Games involving war with Russia, China and/or a Middle Eastern Alliance

[Marek]

So I'm doing my daily ShackNews routine and I read this:

"Activision recently announced the development of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the next installment in the popular war game series. Moving away from the World War II setting, Modern Warfare instead centers around a conflict involving Russia and the Middle East."

Doesn't it feel a little bit weird how it goes from historical WW2 game to fictional WW3 game? Somehow it makes the WW3 setting feel less fictional or speculative and more like 'okay this is going to be the next big war, it hasn't happened yet, but check it out guys we're using it already!!'.

It's almost the default fictional present-day conflict in games. Always America versus the Chinese, the Durka-Durkastans (who band together in some form of alliance like the GLA in C&C Generals) or, occasionally, the Russians. Like we'll inevitably have such a war. Time to buy more ducttape I guess.

It's not something that upsets me in any major way at all (really), and I don't think it's wrong to use this kind of setting in Call of Duty 4 or other games, but it just stood out to me for a second. Whatever. I guess I just want something interesting and new. Maybe I just want a game that pits America against Europe? Or Australia becomes a rogue terrorist nation? That'd be awesome.

[elmuerte]

Results of market research and not trying to piss off the market I guess. You can't set a market share into bad daylight ... according to research, or the sales will suffer.

although... Europe vs USA when both parties are playable would be interesting.

anyway.. I never cared for (semi)realistic warfare.

[DanJW]

DEFCON FTW. Any conflict or alliance you like there.

[Roderick]

You know what I thought was creepy today? Reading that Birma was stocking up on nuclear tech and knowledge. Sounds like Splinter Cell got it right when they used the country as the bad guys.

[brkl]

Maybe they played Splinter Cell and thought it was a good idea.

[toblix]

In that case I hope they board up all their ventilation ducts and turn up the speed on the giant fan on the roof.

[Redwall]

I think there should be a game with the US and China allied against Europe.

[DanJW]

isn't the whole Russia/ China/ middle east as enemy a hangover of the Cold War? Also interesting in how many alien invader scenarios involve "swarms" or hives of aliens - a possible metaphor for communism? I'd love to see alien invaders from a democracy who are invading earth because it wins them votes and protects their trade routes.

[elmuerte]

I think there should be a game about Penguin vs Global Warming.

For the simple reason that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[Wrestlevania]

I agree, Marek; it's becoming tedious to the point of being outright persecution. The more this happens in our ever-more connected world, the more ashamed I feel being on the "good" side. It's shit.

I like where Dan's coming from, but DEFCON's enemies are completely faceless in this context. It's not like your charging across a battlefield, on foot (or whatever), with the express aim of slaughtering a specific race is it?

What I'm getting at is perhaps deeper than where Marek's coming from, in that specific races/nationalities are being villified over and over again. Yet we're supposed to be a global nation now, supposedly more tolerant of others, etc.

In reality, this is complete shit. Western games companies - for this particular type of game scenario - are just continuously exploiting "weaker" economies, because they're easy targets. As I see it, these companies seem to have only three options when it comes to creating this particular format of war game:

1. Historical: exclusively WW2, so Germans
   
2. (Alternate) Modern Day: China, or restart/perpetuate the Cold War (i.e. Russia)
   
3. Futuristic: fucking aliens

Just for once, I'd like to see someone have the balls to create a mainstream conflict game where the West is actually behaving like some marauding cunt. C&C Generals' non-Western campaigns don't count in my opinion, because it's bile-churning stereotypes were offensive in the extreme.

I've had plans to create a simple RTS for quite a while now, based around a peaceful alien race that gets attacked by invading humans, and this might be enough of a catalyst to finally get started on it.

[SiN]

On a vaguely related side-note, I should really drop out of university and become an actor instead. The way I see it, since terrorists are the new communists, and I'm Middle Eastern, I'll have no trouble what-so-ever finding jobs as "badguy extra #121" for at least twenty years. All I need to do is speak a bit of broken Arabic (I can kinda do that) and work an AK47.

SiN

[elmuerte]

using an ak47 is apparently not very difficult.

[Roderick]

Wrestlevania: the obvious flaw in the plan to portray the West as the bad guys is that it wouldn't sell well in the West. I think the most you can do is using irony to mock 'our' side. Like in Starcraft, where the whole of the human race is represented either by inbred rednecks and cajuns or frigid cold-war type generals.

Aside from that; I totally agree with the stereotype thing. Look at Lucasarts' new shooter (Fracture, I believe?) The good guys here are the gunwielding 'corporate' mecha dudes. The bad guys? Genetic engineers and scientists. I can almost smell the influence of the Christian church there.

[miffy495]

But... but... deformable landscape as a weapon!

Yeah, it's a bit over the top. I'm always particularly struck most by how paranoid everyone seems to be about China. Still, there are a few games out there in which the corporate western overlords get to be the enemy. Red Faction did this interestingly up until for some reason a crazy geneticist turned out to be behind everything. Or something. Honestly, by that point in the game I'd kinda tuned out and was just going through the motions until I saw credits. See also: corrupt lawmen in Crimson Skies, pretty much any police officer with a speaking role in the GTA series (San Andreas in particular), and Metal Gear's conspiracies on top of conspiracies. The "one honest guy mixed up in an amazingly corrupt system" is a standard plot device that allows you to fight back against too-powerful Western figures. For games that look at Western society (the bits we don't already think of as corrupt) as it is now though, I'm inclined to agree.

[Wrestlevania]

The obvious flaw in the plan to portray the West as the bad guys is that it wouldn't sell well in the West.

That's precisely my point; there appears to be some engrained need to perpetuate the villification of "traditional" enemies of the West, typically Communist societies.

In a sick way I also find it somewhat amusing. Consider the point-of-view that these games are designed for the most prominent Consumerist societies, and actually involve you fighting anything that threatens this Consumerism. It's like we're the publishing houses' commercial infantry!

[DanJW]

I've found it fascinating in the past that most americans (and many English too) still have a knee-jerk reaction to communism. Even say the word and you will be treated some kind of affirmation to the effect that it is inherantly evil, flawed, and a Generally Bad Thing (yes this has happened to me). It's amazing how long the effects of propaganda last.

Not that I'm communist understand; I just don't automatically see it as "evil".

Games, like all fiction, that go against the trends we've been discusing tend to be labelled as "subversive". I know there are a small number of games that fall into this catagory, but I can't think of them right now because I need my morning coffee (curtesy of Nescafe! The coffee that in Hebrew means "miracle coffee!) Deus Ex maybe?

[eljay]

Are you suggesting that the NES is a Hebrew miracle? Wouldn't that make Nintendo the messiah?