Atomic Heart - Half Life with Russian Robot Clowns

[Giddas]

I'm only taking a moral stance on the Potter game, full steam ahead on this. (The fact Hogwarts looks shite and isn't on Gamepass is just a coincidence). 

[Unofficial Who]

1 hour ago, Giddas said:

I'm only taking a moral stance on the Potter game, full steam ahead on this. (The fact Hogwarts looks shite and isn't on Gamepass is just a coincidence). 

 

Yeah, it's going to be interesting seeing the Venn diagram of users here who are going to boycott one and not the other.

 

It is what it is though.

[jonny_rat]

18 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

Yeah, it's going to be interesting seeing the Venn diagram of users here who are going to boycott one and not the other.

 

It is what it is though.

 

Do we have any hard info about what the devs have done here, other than that statement?

 

Because from the statement itself, I'm struggling to see what else they could do in that situation other than stay entirely silent (which might have actually been better in the long run) - they're living and working under an oppressive government which is entirely alien to me. Like, do we know the consequences of refusing grants from the Russian government?

 

In any case, I don't think it's going to be helpful to start drawing up Venn diagrams and potential false equivalences here.

 

(If it's necessary to add this, I think the actual game is going to be a bit of a stinker)

[Eighthours]

Unless they come out and declare their love for Mother Russia's war against Ukraine, I'm happy to give the developers the benefit of the doubt at this point.

[Giddas]

I don't think the Hogwarts devs have come out and said anything either... but ultimately the argument goes JK will become richer if it's a success and similarly through taxation I guess the Russian state will benefit if this is, as valid or not as that may be.

 

[jonny_rat]

17 minutes ago, Giddas said:

I don't think the Hogwarts devs have come out and said anything either... but ultimately the argument goes JK will become richer if it's a success and similarly through taxation I guess the Russian state will benefit if this is, as valid or not as that may be.

 

 

Yeah, although I agree that this would be the angle, I think I would probably chalk that up as a false equivalence.

 

There's a more interesting question (I think) around how easy it is to enjoy things around a theme or brand when there's something awful attached to them. I am always a bit surprised that people can actually still enjoy the HP stuff because when I see it now, all I can think of is Rowling. It's absolutely poisoned it for me, although I can see that not everyone thinks the same way.

 

I do get a touch of it with things that lean on soviet and russian imagery at the moment too, including this game. Less so, because it's a rich society of millions of diverse voices rather than a load of slightly wonky lore around goody and baddy wizards. But a bit.

[Timmo]

Polygon are reporting this is a pretty traditional single player FPS which made me realise that we really haven’t had many of those for a long time, at least not with modern visuals. Excited for it!

[Popo]

It has been in gestation for so long that the initially jaw-dropping visuals are now relatively par for the course, which takes the shine off somewhat.
 

It still looks very impressive - but we’ve played things like Last of Us Part 2 and Callisto Protocol now, and the Matrix Awakens demo has shown us what the future looks like, when once upon a time this game was the future. 

[Unofficial Who]

On 18/01/2023 at 21:52, Giddas said:

I don't think the Hogwarts devs have come out and said anything either... but ultimately the argument goes JK will become richer if it's a success and similarly through taxation I guess the Russian state will benefit if this is, as valid or not as that may be.

 

 

On 18/01/2023 at 22:14, jonny_rat said:

 

Yeah, although I agree that this would be the angle, I think I would probably chalk that up as a false equivalence.

 

There's a more interesting question (I think) around how easy it is to enjoy things around a theme or brand when there's something awful attached to them. I am always a bit surprised that people can actually still enjoy the HP stuff because when I see it now, all I can think of is Rowling. It's absolutely poisoned it for me, although I can see that not everyone thinks the same way.

 

I do get a touch of it with things that lean on soviet and russian imagery at the moment too, including this game. Less so, because it's a rich society of millions of diverse voices rather than a load of slightly wonky lore around goody and baddy wizards. But a bit.

 

I saw this on Yahoo News but the original source is The New Voice of Ukraine which obviously has a point of view. But it's still given me pause. (Warning, the news piece in question does contain a paragraph or two describing some of the plot which might be considered spoilerish.)

 

https://news.yahoo.com/gamers-criticize-russian-shooter-atomic-142100229.html?

 

Quote

It is known that the studio plans to release Atomic Heart on the VK Play platform, the president of which is Vladimir Kiriyenko, the son of Sergey Kiriyenko – Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s Deputy Chief-of-Staff, and a member of the State Council of the Russian Federation.

