Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games
Propaganda is appearing in #Minecraft and other popular games and discussion groups as the #Kremlin tries to win over new audiences.
This is completely ridiculous.
In Minecraft, the immersive game owned by Microsoft, Russian players re-enacted the battle for Soledar, a city in Ukraine that Russian forces captured in January, posting a video of the game on their country’s most popular social media network, VKontakte.
These authors clearly know nothing about Minecraft. Wow, some nationalists re-enacted a battle on their private Minecraft server. Woe is the world! All of Minecraft has been infected by Russian dezinformatsiya!
A channel on the Russian version of World of Tanks, a multiplayer warfare game, commemorated the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May with a recreation of the Soviet Union’s parade of tanks in Moscow in 1945. On Roblox, the popular gaming platform, a user created an array of Interior Ministry forces in June to celebrate the national holiday, Russia Day.
Defeating the Nazis is good, actually. And commemorating that is also good, actually.
Yes, we live in the Information Age. We’ve been living in it for decades now, NYT. Nationalist zealots are going to post. They’re going to make reactionary content. It’s nothing new.
Wait what has COD been doing for the last decade? Don’t they have state dept and US military advisors advising on every game for message control?
Yeah I think they do that for movies as well. If directors want the real thing (because who doesn’t like practical effects and having the real thing in shot?), they’ll have to contact the DoD.
The DoD reviews the script for the movie, and they just water it down to absolute propaganda (they even say it out loud, they don’t hide it). US is always good, enemy always bad, US wins and saves the day. If there’s any criticism of the army, it’s usually brief and with a very weak point.
Full Metal Jacket isn’t approved by the DoD. Says everything you need to know about the, imo.
Yeah, and they’ve also had more explicit efforts like America’s Army. That being said, while it is propaganda, it’s not quite as deceptive and pro-warcrimes as what Russia’s putting out there.
I heard in the campaign for the COD MW (2019), the devs put the Highway of Death in the game (which is an American war crime) but in the story they depicted it as something Russia did. This obviously sparked some outrage, as people read this as the game dismissing American war crimes.
Seems pretty deceptive to me.
If there’s other games (and maybe some probably much to the equivalent of America’s Army to Russia) that water down Russian war crimes, then that’s just as deceptive.
I think all propaganda is equally bad. Putting certain ones on pedestals because “At least it isn’t XYZ” doesn’t jive with me, and it distracts from the real issue.
I think all propaganda is equally bad. Putting certain ones on pedestals because “At least it isn’t XYZ” doesn’t jive with me, and it distracts from the real issue.
False equivalence and whataboutism is not helping anyone.
Remember when the US Army made a video game with tax payer dolars to promote themselves?
Yeah i head about that. America’s Army or smth like that. Heard it got cut and i think some players said that the game was actually kinda good lol.
Was never really interested in it tbh, seemed generic af.
I actually had a lot of fun in that game as a kid. It had the opposite effect though and made me never want to join the army. You die… a lot. Doesn’t work that way in real life.
I played it. Died at least once an hour. Not sure how it would serve its goal of getting recruits to join the army by dying several times per day in the game.
Very surprising that a local channel of a video game celebrates holidays/certain events of that particular nation in the game. Truly shocking!
On the other hand, wasn’t Minecraft used to create libraries and host news articles about State oppression in countries with internet censorship?
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