Poll: Americans as the bad guys

[Zhalath]

It'd be an interesting thought experiment, if you were to apply some aspect of US policy to an extreme and turn them into a military evil. However, any developer would have to be foreign (so their office is not burned down by American "patriots" and all the developers shot OH THE IRONY). Also, it'd have massive issues getting released in the world's biggest economy, as said "patriots" cause issues. So, it'd be interesting, but financially, it'd be difficult.

Lord Inglip sez: "Selpeon Jones". Perhaps this will be the America-is-evil game title.

 

[Jack Cheal]

well the only example i can think of top of my head is the end of MW2, and I can safely say that MW2's story was not exactly up to par.
but the idea would make an interesting turn, even if it is just americans vs other americans.
like some rebellion against the us government or something?
anything to get away from killing the opposing force from genericastan.

 

[Normalgamer]

Since we are all sick to death of russians/terrorists/russian terrorists being the villains in pretty much every modern warfare-type game released in the past 5 years or so, I got to thinking, why doesn't any studio take the risk of making the world's most powerful country the enemy, beyond the occasional level or two? Even as simple as a reverse Red Dawn (with the eeeevil capitalists invading the peace-loving communists... or something) would make a change from shooting people with a foriegn accent.

America is powerful?

For the last 40 years the USD has continually suffered depreciated evaluations and the rest of the world is dumping it in favour of other currencies as the reserve standard.

Personally I see all the hash of "Be American Hero 'A' and shoot up Evil foreigners 'B'" as merely the final whimperings of a dying imperialist attitude that began to surface in the individual American as Carter resigned US forces (and the public) in the 70's to Colonialism of the Persian Gulf and 'protection' of the then, and now, supply of the most important commodity ... crude.

And of course, after 30 years of breeding this attitude of 'Might makes right' you suddenly find the average American media outlet (without political pressure) publishing materials of a likewise nature.

That being said, you'll probably find in ten years time that there will be a whole rush of games about counter-US imperialism ... as the only real option the US has remaining to secure itself as, how you would say 'powerful', is by 'Wars of Plunder'.

But even then it's a loising game once the USD has now been effectively dropped as the reserve currency (and USD loads will continue to be reduced substantially internationally) which will limit any ability to produce weaponry.

Or maybe we have differing ideals about what makes a country 'powerful'.

Nevertheless, expect in the next ten years for games to change their tone ...

America isn't powerful? I hate to break it to you, but no matter how bad our economy is right now, we'll shove a boot in your ass and call it American way(Relax it's a song). Economy isn't as easy as just saying "Look! This currency is worth more per unit then this one! Clearly that nation is more powerful."

OT: Sure, I'd play it.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Since we are all sick to death of russians/terrorists/russian terrorists being the villains in pretty much every modern warfare-type game released in the past 5 years or so, I got to thinking, why doesn't any studio take the risk of making the world's most powerful country the enemy, beyond the occasional level or two? Even as simple as a reverse Red Dawn (with the eeeevil capitalists invading the peace-loving communists... or something) would make a change from shooting people with a foriegn accent.

America is powerful?

For the last 40 years the USD has continually suffered depreciated evaluations and the rest of the world is dumping it in favour of other currencies as the reserve standard.

Personally I see all the hash of "Be American Hero 'A' and shoot up Evil foreigners 'B'" as merely the final whimperings of a dying imperialist attitude that began to surface in the individual American as Carter resigned US forces (and the public) in the 70's to Colonialism of the Persian Gulf and 'protection' of the then, and now, supply of the most important commodity ... crude.

And of course, after 30 years of breeding this attitude of 'Might makes right' you suddenly find the average American media outlet (without political pressure) publishing materials of a likewise nature.

That being said, you'll probably find in ten years time that there will be a whole rush of games about counter-US imperialism ... as the only real option the US has remaining to secure itself as, how you would say 'powerful', is by 'Wars of Plunder'.

But even then it's a loising game once the USD has now been effectively dropped as the reserve currency (and USD loads will continue to be reduced substantially internationally) which will limit any ability to produce weaponry.

Or maybe we have differing ideals about what makes a country 'powerful'.

Nevertheless, expect in the next ten years for games to change their tone ...

America isn't powerful? I hate to break it to you, but no matter how bad our economy is right now, we'll shove a boot in your ass and call it American way(Relax it's a song). Economy isn't as easy as just saying "Look! This currency is worth more per unit then this one! Clearly that nation is more powerful."

