Proposing a Russian campaign

[Gustav62 0]

It has been made clear that Armed Assault will feature a campaign from the American side. I'm pleading with the developers -- please also include a campaign for the Russians.

Personally, the one and only thing about Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault that bothered me was how those games treat the Americans as world saviors, and the Soviets and other "evil communists regimes" (or the side who simply use Soviet-made weapons) as the bloodthirsty rapists and pillagers.

What really excited me about Flashpoint when I first played it was the originality of the gameplay. Originality, I believe, is the key to why so many people have become enamored with these (otherwise great) games from Bohemia Interactive. Then why are the stories in the first three campaings so predictable and vanilla? It is the same trod-out stereotypical russophobic propaganda that has been pushed down the throats of people in the West since Napoleon's rule:

"The crazy Russian hordes rape and murder their way into a defenseless little nation, NATO / America / the beacon of liberty and democracy and hope in the world selflessly steps in to save a beleaguered people from the primitive, animalistic asiatic barbarians." Been there, done that, even have the T-shirt. Hundreds of Cold War propaganda books, films, and games use this unimaginative cookie-cutter template. It kills me, thinking that Armed Assault 2 might fall into the same hole.

(I remember Red Hammer. It did have the player in the position of a Soviet soldier. But, again, the story portrays the Soviets as evil, and your character is supposed to kill his own buddies. For perspective, imagine if someone released a game about Iraq where you are an American who has a cathartic revelation and begins to kill his fellow Americans.)

Campaign / mission developers, if you are reading this, please take the first brave step out of the big old box of stereotypes. Write a campaign that is somewhat intellectual and doesn't just fill players' minds with pseudomoral xenophobic drivel. I know that making a parallel campaign doesn't require new models, vehicles, or scenery on top of what will already exist in the game.

Marketing people for BIS -- I know that Russia and the Russian speaking world today is a quickly-growing market. Don't turn off a huge section of your customer base by allowing another dripping, hateful misrepresentation of their nation. If you churn out another mass-stereotype, that will equate to a slap on the face of Russian gamers. Set an example of fairness, and you will gain fully-devoted fans from that region of the world.

As for me, I've decided to avoid this game altogether if it only brings one campaign where you're supposed to slaughter Russians by the hundreds. There is something wrong with that, in light of how the Americans, for two decades already, are the ones consistently invading nations in every corner of the world and sticking their noses into sovereign nations' internal affairs -- not the Russians.

Gus

[Commando84 0]

how do you know the russians are the bad guys here? to me they seem like any other faction

[Goeth 0]

I won´t go into politics but Russian campaign would be nice, somehow i have a feeling that we might have Russian campaign to Arma II as expansion at some point.

[Deathstruck 375]

Maybe they will eventually co-operate

[Spetz 0]

yea i think it will be a good idea to give us the perceptive of the "other side of the fence"

[celery 8]

Do you really think that Soviets weren't really that bad or do you just want the Russian version of the truth? Personally I wouldn't mind a Russian campaign, but for godsakes read a little about what the Soviet regime has done to the world and itself for most of the last century.

[Blackhawk 0]

The Soviet Union had to be one of the most dark times in modern history, some proof

Lenin : Slaughtered the Russian Royal family

Stalin - Killed 35 million people

World War II - Hundreds of German Women and Children raped and executed by Soviet soldiers

Cold War - happened because the Soviets wanted more land (technically)

Afghanistan - Soviets invaded Afghanistan, thousands of civilians killed.

Are you saying the Soviet Union was a good thing? NO it wasn't. Lots of games base their story lines on the Cold war because it's a good story line, The USSR is no more so they can easily base their game on the cold war, like many game makers base their games on the Nazi Regime.

But....ArmA is in 2009 and Russia is the Russian Federation, I doubt the Russians will be against the Americans because they are described as a peacekeeping force.

[someboy 0]

We all know Soviet Union has done horrible things in modern history. However, the US has also carried out "not so nice activities" in the past (and in the present). We could name for example helping bringing down democratic governments in latin american countries, or jailing people ignoring all international laws...

