Video games as tools of US hegemony

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I played a bit of the newly released Tim Schubert's: Ranger Sphere: Future Skirmisher or whatever.

What struck me was how the game kept telling me I was the good guy while I was going around the world shooting up random people with my high tech gadgets and breaking their necks unaware constantly while wearing a scary skull mask.



Right in the beginning you're attacking some convoy, killing everyone left and right completely effortlessly with your utter racial and technological superiority, then a bomb goes off after they're all dead and your team is wiped out. Then in the next cutscene they talk about how awful it was that some of our dudes are dead and now we're going to get revenge. Revenge for what? We fucking ambushed them! The bomb went off after they were all dead! What the fuck, man. The bomb was probably activated by a stray bullet from our firefight, and now we're going to invade the streets of a thousand thirdworld shitholes where the people already have enough problems without our racially and technologically superior alphas shooting everything up.

And can you blame the people who shoot at us? We're the invaders. They're just defending their sovereignty. How would Americans react if a bunch of Chinese commandos started shooting shit up in Chicago? Would we stand by while Chinese drones dropped bombs on American weddings? Would we tolerate sanctions and blockades?

It's a good thing our movies, our press, our music, and now our video games keep telling us at every step that we're the good guys, because I sure as fuck wouldn't have come to that conclusion independently.

Tom Clancy is such a tool that if he didn't exist we'd have to invent him.

Bro, it's just a game.

Actually, is that the right name? I can't find any mention of it. Sounds like a CoD clone.

Stupid military shooters promote the stupid militaristic machismo of the United States military because the people the games are marketed to buy into it in the first place; it's a big portion of the target audience.

I don't know if the military itself funds games like this (they certainly do for feature films) so I wouldn't be surprised if developers have to agree to certain terms to get the help in development. I mean, this is an organization that has used fucking Halo to promote itself to high school students, they're about as shameless as it gets.

Well, this is because this shit sells. Space marines, normal marines, medieval marines, space-gay marines it all caters to specific audiences.

Blame the society that creates the demand for such products, not games.

Put it in GD pls

hrrmn that gives me an idea

if lollipop chainsaw can exist, why not a space marine chick squad game where you go around kicking alien scum in the balls and making with the gossip during firefights and putting down advances from elite troop commanders and accessorise your gun with cultural alien loot

lead character getting all spacedrunk and heading to the cockpit to grab the pilot's boobs and speaking in a faux manly voice and then throwing up on the screen causing them to crash

Might makes right. Guns > votes.

"Team Rainbow faces a new and very real threat called the "True Patriots," a highly-trained, well-organized revolutionary group that claim the American government is irrevocably corrupted by greedy politicians and corporate special interests. The True Patriots will do whatever it takes to reclaim their country. Playing as Rainbow, players will face critical scenarios that will require them to make tough ethical decisions in order to stop this new breed of terrorists."

True Patriots really have a noble goal, its a shame they decided to destroy all public support by needlessly killing civilians. But developers need to make a reason why player will sympathize will corporate controlled government and not with revolutionaries since killing corrupt politicians = killing innocent civilians.

Well, here is a more important issue at hand.

If you were to see a Serbian military nationalist shooter or a Turkish military nationalist shooter where you kill Croats or Kurds, you'd think it is an object of parody or something so ridiculously chauvinistic that you can only laugh at it. It would be considered grossly ridiculous, because all those nationalistic themes have nothing to do with being a good game or having worthwhile levels to play. It would also seem ridiculous, because the developers are acting like their country is something special, just because they were born there.

But an American chauvinistic shooter? We normally brush it off as just mass market silliness and a standard gung ho theme. But we don't see it to be as ridiculous as making a Serbian, Turkish, Iranian, or Russian themed FPS where the enemies are Croats, Kurds, Arabs, or Americans.

So what makes - say - Turkish chauvinism complete stupidity while making American chauvinism a mere light hearted trope?

What does Tom Clancy have to do with this game?

Also are you shooting poor defenseless civilians? Are you not on your meds again? Why US rant again?

It's a multitude of factors really, but the basic idea is, while many nations like to simply share their cultures, US makes their culture a show and sells it and the funny part is that there'll be millions of people outside the initial target audience to fucking buy it. Parts of American culture are pretty cool/interesting/inspiring, mind, it's not like IT'S ALL SHIT, but then you have the less attractive yet still important (for US at least) aspects of culture such as implicit militarism, which, obviously, will be marketed and sold as well. However, I can understand why it is a success on the home market - only a fucked up or brainwashed citizen will really want to have proof that indeed his country is a fucking piece of shit, a normal person will generally want a positive outlook on the country, with up-to-date issues gloriously blown away by Special Service/MediCare/Cyborg Policemen or socially conscious civilians.

