfare_2_zapretjat_v_rossii/ [gotps3.ru] for more details.
Parent
Re:Thin skins are not the problem; terrorism is (Score:5, Funny)
What if they were journalists?
Parent
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd get bitchy people, but an attempt to ban it would probably lead to the ACLU taking whatever level of government that tried it to court..
There is a difference between disliking something and having a system that actually allows you to outright ban it.
Parent
Re:Sad (Score:5, Funny)
"Rated 'T' for Terrorist"
Parent
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
but censorship by the masses is very alive and very well here in these United States.
Please explain to me how "censorship by the masses" is different from plain old "voting with your wallet." For my part, I see a huge, fundamental difference between the people saying, "No, we're not interested," and the government saying, "No, you will not be interested."
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Germans and Wolfenstein .... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Germans and Wolfenstein .... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like we don't have a culture of denial here in the US. We wiped out the American Indians pretty remorselessly. That's pretty close to genocide, but it doesn't get taught that way in our schools. Every nation tries to overlook the terrible things its done in the past. People and countries are pretty much all the same, wherever you go.
Parent
Re:Not much has changed in Russia since Glasnost (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The big picture... (Score:5, Funny)
One. And it's returned the next day.
Parent