Kiriyenko openly supports the war against Ukraine and says he believes that Russia was attacked by NATO.

 

I mean that isn't great but I'm not sure Valve or Microsoft are still operating in Russia.

 

Quote

Investors in Atomic Heart are Gaijin Entertainment and GEM Capital. The first, according to The Gamer, also sponsors an anti-Ukrainian channel on YouTube that promotes the Russian army.

GEM Capital, as Twitter users managed to find out, belongs to a former employee of Russian state gas company Gazprom, Anatoly Paliy. This company is also associated with sanctioned banks and organizations.

 

That's more cut and dried if true for myself at least.

 

Quote

The soundtrack for the game was recorded by Nikolai Baskov, who has distinguished himself by actively supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine.

 

"Recorded by" seems a little nebulous but indeed he has composed a piece that's used in the trailers.

 

There's also some talk about the plot of the game glorifying the days of Soviet dominance which I won't go into here as it's a tad spoilerish and without seeing the end of the game it's impossible to determine whether or not that's the central theme of the game. It's a bit like judging the politics of Bioshock or Spec Ops:the Line on the first hour of play.

 

As I said in the Harry Potter thread I've got a rather simplistic world view regarding such things and while skipping this is going to be more of a pain than skipping HP (especially since I have gamepass and it's just sitting there) I'm not sure I can justify it to myself. For adults with more nuanced takes on the world ymmv.

[Gabe]

23 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

For adults with more nuanced takes on the world ymmv.

 

Don't do this. I like you, @Unofficial Who, but I don't like this self-flagellation as if your opinion must somehow be inferior. Your view is as valid as any others expressed in this and the Hogwarts thread. Indeed, in my first post the other day in that thread I said this:

On 13/01/2023 at 23:25, Gabe said:

I think this is what it comes down to ultimately; we are wildly inconsistent as a species, we are hypocritical, short-sighted and make bad decisions. As such, we all have our own personal line in the sand which, quite possibly, we don't always stick to for a variety of factors.

 

Now the information you've posted above does add more depth to the story, though I would still find the link between a number of those things to still be quite tenuous. Did the investment from Gaijin Entertainment and GEM Capital happen since the outbreak of the war, or before, for example? Having the owner of a platform you release on being the son of a war-supporter and then used as stick to beat them with seems harsh, unless these same twitter detectives are also highlighting and making noise about every other dev that is on that platform, no? For the music piece, well lots of music is licensed and used in things from horrible people without comment.

 

All of these things together may mean something as to the politics of the devs, but more likely seem like circumstance. I just think that they seem a bit far-removed at the moment and so I'm reserving judgement until things look a bit clearer. It doesn't mean I'm right and has nothing to do with 'nuance' - it just means I'm not making a snap decision.

[Strafe]

 

I’m not sure how much of a ‘gotcha’ this is. 

 

It’s a guy who contributed to the game who supports the war in Ukraine. I think for any large studio release you’re going to find at least one staff member - probably more than one - who does. Chances are a few of us know people who do. I do, I’ve got a friend* who does (granted, he’s a conspiracy nut, believes in chem trails and chugs down metaphorical kool-aid on a daily basis).

I can’t imagine that EA, CD Projekt Red, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Microsoft game studios etc won’t have at least one or more people making their games with distasteful/batshit views and opinions.

 

Anyway, Atomic Heart was started long before all this and soviet styling isn’t exactly a new concept for games anyway. Now, if the game were rebranded as “Special Operation” and the robots were the evil creations of fantasy Nazi-occupied Ukraine then I think I’d probably give it a wide birth but as it stands I’m sure people can play this without making a dent in their karmic balance.
 

 

 

* Needless to say I don’t agree with his views. Have you ever tried to change the opinions of a conspiracy nut? Bang your head against a brick wall instead 

[BubbleFish]

Oh FFS. Another game that’s getting spoiled due to politics, bigotry, intolerance, ignorance or all of the above.

 

I remember the good old days when we were all ignorant and just didn’t realise most people are awful. Pre order cancelled.

 

Anyway, back to growing my cult and sacrificing some animals to my Dark Lord before feeding the remains to my flock. 

[Unofficial Who]

7 hours ago, Gabe said:

 

Don't do this. I like you, @Unofficial Who, but I don't like this self-flagellation as if your opinion must somehow be inferior. Your view is as valid as any others expressed in this and the Hogwarts thread. Indeed, in my first post the other day in that thread I said this:

 

I'm sorry it comes across like that, I'm just trying to acknowledge that I'm very much aware that my views are more limited in this field. I understand the concept of the whole "death of the author" thing, that artistic works should be considered alone outside the creator's intent or profit, it's just a hurdle I find difficult to make personally.