OT: Sure, I'd play it.

You have no clue how economics work do you?

Let me spell it out for you ... worthless credit + debt = repudiation, repudiation = 0 balance of trade, zero balance of trade = zero spending ...

You can't trade what you don't have or what someone doesn't want.

Similarly, you can't buy things when you have no credit. It's that simple.

Bit hard to get an army to listen to it's generals when theres only a handful of bullets per person, or when soldiers have gone days without any food. Bit hard to fight a war when you have a zero fleet presence to begin with.

Which leaves 'War for Plunder' ... what the Romans did in the face of fiscal collapse until their expansion left them logistically impotent to fuel the ongoing war efforts o.o

 

[CommanderKirov]

How about we have Canada, or Poland, or Wales? Any country can be a bad guy if you want it bad enough.

As self-proclaimed ambassador for Poland I can say that we will gladly invade the world in Game. We would just want to have some time to de-rust all of our five military jets and de-termite our catapults.

Also I think our only bomber was recently sold for parts in order to pay for new grinders for our ten tanks.


So please do hold up while we make the arrangements :].

Just using Poland as an example.

Was just messing with ya.

 

[Normalgamer]

Since we are all sick to death of russians/terrorists/russian terrorists being the villains in pretty much every modern warfare-type game released in the past 5 years or so, I got to thinking, why doesn't any studio take the risk of making the world's most powerful country the enemy, beyond the occasional level or two? Even as simple as a reverse Red Dawn (with the eeeevil capitalists invading the peace-loving communists... or something) would make a change from shooting people with a foriegn accent.

America is powerful?

For the last 40 years the USD has continually suffered depreciated evaluations and the rest of the world is dumping it in favour of other currencies as the reserve standard.

Personally I see all the hash of "Be American Hero 'A' and shoot up Evil foreigners 'B'" as merely the final whimperings of a dying imperialist attitude that began to surface in the individual American as Carter resigned US forces (and the public) in the 70's to Colonialism of the Persian Gulf and 'protection' of the then, and now, supply of the most important commodity ... crude.

And of course, after 30 years of breeding this attitude of 'Might makes right' you suddenly find the average American media outlet (without political pressure) publishing materials of a likewise nature.

That being said, you'll probably find in ten years time that there will be a whole rush of games about counter-US imperialism ... as the only real option the US has remaining to secure itself as, how you would say 'powerful', is by 'Wars of Plunder'.

But even then it's a loising game once the USD has now been effectively dropped as the reserve currency (and USD loads will continue to be reduced substantially internationally) which will limit any ability to produce weaponry.

Or maybe we have differing ideals about what makes a country 'powerful'.

Nevertheless, expect in the next ten years for games to change their tone ...

America isn't powerful? I hate to break it to you, but no matter how bad our economy is right now, we'll shove a boot in your ass and call it American way(Relax it's a song). Economy isn't as easy as just saying "Look! This currency is worth more per unit then this one! Clearly that nation is more powerful."

OT: Sure, I'd play it.

You have no clue how economics work do you?

Let me spell it out for you ... worthless credit + debt = repudiation, repudiation = 0 balance of trade, zero balance of trade = zero spending ...

So quick to rage over the internet,4chan must love you. By the way your math is atrocious, you say worthless credit like a nation is a person, you know if America stopped actually buying and consuming the world market would collapse? Look it up, I'm not trying to go "Nyeh look at us".

 

[Sjakie]

That is acontroversial idea...controversial things inspire independent thinking about stuff...

I would not mind shooting American Soldiers in a game, provided there is a good reason for it.

i'm all for it. But it wont ever happen. Any developer actually doing this because they think they have a good story to tell and not just because of the media buzz controverse attention: i would send them money!

The Vietnam war might be a good idea, americans had no business there

to quote The Prodigy: Invaders must die

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Since we are all sick to death of russians/terrorists/russian terrorists being the villains in pretty much every modern warfare-type game released in the past 5 years or so, I got to thinking, why doesn't any studio take the risk of making the world's most powerful country the enemy, beyond the occasional level or two? Even as simple as a reverse Red Dawn (with the eeeevil capitalists invading the peace-loving communists... or something) would make a change from shooting people with a foriegn accent.

First, I would point out that Americans, or American entities are the enemy is a great many video games. Rainbow Six: Vegas has an American playing the evil mastermind, HAWX pits the player against a PMC that is based in and recruits from the US, and Army of Two had yet another American PMC acting as the true villains in the "story".

