They’re not wrong in this case. Call of Duty is the same franchise which:
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has you shoot up Russian civilians (“no Russian”)
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whitewashes American war crimes… by protraying them as Russian instead (the highway of death)
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has missions where you either shoot civilians (non-western, naturally) as you storm their homes, or be shot by them in turn
It’s basically boot camp for war criminals, and naturally what was intended for overseas makes its way back home.
Let’s not forget the AC130 missions which are essentially a gamified version of the collateral murder video.
Some evidence to back up the connection:
https://x.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1593709638708613123
https://www.mintpressnews.com/call-of-duty-is-a-government-psyop-these-documents-prove-it/282781/
Couple examples from the linked thread:
A number of key Activision Blizzard staff came straight from the national security state.
e.g. Chief Admin Officer Brian Bulatao, was 3rd in command of the CIA until 2018.
Then there’s Fran Townsend, formerly GW Bush’s senior nat sec advisor & one of the faces of the War on Terror and the surveillance state.
She helped popularized the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” and alledgedly had a hand in ramping up the torture program at Abu Ghraib
CoD’s biggest problem is the narrative it pushes. The violence otherwise doesn’t faze me one bit.
Agreed, context is everything. I don’t think games like GTA (perhaps somewhat), Hotline Miami, or even (from what little I know of it) Postal, can be reasonably accused of causing violence.
Call of Duty on the other hand- well, I’d argue it pushes both the legitimization of war crimes and atrocities (against civilians no less, so long as they’re “not western” ie. “deserving of human rights” in the series’ eyes) and the accompanying exceptionalist (and thus anything, any horror done is legitimized) ideology of the US/west.
As for Spec Ops the Line- while it’s been years since I last played it, I think I’d recommend it still. It thoroughly shits on the “crusading hero” mentality of other western, US military FPS games, and the settings and mechanics to my recollection were incredibly cool (Dubai if I remember correctly- but immersed by sand, words won’t do it justice IMO). Though going into it you should also be aware that it has mild(?) gore at a certain point, it actually makes the player aware of the consequences of such actions many other games give a clean, Hollywood, Disneyfied sort of whitewashing over (CoD included).
Exactly, violence is never the problem, but westoid propaganda and narrative it pushes.
I mean Spec Ops the Line could have similar missions but since it has a different narrative, I might give it a try.
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Games like Call of Duty do actually cause violence, not because they produce school shooters at home but because they sell naive youngsters on the idea that becoming a soldier in the military and shooting up underequipped third worlders is awesome and cool.
before games it was just movies, tv, magazines, newspapers, and books
games changed everything
So essentially only games with propagandistic rhetoric cause violence? Well that cokputes for me.
making a game about shooting not-aligned foreigners painting them as savages
kids indoctrinated by rightist rhetoric shoot their own defenseless countrymen
weird
The ‘‘games/movies/TV shows bad and cause violence’’ crowd is the most braindead group of people I ever heard about, the fact that they still exist is insane. Even in this case, they don’t criticize the most notorious series about westoid propaganda and brainwashing for that, but because ‘‘ViOlEnCe’’.
Yeah. I am completely fine with No Russian letting us shoot up civilians. The narrative it pushes is what bothers me if anything.
Even if they do cause violence it would be the parents fault they should know the rating hell even watch game play!
Yeah. Capitalism ruined parenting
Name one thing capitalism hasn’t ruined
Games may not cause violence, but they help normalizing it.
Right, like movies haven’t been doing that for decades longer.
No disagreement from me. I just pointed out that games do the very same.
Off topic, but what kind of mad man runs their UI in Comic Sans?
It ain’t Comic Sans. Also Comic Sans isn’t that bad
Activision and Call of Duty are definitely culpable in being fronts for the US military recruitment and should be held to task for that. The military realised it was way more cost effective to just fund CoD rather than keep trying to make their own game, which they did before too.
The “causes shootings” angle though doesn’t really track, because that is still largely a USian problem. If one of the most popular games in the world was causing those shootings, it would be a nigh-on global issue.
We could definitely have a conversation about how much violence pervades media in general, but I don’t think video games are uniquely problematic in that regard. Heck, I spent part of my time gaming this weekend growing crops and handing out gifts to people. Yet I am not rushing out to become a farmer.