 

7 hours ago, Gabe said:

 

Don't do this. I like you, @Unofficial Who, but I don't like this self-flagellation as if your opinion must somehow be inferior. Your view is as valid as any others expressed in this and the Hogwarts thread. Indeed, in my first post the other day in that thread I said this:

 

Now the information you've posted above does add more depth to the story, though I would still find the link between a number of those things to still be quite tenuous. Did the investment from Gaijin Entertainment and GEM Capital happen since the outbreak of the war, or before, for example? Having the owner of a platform you release on being the son of a war-supporter and then used as stick to beat them with seems harsh, unless these same twitter detectives are also highlighting and making noise about every other dev that is on that platform, no? For the music piece, well lots of music is licensed and used in things from horrible people without comment.

 

All of these things together may mean something as to the politics of the devs, but more likely seem like circumstance. I just think that they seem a bit far-removed at the moment and so I'm reserving judgement until things look a bit clearer. It doesn't mean I'm right and has nothing to do with 'nuance' - it just means I'm not making a snap decision.

 

It's a weird catch 22, in effect one can't really judge until they've played the game all the way through. I mean if you judged Spec Ops:the Line on the first hour of play rather than the entire game then you'd be forgiven for thinking it was yet another "kill all the foreign baddies" propaganda. The same with the Bioshock games to a degree.

 

I mean it might end up being a subversive critique of the Soviet machine, or it might end up as a propaganda piece and I'm probably being unfair pre-judging it from biased sources.

 

7 hours ago, Strafe said:

I’m not sure how much of a ‘gotcha’ this is. 

 

It’s a guy who contributed to the game who supports the war in Ukraine. I think for any large studio release you’re going to find at least one staff member - probably more than one - who does. Chances are a few of us know people who do. I do, I’ve got a friend* who does (granted, he’s a conspiracy nut, believes in chem trails and chugs down metaphorical kool-aid on a daily basis).

I can’t imagine that EA, CD Projekt Red, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Microsoft game studios etc won’t have at least one or more people making their games with distasteful/batshit views and opinions.

 

Anyway, Atomic Heart was started long before all this and soviet styling isn’t exactly a new concept for games anyway. Now, if the game were rebranded as “Special Operation” and the robots were the evil creations of fantasy Nazi-occupied Ukraine then I think I’d probably give it a wide birth but as it stands I’m sure people can play this without making a dent in their karmic balance.
 

* Needless to say I don’t agree with his views. Have you ever tried to change the opinions of a conspiracy nut? Bang your head against a brick wall instead 

 

And this is another good point, I'm not a big fan of purity tests when it comes to large teams. I know I don't like it at all when right wingers find people whose politics don't agree with theirs and attempt (and usually succeed) in getting them sacked.

 

37 minutes ago, BubbleFish said:

Oh FFS. Another game that’s getting spoiled due to politics, bigotry, intolerance, ignorance or all of the above.

 

I remember the good old days when we were all ignorant and just didn’t realise most people are awful. Pre order cancelled.

 

Anyway, back to growing my cult and sacrificing some animals to my Dark Lord before feeding the remains to my flock. 

 

All games contain politics, it's always been that way. Even benign looking games like Sim City. I've made a couple of points quoting (a biased) source and talking about how that's put me of playing the game. Both Strafe and Gabe have made pretty good rebuttals. I'd make your own decision here, it's more complicated than the Harry Potter game and it's a lot more complicated than some indie titles where it's pretty much a one to three person show.

[BubbleFish]

I was being humorous, well trying to be.

On a serious note I agree. Like most things the individual should decide for themselves.

[Rex Grossman]

Blows my mind that anyone with a conscience and awareness of current world events would support a product that the Russian state benefits from. The government is looking for new revenue streams to fund the war.

[JoeK]

40 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

Blows my mind that anyone with a conscience and awareness of current world events would support a product that the Russian state benefits from. The government is looking for new revenue streams to fund the war.

 

So in essence we're talking about a blanket-wide ban on anything and everything that comes out of Russia. 

 

I dunno, if that's the argument here, then it seems a very narrow and unproductive reasoning of how people deal with the state of the world at the moment. 