Anyway, I like the idea of a russian campaign. I guess they will probably make it available in an expansion pack.

[ballistic09 241]

Agreed.

Each superpower has their own "dark side." They have mostly done all the fighting through proxie wars, and not direct conflict. Thats probably how ArmA II will be. Each side picks a faction('s) and arms them or supports them with small contingents of special forces. I agree, a Russian perspective would be kind of neat, but I t would rather see the U.S. perspective first.

[Gustav62 0]

Do you really think that Soviets weren't really that bad or do you just want the Russian version of the truth? Personally I wouldn't mind a Russian campaign, but for godsakes read a little about what the Soviet regime has done to the world and itself for most of the last century.

As an American, I'm willing to admit that the American government isn't nearly as kind and altruistic as it presents itself. No, the Soviet Union wasn't a "nice" state, but the representation of the Soviet Union as some kind of force for pure evil in the world is also misleading. Every government needs a scapegoat to distract the citizens from problems at home. The image of the menacing USSR was used by the USA in that capacity beautifully.

[Gustav62 0]

Ballistic09, I agree totally. No global power does anything without some kind of gain involved. No war happens on purely moral grounds. If America and the Russian Federation are involved in a shooting war, they both have some rationale for that, not just "good" and "evil."

Show the story from both perspectives fairly, for Pete's sake!

[Gustav62 0]

The Soviet Union had to be one of the most dark times in modern history, some proof

Lenin : Slaughtered the Russian Royal family

Stalin - Killed 35 million people

World War II - Hundreds of German Women and Children raped and executed by Soviet soldiers

Cold War - happened because the Soviets wanted more land (technically)

Afghanistan - Soviets invaded Afghanistan, thousands of civilians killed.

Are you saying the Soviet Union was a good thing? NO it wasn't. Lots of games base their story lines on the Cold war because it's a good story line, The USSR is no more so they can easily base their game on the cold war, like many game makers base their games on the Nazi Regime.

As someone who is fascinated by Cold War history and by the USSR, I want to answer your points.

There aren't many people left in the world who would stick up for Stalin, so he is always attributed with ever-increasing numbers of deaths. X-number of people died in the USSR from 1924 to 1953, whether of natural reasons, by accident, war, illness, etc. well, "Stalin must be at fault." But you're right. Stalin was not fit to be in charge of a tollbooth, let alone a superpower. Anyway, Stalin's actions in the thirties should have no effect on the reputation of Russians today. Agree?

I don't know how many hundred (as you said) German citizens were raped by the Soviets in the Second World War, but I know that upwards of 13 million Soviet civilians were killed by the Germans. When the Germans carried huge casualties on their advance through Belarus due to partisan action, they began exterminating entire villages in retribution (almost exclusively, women, children and old people, since the men were mobilized). About one quarter of the Belarussian settlements were erased from the map.

The Cold War cannot be attributed to Soviet ambitions alone (as if America was oblivious to the changes which were taking place in the world order). It was a collision of ideologies. To say that the Soviet Union "wanted more land" is a ludicrous simplification of historical fact. The Eastern-European nations inherited pro-Soviet governments after the war, but they were never annexed or controlled by the USSR.

Afghanistan was not invaded by the USSR. This is a common myth among people who don't really care to read the historical facts. There was a revolution in Afghanistan in 1978 (most likely funded by the USSR), followed quickly by a civil war (most likely funded by the American CIA). The Soviet Union supported the new government, and the Western nations supported the rebellion. Afghanistan's president Taraki requested the Soviet Union for help in stabilizing his country, but the Soviets refused. The situation in Afghanistan (by extension, on the Soviet border) gradually became worse, and in 1979, a Soviet battalion-size force seized the palace where Afghan prime minister Amin was located. The "war" in Afghanistan was one in which the Afghan army participated on the side of the Soviet contingent. Classically, during an invasion, a nation's armed forces resist the invader, not aid them. So there was no invasion of Afghanistan. And even though it's been twenty years already since the Soviets left, the civil war continues (proving the point that the Soviet military intervention wasn't the big issue).

