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| Science & Technology |
| American teenagers go over to the side of Russia |
| 2023-08-02 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Aleksandr Timoshenko [REGNUM] Russian propaganda is infiltrating the world's video games - such a message is heard in the Western media, alarmed by the popularity of the Russian agenda. Thus, the press draws attention to the fact that in the game Minecraft, owned by the American giant Microsoft, Russian players recreated the battle for Soledar, a city in the DPR, which was liberated in January. On the channel of the multiplayer military game World of Tanks, on May 9, the Victory Parade in 1945 was shown, and on the popular gaming platform Roblox, the user created in June a whole company of military personnel of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs - this happened on June 12, on Russia Day. But the main thing that the American media is paying attention to is that representatives of the main target audience of games - teenagers are ready, albeit virtually, to "fight" on the side of Russia. “Games and related sites such as Discord and Steam are becoming online platforms for Russian agitprop,” notes The New York Times, which devoted a lot of material to how “Russia is transferring its information war against Ukraine into video games.” The American edition, by the way, uses exactly “agitprop” in Latin transcription - the same international “Russianism”, for example, as Sputnik or Kalashnikov. The authors of the note emphasize: "In this virtual world, players assume the letter Z, the symbol of the Russian troops." “Glory to Russia,” this is how the video tutorial on how to build a flagpole with the Russian flag in Minecraft ends, ” The New York Times cites an example. Moreover, it explains how to virtually hoist the flag of Russia against the backdrop of a “city landscape with the signature “Lugansk,” the American edition clarifies, explaining to readers that Lugansk is the center of one of the “occupied” Ukrainian regions. Playing on the side, or rather in the role, of the Russians, the players “support Russia's legally justified territorial claims in Crimea and other regions; echo President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to equate Ukrainians with Nazis and blame the West for the conflict.” “The gaming world is really a platform that can influence public opinion, influence the audience, especially young people,” Tanya Becker, an analyst at the American company ActiveFence, specializing in combating extremist content (in the American, of course, understanding). What a load of stuffing, to use a Russian term. NYT recalls: after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, Microsoft announced the suspension of sales of new products and services to Russia in accordance with the sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. But, American IT experts say, Russians continue to find ways to use her games and sites like Discord and Steam. At the same time, American journalists are surprised by the fact that examples of "pro-Russian propaganda" found by Western experts in a number of games "praise the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany." In Minecraft, Russian players recreated the battle for Soledar in Ukraine Multiplayer games (those in which thousands of gamers from different countries are present at the same time), in addition to the main game task, are used as platforms for communication, and therefore, to convey certain ideas, experts say. Recently, many users have often asked questions about whether games can be used as a communication channel - the way it is done in the West, Mikhail Pimenov, director of development of the game industry direction of Synergy University, an expert in the field of the game industry, told IA Regnum . “It's no longer a secret that the West uses the game Call Of Duty as a platform for this, and the same Arma 3 and a number of games that are somehow designed for mass players. The same Minecraft is, in fact, a large platform, which is a "sandbox" in which, like in a constructor, you can reproduce any realities. The same applies to games that are narrative,” Pimenov said. Narrative games, let us explain, are a kind of role-playing games where the main role is given to the development of the plot, and not pure "game technology" (for example, battles). In the West, Russian gaming products entering the world market have long been perceived as an element of our soft power, experts say. TIMOSHENKO, MINCED PORK AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A recent example, already from the times of CBO, is the game Atomic Heart, developed by the Russian company Mundfish and released on all key gaming platforms - Windows, PlayStation and Xbox. In terms of genre, this is a shooter (“shooter”), and in terms of action, it is an alternative USSR of the 1950s, where robots are used with might and main. The plot is extremely far from modern politics (we are talking about the fight against rebellious machines ), but both in the West and in Kiev they saw something insulting to themselves in the “shooter”. Western users were very outraged by a fragment of the game, which shows an excerpt from the cartoon "Well, you wait!". It featured a statue of an African native with a bow, which led to accusations of "cultural appropriation." But Ukrainian users went even further than their Western allies: in the game they were very offended by ... a flying robot drone that carries a pot of geraniums in its paws. Ukrainian gamers absent from the front considered that this was a direct reference to the Russian Geran-2 kamikaze drones, which are actively used during the NWO. Another fragment that caused indignation among Ukrainian gamers was cans of minced pork meat in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. However, the pun is that such