So, it's been done already, but perhaps not the same way as you describe. The key source of conflict in these games is that you must fight against those who should be on your side. This works simply because treason is generally seen as the worst of the "deadly sins". If you simply want to "switch sides" in the conflict, the question ought to be "why". Functionally and narrative, all it does is lend greater credibility to the notion that your faction is the under dog backed into a corner. If you aren't doing it for any reason than "just because", it really doesn't matter what the enemy faction is so long as it can plausibly be considered an overwhelming threat. And, I'd go so far as to wager that if you did want this side switching to say anything important, it would probably be best explored in a game who's primary mechanic is not murder. It is, after all, a bit difficult to explore themes of greed and suffering and loss when, in your average first person shooter, you will rob hundreds of parents of their children, children of their parents and so forth.

 

[Nocturnal Gentleman]

I had to answer "I don't care." Never liked war games in general and I've seen enough Americans are the bad guys mess. Plus a game that demonizes our entire country would make anti-american pricks even more annoying.

Can't we just use fantasy enemies? I mean trying to lump America as a whole into any role is difficult since we never get along with each other anyway. However, if you made a game where Monsanto tries to take over the world with corn themed war machines and plant mutants I would play the shit out of that.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

So quick to rage over the internet,4chan must love you. By the way your math is atrocious, you say worthless credit like a nation is a person, you know if America stopped actually buying and consuming the world market would collapse? Look it up, I'm not trying to go "Nyeh look at us".

World market would collapse? Why? The only thing that is propping up the USD as a reserve currency is that the Euro is doing so piss poorly. But the BRIC nations have all collected themselves and said "Why not de-dollarize completely as of this moment?"

Anmd frankly, most nations are coming up with less and less reasons to keep entertaining whether the USD is actually worth the ink and paper used to make it.

If anything I'd be proposing de-dollarization as of this moment and forget about America paying off it's debt because by the looks of it it will never do so, and keep on relying on foreign capital to support itself.

Why prolong the inevitable? <.< Certainly why keep pretending to ourselves like if we shut our eyes somehow America's trade, budget and savings deficits will disappear and all will be well?

"World market will collapse' .... really? How? It will re-evaluate and that's it. BRIC nations are already discussing amongst themselves the currency of a true diverse reserve in order to combat future incidents such as what we're seeing now.

Hell, World Bank has been doing it for decades.

America is a nation of 300 million individuals. The rest of the world, 6.3 billion. What, you think is the US not being around to artificially inflate markets with cheap credit the world would suffer for it? If anything emerging economies should prosper as you get a more natural supply and demand and depreciated price of oil.

Regardless ... if this is what you consider 'powerful' ... I facepalm <.<

 

[sumanoskae]

Make a game where the Americans are the antagonists, but humanize them and give context to their actions, so that we can understand how they came to their conclusions and force us to question our beliefs

 

[PureIrony]

As an American, while I do think we should hold the villain ball every once in a while, the idea of every state teaming for a big villain ho-down is too unrealistic.

Certain states do not get along. A civil war is the only way this could probably work.

 

[MrGalactus]

How about a game that represents how real life is. Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy no matter what they are doing.

 

[Bullfrog1983]

I think there could be some opportunities to pull of something like that. I mean off the top of my head... Oil supplies running low... U.S. needs more... so they invade some country to get it.

Plenty of people with a voice in politics nowadays that I know would have no problem killing a bunch of innocent foreigners to get what they want.

Agreed. However, I'm thinking that parts of the American government would actively work on getting said game banned, but I think you could write a great game based on that, possibly involving a "regime change" or rebellion funded by the Americans against a foreign leader who isn't as bad as they make him/her out to be.

 

[jpoon]

American here, I'd play I'm sure. It would be interesting to see what their objective would be.

 

[Evidencebased]

Because that's like having organ-donor charity workers as the bad guys: It just doesn't make sense.

That makes tons of sense, and would actually be awesome.

 

[The Forces of Chaos]

Perhaps a cool take could be part of United States leaving to gain independence, and fearing that this may cause others to follow suet, causes an economic and then finally military war. Other nations may be neutral to start with or would side with one of the fractions. During the game your deeds within the country would reflect how other nations would react to your side as well as your opponents. Was think of a Deus Ex style game. This would also bring media perception into the game.

 

[penguindude42]

Americans aren't nearly witty and charming enough to be the villians.

No, but at least they're almost sub-human enough to be the antagonists.

-TOM