I don't agree with what the Soviets did, but I also disagree with what Ronald Reagan's reaction was -- to arm the opposition in Afghanistan and to "talibanize" the country. It kills me to know that, today, American kids are dying in Afghanistan as a direct effect of the short-sightedness of that president.

And since when do people actually care about the Russian royal family? Only when their fate is used to villify the Bolsheviks.

Quote[/b] ]But....ArmA is in 2009 and Russia is the Russian Federation, I doubt the Russians will be against the Americans because they are described as a peacekeeping force.

Maybe you're right, the Russians might be portrayed as neutral in the game. But in one of the videos that was released, it looked like the Russians were being manhandled by the game's main characters. It looks like the whole situation is a play on Russian affairs in Georgia's Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjara, Moldova's Transnistria, and the Crimean peninsula. In videos, the "Chernarus" flag is very similar to that of the Ukraine. Really interesting.

[POTS 0]

The russian federation is a federal republic. A loose one though. So you literaly cannot compare the two at ALL!!! The Soviet Union was not just Russia, it included many differen't countries for it's concepts of international socialism, which is why the nazi's (national socialists) hated them. lol getting politicaly carried away here.

[11aTony 0]

(I remember Red Hammer. It did have the player in the position of a Soviet soldier. But, again, the story portrays the Soviets as evil, and your character is supposed to kill his own buddies. For perspective, imagine if someone released a game about Iraq where you are an American who has a cathartic revelation and begins to kill his fellow Americans.)

Only Guba was "evil" not Soviets. Soviet troops were on the way but you worked with resistance and US until they arrive.

American campaign was made 1st and you defeat soviets in the end. They couldnt just make Soviets win in Red Hammer.

[andersson 285]

It will be interesting to see russias involvement in this campaign. From what I read about it russia can play an interesting part.

From the presskit:

Quote[/b] ]After negotiations to join Russia resulted in dismissal by Moscow,

insurgents installed their own government and declared martial law, continuing to advance to the western part of the country.

http://www.arma2.com/supply....lang=en

[Second 0]

(I remember Red Hammer. It did have the player in the position of a Soviet soldier. But, again, the story portrays the Soviets as evil, and your character is supposed to kill his own buddies. For perspective, imagine if someone released a game about Iraq where you are an American who has a cathartic revelation and begins to kill his fellow Americans.)

Only Guba was "evil" not Soviets. Soviet troops were on the way but you worked with resistance and US until they arrive.

American campaign was made 1st and you defeat soviets in the end. They couldnt just make Soviets win in Red Hammer.

Guba led rebels, this is reason why Red Hammer went like it went... Well Red Hammer has one of most horrible stories i've played in games ever, and given the quality of stories in games overall that speaks a lot.

So in the end did Soviets win when Guba and his unit got destoryed? It wasnt' Soviet union's goal to start ww3 or to get Everon or Malden under their influence. It was Guba's personal goal because in his mind Soviet Union was getting weak.

But i believe in Resistance he was operating under Kreml's orders, so basically Soviet union could be seen as bad in there... Then again every nation could be seen as bad by that definition. Yet by my understandmant Guba was one&only responsible for ruthless acts against civilian population (which in the end made him bad). Moscow gave him order and he dealed with it on his own.

Who was bad guy in movie Apocalypse now? US troops overall or that high ranking officer who needed to be killed? I admit that i've never seen that movie completely (i've skipped the end of it every time i watched it). Just crossed my mind.

[Gustav62 0]

You're probably right about Red Hammer (I never finished that campaign). The idea that the Soviet Union could "lose track" of an entire division (Guba's division) was always silly to me. The people who wrote the story really tried hard to come up with a situation where the USSR could invade an island in the Mediterranean. So the plot came out pretty unbelievable, I agree.

[lecholas 2]

To say that the Soviet Union "wanted more land" is a ludicrous simplification of historical fact. The Eastern-European nations inherited pro-Soviet governments after the war, but they were never annexed or controlled by the USSR.

