Not nice to Russians
The most popular game of the year has been banned in
Russia because one of its main premises is that the country is not that nice
and wants to invade the world.
Russian politicians are apparently fuming over one of the
scenes in the game in which the Russian Federation is being ruled by extreme
nationalists. The controversial ‘No Russian’ level in the game, depicts
the player and a few Russian terrorists opening fire on civilians in an
airport.
Russian gamers at the website GotPS3 slammed the
storyline, which they criticized as catering to a primarily American audience
with total disregard towards other cultures, especially the Russians, whom the
game depicts as terrorists. However the Russians have had little sympathy from anyone
else. If the terrorists were Nazis or Muslim fundamentalists the game would be
OK.
However in this case they are like the kid in school who
always wants to play the cowboy and never the indian. British have been used to
playing bad guys in American films for nearly a century. It was never seen as
bad for us to have all the Empire being British while the Rebel Alliance were
Yanks. The objection here is about being seen as terrorists as
the assumption is that no Russian would ever be a terrorist.
However anybody who pays attention to MW2's plot will
understand why Russia is at war with the US, and know that the Russians aren’t
being depicted solely as bad guys. Apparently the game writers are changing the plot
slightly so that the terrorists are not Russians but something that no-one can
object to persecuting – fat people.