 

I have no answers to any of this, but unless there's categorical proof that the devs are right-wing facists who have gone on record saying 'death to Ukraine', then I don't see my conscious is dirtied in any real way. 

 

My UK taxes go to a government who actively chooses to align itself with selling weapons to places like Saudi Arabia, and have a hypocrisy to moan about their human rights, whilst seemingly happy to take their money. I can't go anywhere else, nor do I want to. I don't think that a vast majority of the working people over here should be punished for something they have no real control over (short of outright rebellion, but I'm not keen on that happening whilst I've still got Cyberpunk 2077 to finish...).

 

I honestly don't have any real answers that couldn't be rightly argued either way. 

[Unofficial Who]

1 hour ago, Rex Grossman said:

Blows my mind that anyone with a conscience and awareness of current world events would support a product that the Russian state benefits from. The government is looking for new revenue streams to fund the war.

 

And that's why I'm skipping it.

 

However...

 

18 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

So in essence we're talking about a blanket-wide ban on anything and everything that comes out of Russia. 

 

 

Well that is actually what's happening at the moment with sanctions applied and many businesses pulling out of Russia.

 

But  https://mundfish.com/about-us/

 

Quote

Founded in 2017, by a team of four like-minded gaming enthusiasts, Mundfish is a video game development studio headquartered in Cyprus.

 

Technically not a Russian game.

 

Edit Which I guess is why they can sell their game and receive money in the west.

[milko]

I think quite a lot of Russian business ends up in Cyprus. Maybe it was always easier to do deals with Europe from there? I dunno. There's at least a few game dev houses like that.

[Rex Grossman]

53 minutes ago, JoeK said:

So in essence we're talking about a blanket-wide ban on anything and everything that comes out of Russia. 

 

This is already a thing with the sanctions put in place by governments around the world. Because Putin is using the money from things coming out of Russia to murder children. I can't tell from this if you oppose the sanctions on Russia. You probably don't oppose them.

 

55 minutes ago, JoeK said:

I dunno, if that's the argument here, then it seems a very narrow and unproductive reasoning of how people deal with the state of the world at the moment. 

 

Not if sanctions mean less money to be used for the death of Ukrainian families.

 

56 minutes ago, JoeK said:

My UK taxes go to a government who actively chooses to align itself with selling weapons to places like Saudi Arabia, and have a hypocrisy to moan about their human rights, whilst seemingly happy to take their money. I can't go anywhere else, nor do I want to. I don't think that a vast majority of the working people over here should be punished for something they have no real control over (short of outright rebellion, but I'm not keen on that happening whilst I've still got Cyberpunk 2077 to finish...).

 

We have the opportunity to vote out politicians and attempt to influence policy though. This country may have its problems but I don't think we have rigged elections. You can vote for parties that don't want to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.

 

At the end of the day this is just a game. How important a game is varies from person to person, as does the feeling of how much boycotts/sanctions will make a difference, or how they view Russia.

 

[sofasurfer]

I may be naive but if one was to take a stand against this game, don't we have to boycott Microsoft as well as it's day one on Gamepass and thus giving money, albeit indirectly, to Russia?

[RubberJohnny]

The problem with these things is they only ever seem to target new games, I feel that UnofficialWho wouldn't be making these posts about something he was passionate about like the next FFVII Remake dropping. You really gonna lecture your girlfriend on how liking or supporting the game is problematic because Square Enix received investment from Saudi Arabia? Because I'm guessing the answer is no.

[jonny_rat]

56 minutes ago, milko said:

I think quite a lot of Russian business ends up in Cyprus. Maybe it was always easier to do deals with Europe from there? I dunno. There's at least a few game dev houses like that.

There absolutely are devs trying to do this, and it all comes down to whether you take the view that it's trying to get out from under an aggressive regime or political expediency on their part. Wargaming for example had a member of staff who made pro-invasion comments. He's gone and they're now based in Cyprus with their Russian offices closed. What's the key question here: that these studios have ever received government money, even before the invasion of Ukraine? Or is it that their games contain pro Soviet imagery? Or that playing and buying them continues to benefit Russia?

 

I mean, I don't have answers, but it's not really 'just a game' to the people making it. If I'm boycotting their product - and I still might, even if that only means avoiding it on GP - I'd like to be doing so on solid information.

[Rex Grossman]

As I said in the Hogwarts thread, everyone has a line they won’t cross whether they know it or not.

 

I think for me Ukraine feels particularly tangible because my daughter has quite a few Ukrainian school friends she helped settle into the area. Some have even moved in with friends of ours.