Which East European countries are exactly you talking about? Not controlled by USSR?

The Soviet Union was not just Russia, it included many differen't countries for it's concepts of international socialism, which is why the nazi's (national socialists) hated them. lol getting politicaly carried away here.

That's right. And as it was an international socialism its purpose was to spread around the world. That's why USSR's doctrine was war for peace and socialism.

Really, it has always amazed me that so many people here always wanted to play OFP 'from the other point of view'. But I always explain it to myself that it's like the fascination with the Empire in the Star Wars universe. People sometimes want to play the bad (dark) side. But it's out of the quesition who was the bad guys.

So why BIS made USSR the bad guys and the USA the good guys? I think it's because BIS is a Czech studio. Its members lived in socialistic Czechoslovakia (they are old enough). They really can tell who were the good guys and who were bad. People from the West usually have no idea about the life in so called Eastern Block countries before 1989. But you don't need to go into to much detail to understand it. You can ask yourself: in which direction people were escaping (risking their lifes! threw the Berlin Wall? Was it east or west? If Western countries were comparatively bad as USSR the traffic should be both ways the same...

In videos, the "Chernarus" flag is very similar to that of the Ukraine. Really interesting.

Flag of Chernarus is similar to Ukraine's one? In what respect? That it is rectangular?

Chernarus:

Ukraine:

[dentist guba 0]

maybe they will add more campaigns in expansions/DLC maybe even with small extensions of the map.

i would like to play as another faction, maybe a resistance style campaign or something. Maybe a prequel type thing where you play as "Akula" the ChDKZ leader, during his rise to power.

[dmakatra 1]

lecholas: Well, I simply don't trust political analyses that like to classify systems as 'bad' or 'good'. Just because you judge the Soviet Union to be a republic of evil, doesn't make it so. You can't force an absolute truth based on moral grounds.

That doesn't mean I support the actions of the Soviet Union, but I don't try to establish an absolute truth that they were 'evil'. It's all shades of grey.

[lt.chris 0]

Quote[/b] ]Personally, the one and only thing about Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault that bothered me was how those games treat the Americans as world saviors, and the Soviets and other "evil communists regimes" (or the side who simply use Soviet-made weapons) as the bloodthirsty rapists and pillagers

There is no good and evil side, the evil is war itslef, All whats being shown in that each faction have differnt points of view on the future of their land, nothing more

I think that may answer these thoughts

[andersson 285]

Noone can play as soviet union in arma2 as there is no faction for them (until a mod is released).

[Gustav62 0]

Which East European countries are exactly you talking about? Not controlled by USSR?

Those within the Soviet sphere of influence, but not constituents of the former Soviet Union. Like (I'm taking a shot in the dark) your country, Poland. Did I guess right?

If you are saying that the USSR put pressure on them, which amounts to indirect manipulation or control, that is true. But then the same has to be said about the United States and NATO. The two sides are peas in a pod -- there isn't an "evil" one and a "good" one. They just happened to have opposing views.

Quote[/b] ]That's right. And as it was an international socialism its purpose was to spread around the world. That's why USSR's doctrine was war for peace and socialism.

The Soviets considered this doctrine failed after the Second World War (if the biggest war in mankind's history couldn't start a spark for a global socialist revolution, nothing could). Besides, the war was never supposed to be brought westward by the USSR but from within, by the proletariat of the Western nations themselves. Civil war, in essense, was the idea. Any historian will tell you that as soon as Stalin was out of the picture, Soviet foreign policy mindset underwent a colossal and permanent change.

Quote[/b] ]People sometimes want to play the bad (dark) side. But it's out of the quesition who was the bad guys.

You're right -- both sides are bad. Political ambitions are always based on greed and paranoia (help me to find an example of an exception). Therefore, it can be said that all political and, consequently, military action is bad.

For many people, it depends on perspective. Like, "I'm a citizen of <blank>, so any event that benefits my country is good. Anyone who opposes my country is evil. Anyone who supports my country is good. Anyone who helps me in opposing the evil side is good." Et cetera. But anybody from anywhere can do that. It is a moral argument rooted in relativism.

