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‘Call of Duty’ Doesn’t Just Depict Bad History—It’s Pro-War Propaganda (progressive.org)

submitted 1 year ago by knokelmaat@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

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I just started playing COD Black Ops Cold War because I got it through my PlayStation Plus subscription and wanted to try it out. I've previously played some others like Modern Warfare (1 and 2) and WWII. While it always felt a bit over the top and propaganda-ish, I really liked it for the blockbuster feeling and just turning your mind off and enjoying the set pieces. However, Cold War has a section in Vietnam and I suddenly started feeling really uncomfortable and just turned the game off.

In WWII you can easily feel like the "defender", and even Modern Warfare felt like fighting a very specific organisation that wanted to kill millions. Here however it just becomes so hard to explain why I'm happily mowing down hundreds of clearly Vietnamese locals that I was unable to turn my mind off and just enjoy the spectacle.

I turned to the internet and started browsing and found this article and I really agree with what the author is saying.

I don't know if I will be continuing the campaign or not, but I just feel that I don't want to support these kinds of minimizations of military interventions.

I just wish there were more high budget / setpiece games that don't glorify real life wars. Spec Ops The Line was amazing in that sense, but it's also quite old already.

I would love to hear your opinions on this subject.

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[–] ShadowRam@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Would you define this as your "Are we the baddies?" moment?

[–] knokelmaat@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, not really as I'm European and have no connection to any side in the Vietnam war.

I just feel that if your game is based on real life wars than you should be very careful to give a nuanced view of the situation. Even allowing a campaign on both sides would be interesting if executed well.

[–] Can_you_change_your_username@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

French colonization of Vietnam was what the VCP were fighting against at the beginning of the war. The Soviet Union and China got involved to help kick France and Britain out and US involvement came when it was clear France and Britain had lost the war. But other than that and the coalition troops I guess Europe wasn't involved in the Vietnam War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina

[–] knokelmaat@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I knew about this. As a Belgian though, I don't believe we had a lot of presence there.

Sadly, we have done our share of horrible stuff on foreign soil (but we haven't made any videogames about it)