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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 to c/gaming

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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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[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Certainly we already had this conversation like ten years ago right? Call of duty has never been anything but that, you really can’t make a war game that is both fun and anything but pro war

[–] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think this is a conversation we can have once ten years ago and forget about it, as long as the franchise is still going.

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

I think you’ve mistaken being pro war with being unpopular or being abolished or something

[–] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I don't even know where you got that from. What I'm saying is that there is plenty of reason to keep talking about it.

[–] Gamey@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

I never played much CoD so I might be wrong here but there is a difference betwesn debicting war and rewriting history in favor of the US and I think that's what the author wants to point out, the US loves to be debicted as the good guys even if it's anything but true and their collaborations with Hollywood show that really fucking well.

[–] Perfide@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah well, the propaganda has gotten even more blatant and it's still the worlds best selling game every year. So I think it's totally reasonable to continue having this conversation.