Quote[/b] ]They really can tell who were the good guys and who were bad.

Since you venture to speak for them, please share with me -- what horrible things did the USSR do to BIS studios? I think the reason that the USA and USSR are portrayed as the good (former) and the bad (latter) is almost purely financial. Explanation:

The English-speaking sector of the games market is by far bigger than the Czech, Russian, German, Spanish, etc. As it happens, most of the people who speak English also live in countries harboring decades of anti-Soviet sentiment. If you were marketing a game, would you want to offend the biggest customer population, or to play into our stereotypes?

Quote[/b] ]You can ask yourself: in which direction people were escaping (risking their lifes) threw the Berlin Wall? Was it east or west? If Western countries were comparatively bad as USSR the traffic should be both ways the same...

You're probably right here (not that there weren't defections in the other direction also -- there were). The quality of life in the socialist bloc was worse than that in the Western nations. I doubt that so many people were hopping over the Berlin wall to make a political statement. They were trying to go to a better, wealthier state. It's the same here in the States with regard to immigrants from Mexico. Lots of people come here, legally and even illegally, because it's easier to live here. Not because the evil Mexican dictatorship creates an unbearable life for the citizens.

But again, no proof of an "evil USSR." Care to build another strawman?

Quote[/b] ]Flag of Chernarus is similar to Ukraine's one? In what respect? That it is rectangular?

Very clever!    In either case, they must have changed it since the first screenshots. For example:

[celery 8]

Evil of USSR: http://www.mega.nu/ampp/rummel/mega.htm

Show me a western country that has killed so many people and whose citizens risk their lives to have a better life outside their homeland and I will start to believe that USSR wasn't all that bad.

maybe they will add more campaigns in expansions/DLC maybe even with small extensions of the map.

i would like to play as another faction, maybe a resistance style campaign or something. Maybe a prequel type thing where you play as "Akula" the ChDKZ leader, during his rise to power.

That's actually a good idea.

[Gustav62 0]

Evil of USSR: http://www.mega.nu/ampp/rummel/mega.htm

Show me a western country that has killed so many people and whose citizens risk their lives to have a better life outside their homeland and I will start to believe that USSR wasn't all that bad.

Celery, the referenced site attempts to put China, Nazi Germany and the USSR into one big happy "democidal" family. Unfortunately, it's not an academic, serious source by any means. Did you even look at their charts yourself?

They list the war-dead in Afghanistan as evidence of "democide" -- the country's willful extermination of its own citizenry. Especially conniving is the use of those killed in the Second World War to pump up these statistics. I mean, come on! Germany invaded the USSR, but the "bloody Soviet regime" is charged with those deaths. I understand the weak logical connection -- if the Soviets had never been in power, Russian relations with Germany might have been different, but it's still speculative and academically dishonest to put the blame on the Soviets for the 13000000 civilians who were directly slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis. Also, that site takes numbers from different sources, and uses the most elevated ones (counting on the fact that you don't pay attention as they attempt to slip it by you) for its conclusion that the Soviet Union was evil. Famine and starvation feed into the statistics. Even "Deportation" of anybody is figured into the "Murdered" category. Did you notice these deceptions?

We Americans should be thankful that the cities here were spared the horrible destruction of the Second World War -- not trying to carelessly use the mass-deaths of innocent people as fodder for the defamation of a country that has ceased to exist twenty years ago.

If you searched for some America-hating site, you could also find the same kind of circus. The US government has also deported people by the thousands (e.g. oriental population during World War II), committed genocide against the Indian population, experienced economic hardships which displaced people (Dust Bowl and Great Depression), and fought wars in which American citizens have died by the hundreds of thousands (Civil War, for example). The bodies quickly start to stack up here, too. I figure, if I don't want to have people throwing that kind of stuff in my face, I should not be so quick to accuse others of the same thing. Anything that the USSR has done is analogous to things that any other nation has done (maybe in somewhat larger numbers, but still). So let it go already.