 

Saudi Arabia less tangible for me personally. That country has also just increased its investment in Nintendo which I’m sure is making many people uncomfortable.

 

So I guess my line is anything the Russian government can profit from because we know what they are doing with those profits.

 

Like most of you, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. What feels wrong to me won’t feel wrong to everyone. We’re not all the same.

[metallicfrodo]

According to the about page that @Unofficial Who posted they claim to have a least one Ukranian developer who has worked/is working for them

 

Quote

Artem Galeev, Robert Bagratuni, Evgenia Sedova, and Oleg Gorodishenin have built an incredible team of 130 creatives from 10 countries including Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Georgia, Israel, Armenia, UAE, Serbia, and Cyprus.

 

Now I only have that to go off and it could well be that team member was gone before or left at the start of the war.

 

It's difficult to delve into their finances they list their financial partners and one of them is Tencent, so there is that, depending on your view of how closely aligned Tencent are with the Chinese government and your feelings on that.

[Unofficial Who]

4 hours ago, RubberJohnny said:

The problem with these things is they only ever seem to target new games, I feel that UnofficialWho wouldn't be making these posts about something he was passionate about like the next FFVII Remake dropping. You really gonna lecture your girlfriend on how liking or supporting the game is problematic because Square Enix received investment from Saudi Arabia? Because I'm guessing the answer is no.

 

I had no idea that that was the case. Different thing though isn't it in that it's almost impossible to keep track of all the shareholders buying and selling shares? Whereas this game has clearer links to Russia IMHO.

 

(It's not though really, it's a clear indicator of my rampant hypocrisy in this space.)

[Fry Crayola]

In the end, it always comes down to how comfortable you personally feel, and feelings aren't driven by logical rules. You don't need to optimise your brain so you're correctly boycotting the right set of media for the right reasons, and you don't need to feel bad if your reaction in any particular case seems out of step with your peers. 

[Rex Grossman]

3 hours ago, Fry Crayola said:

In the end, it always comes down to how comfortable you personally feel, and feelings aren't driven by logical rules. You don't need to optimise your brain so you're correctly boycotting the right set of media for the right reasons, and you don't need to feel bad if your reaction in any particular case seems out of step with your peers. 

Nicely put.

[SM47]

Isn't it just people buying into the neoliberal myth of moral consumer agency and marrying it with twitter blue tick tedium in order to create a heady cocktail of extremely online performative cringe? American tax dollars go toward all kinds of nefarious shit that's every bit the moral equal of Putin's invasion. I read some previews of this that have dampened my enthusiasm anyway so will await reviews, but next you'll be telling me to smash up my large and formidable collection of SodaStreams because they're  manufactured in Israel. Not gonna happen, my family's basic quality of life necessitates the round the clock availability of custom beverage carbonation 

[MansizeRooster]

I think talking about the dev's political affiliations is kind of missing the point. I'm willing to bet that nearly every game ever made will have at least one dev behind it who is a bastard of some sort.

 

Modern games have 100's of people working on them - chances are a few of them are going to be sex pests, or bullies, or Tories, or rapists, or murderers, or horrible tippers.

 

If you're only ever going to play games that have been created solely by unimpeachable saints then you'd have a very sparse game collection indeed.

 

The point I'm making is a very practical one. If any subset of the money I pay for this game ends up funding the Russian war machine, then I find that unacceptable. Regardless of how small that amount is.

 

Given that the studio is Russian, they likely pay taxes to the Russian government. That's a deal-breaker for me.

[JPL]

14 minutes ago, MansizeRooster said:

I think talking about the dev's political affiliations is kind of missing the point. I'm willing to bet that nearly every game ever made will have at least one dev behind it who is a bastard of some sort.

 

Modern games have 100's of people working on them - chances are a few of them are going to be sex pests, or bullies, or Tories, or rapists, or murderers, or horrible tippers.

 

If you're only ever going to play games that have been created solely by unimpeachable saints then you'd have a very sparse game collection indeed.

 

The point I'm making is a very practical one. If any subset of the money I pay for this game ends up funding the Russian war machine, then I find that unacceptable. Regardless of how small that amount is.

 

Given that the studio is Russian, they likely pay taxes to the Russian government. That's a deal-breaker for me.

I thought they were Greek or something? At least that's where the company is setup, I think, so I presume they'll pay tax to Greece. I could be wrong though.

 

What is the Russian link with them, other than the game being set in a fantasy version of it?