What's more amusing is that titles by hacks like Clancy actually sell well on the international markets too, shows just how well US has done for itself in monetary, cultural and propagandist aspects via the mass media outlets.


P.S: Tom Clancy is a paranoid douche vending fears.

Dude it's just a fucking shitty console shooter.

It's not even made by americans.

Most "america fuck yeah" games are made by europeans, while in Kwa's very own CoD main characters are brits and bad guys are often kwas themselves.

Video games as tools of Japanese hegemony


Fixed for accuracy's sake.

This shit made me rage at its KWA Amurika fuck yeah military superiority porn. All Tom Clancy branded games have it to some degree but Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Double Agent actually made the character a bit more cynical about the whole thing. With this though it's worse than Delta Force Task Force Dagger. I laughed and pumped my fist shouting HOOHAH!! when that nigger went off all about 'We'll get the fuckas that did this!' Ridiculous...

Game is crap too, checkpoint system, tpp corridor popamole, they took all the shitty bits from Conviction(like the tag system) and dumped it here. Only one way to do things, everything has to be in order to maintain 'stealth' otherwise it's a 'game over'. UBISHIT is truly shit these days and isn't getting any better.

It's just a game and Birth of a Nation is just a movie. Text and subtext. Sometimes, subtext is so apparent it becomes text. Military games are part of it. Why do you think they often get credits and info from the Army ? Think the Army is just into hardcore gaming?

This is why I play games with japanese schoolgirls getting raped by wolves. It's much better.

They do?

Soldiers in CoD are dressed like retards, marines in BF3 wear haircuts for which IRL they would've had to clean toilets as a punishment. Fuck they even couldn't get desert camo right in BF3. They also don't even have weapons licensed and so you get ridiculously looking shit with made up names.

And GRFS? It uses nothing from reality. It's also made by frenchies and Tom Clancy didn't write a thing for the past 11 years. US army is used in games because it is one of the most advanced armies not because George Bush owns DICE (Sweden), Codemasters (UK), Ubisoft (France, China) etc.

Paranoia runs strong in this place.

Irony?

Anyone noticed how Ubisoft has incorperated a see enemy's position at all times mechanic in the new Ghost recon/rainbow six/spinter cell game

While video games have been catching the Military's eye for a decade now, the movie industry is still their main focus.

More like "Video games as tools of hack writers hegemony". Tom Clancy, Hepler, Gaider, too many other examples to cite, and not all of them Kwanstainian.

Tom Clancy hasn't written anything for years. His name has just been used by ghost writers.

It's how a book "by" him can get something he wrote a non-fiction book ON completely and utterly wrong.

still a hack

they do, there were some threads about it here before, I think a strategy game was mentioned where the developers were whining about fucking up the game mechanics and realism in their game in the name of freedom and liberty

Skyway is actually making sense in this thread

Well, there's several reasons for that:
1. Foreignian games usually have low production values. This makes it hard for them to take all that seriously.
2. Anglophone, especially American, audiences, are generally not familiar with the political issues of Foreignia...
3. Because Foreignians, in general, are not generally in the business of visibly shooting up other countries.

As a combination of all these factors, a game with Foreignian nationalistic themes typically does not seem quite as serious or plausible as the same issues with Americans. You just don't see the Turks shooting up other countries, and most people are not really acquainted with the Turkish Kurd Conflict. In addition, a game produced in Turkey is unlikely to have the kind of AAA production values, or even B production values, associated with a "serious" game.

And let's face it, the "America, Fuck Yeah!" games aren't really easy to take seriously, either. In the absence of a serious enemy out there, most of the "modern warfare"-type games are really quite comical. Either you end up killing an absolutely silly number of "terrorists", or the enemy cannot really be taken seriously. Without the Soviet Union around, who exactly do we have to cast as the bad guy? China? Producers are so concerned about offending China with such a portrayal that this is a no-go. Open military conflict with China is just not plausible: We talk to them way too much. We do too much business with them. It's in nobody's interests to fight, and everyone knows this. So they end up casting something like North Korea as the antagonist, and the end result is just plain comical already. This is why there are so ridiculously many WW2 games now.