a product in yellow and blue colors on cans was actually produced in the USSR. Another claim of the Ukrainian segment of the players was the image of Right and Left - twin robots opposing the main character. According to users, the braid around the head of the faceless female robots suspiciously resembles the image of the former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko. But the main reason for fear of “Russian cultural expansion” was the very fact of the appearance of the game, which in the first release week entered the top 10 sales on Steam, including in the USA, Britain, Germany, France and Japan. In addition, several songs from the Atomic Heart soundtrack (where the classics of the Soviet stage were presented - "Grass at Home", "Arlekino") got into the tops of the charts of world streaming services. A remix for Igor Sklyar's song "Komarovo" became one of the hits on the SoundCloud platform - which, note, is blocked in Russia. Online games can not only serve as a tool of soft power - they have long become such, and in Russia at the state level they have already paid attention to this, Pimenov notes. But, experts say, one should not flatter oneself - the NYT and its experts are exaggerating the scale of "Russian expansion" (at least for now). "SOFT INVASION" HAS NOT YET BEGUN Blogger, computer game developer Dmitry Puchkov, in a comment to IA Regnum, called the statement of the American media strange, because in Russia they still do not make high-quality games in the same mass flow as in the West. “World of Tanks is not our game,” the interlocutor recalled. Western developers do not hesitate to put ideologically “correct” (from their point of view) content into the game wrapper, Puchkov noted. “Are they doing it right? Certainly! This is the most powerful channel of ideological influence, for example, on children. It is children who primarily grow up with these ideological slops in their heads. Do we need to do this? Certainly, it is necessary. And not only computer games - and books, and movies, and serials,” he said. “There has been talk for a long time about why Western countries are actively using this, including cinema and video games, but somehow we are still not shaky with this,” Pimenov added. “If we are talking about games as an element of popular culture, then this is another channel that can extrapolate our historical heritage and cultural values both within the country and beyond.” The same Atomic Heart promotes Russian culture in one way or another, and therefore, if in Russia they began to consider games as a channel of interaction with the broad masses, then this is the right step, the expert emphasized. “This should have been done a long time ago, because games have long been part of popular culture along with movies, TV shows and music. This can significantly influence public opinion. Problems arise not at the level of the fact that these are Russian games or games with a Russian setting, but rather at the level of work with Russian companies,” Pimenov noted. “That is why there are many problems - for example, with the publication on Western platforms. And that is why we are now developing the VK Play service and are focusing very much, in particular, on working with China and other foreign markets that work more in the Asian direction than in the western one, ”the expert said . He emphasized that, on the one hand, not as many games are produced in Russia as we would like, and on the other hand, the talk that the gaming industry has ceased to exist in Russia is also very hypertrophied and does not correspond to reality. “In Russia, there are quite a few projects at the development stage, which are interesting to follow. Well, games that are active right now, for example, Escape from Tarkov from Battlestate Games or the same Troubles, which is in development, like some large projects, - the interlocutor gave examples. - There are games that are made under grants, for example, the linguistic game Buki, which will be available both on mobile platforms and in browsers. It contains educational elements. That is, there are many projects that are being done as part of the All-Russian federal competition “Start the Game”, which comes from the platform “Russia is a country of opportunities”. Puchkov recalled that the world-class Russian game IL-2. Stormtrooper. “It was published generally everywhere, because we have capitalism, and if it is a quality product, then it brings money. Naturally, everyone wants to sell it on their platforms, because this is a world-class game,” said Puchkov. At the same time, world-class specialists are also required to create such games in Russia - and they “prefer to live in Silicon Valley”, and not in Russia, the expert concluded. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #4 50% of the respondents thought that they were being asked their favorite dressing choice at the Golden Corral. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-08-02 14:57 |
| #3 So? Adopting an 'edgy' persona is 'cool' in first person shooters. Also the 'Bad Guys' always seem to have great toys! Games designers often lack information about 'enemy equipment' (reference exaggerated opinions about the WW2 Japanese Zero or the the German Tiger) so those weapons often have unrealistically superior characteristics in game play ...and you can only use the 'cool gun' if you play the 'Baddy Side'. Sometimes a spade is just a shovel without the overthinking. |
| Posted by: magpie 2023-08-02 13:26 |
| #2 A recent poll says only 18% of young people in the US are "proud of America," so this seems likely. OTOH, the percentage of them I'm proud of is way lower, so it's a wash, more or less... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2023-08-02 10:09 |
| #1 American teenagers have proven themselves pretty fucking stupid lately. So, anyway. |
| Posted by: Chris 2023-08-02 09:37 |