Atomic Heart - Half Life with Russian Robot Clowns

[Ry]

16 minutes ago, SM47 said:

 

Meh, much of that video is barrel scraping really. He hasn't played the game and he accuses it of glorifying the USSR and communism. If it's glorifying communism then Putin won't like it as he referred to the invasion of Ukraine as decommunisation, that Ukraine was essentially created due to the machinations of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and is therefore invalid. Maybe he's correct that it does glorify problematic qualities of the USSR, I haven't played it either. It doesn't look all that glorious with all the insane robots and people being brutally killed alongside Soviet iconography. It's like saying Bioshock idealises Neoliberalism because it's set in one fictional character's vision of a Laissez Faire utopia. Yeah but its full of mental people who have been driven murderously insane by superpower tonics. I don't remember that bit from the wikipedia synopsis of Atlas Shrugged I skimmed 20 years ago 

 

He's Ukranian so he'll obviously, arguably understandably, hate it, considering his country is currently at war with Russia causing much unnecessary suffering and death among the civilian population, likely affecting his daily life and the daily lives of his family and friends. He's like the Minister Of Culture who appealed to westerners to stop listening to Tchaikovsky a few months ago. It's regrettable that money we spend goes towards a class of people who actively engage in the perpetuation of human misery but that's not just Atomic Heart. That's consumption under capitalism. Only replacing capitalism with an economic system that doesn't revolve around private ownership of the means of production will stop this, not boycotting this individual videogame. I do think people are extremely eager to buy into the whole ethical consumption thing because they're so robbed of agency in other parts of their lives. Sadly I just think it's a case of the commodity contemplating itself, neoliberalism internalizing social conscience and protest until it becomes just another identity for sale on the market.

 

He also seems to be labouring under the delusion that the developers of Disco Elysium are asserting that the Revacholian Revolution was "bad" because it depicts the partial ruination of Martinaise after the siege. Again, this is obviously a cultural reading of the situation rather than a literary one. The defeat of the Commune is treated with immense sadness in DE, the writer of that particular game is pretty obviously sympathetic to transformative social politics and revolutionism. That game is probably much more guilty of glorifying communism than anything I've seen so far in Atomic Heart's trailers 

 

I agree that some of the video is a stretch. 

 

But you seem to have ignored the parts about the actual companies making the game. The actual important parts. 

[SM47]

The videogame industry is riddled with all sorts of dodgy money from the military industrial complex, the Pentagon, you name it. So is global capitalism in general. The only way to address it is to destroy capitalism itself. Boycotting Atomic Heart is like sidestepping a pile of dog excrement only to leap headlong into an Olympic sized swimming pool of it. It's just performative liberalism. I find my enthusiasm for it ebbing away pretty quickly whenever I scrutinise it closely, maybe you feel different. That's ok 

[bradigor]

I've just watched it. Will look a little deeper before deciding if I play 

[Uncle Nasty]

This looks fucking amazing. Watching the gameplay overview on the Xbox dash now, looks proper next-gen. 

[Rex Grossman]

4 hours ago, SM47 said:

Meh, much of that video is barrel scraping really. He hasn't played the game and he accuses it of glorifying the USSR and communism. If it's glorifying communism then Putin won't like it as he referred to the invasion of Ukraine as decommunisation

 

He actually referred to it as denazification.

[Rex Grossman]

You can't be against the invasion of Ukraine and support a game glorifying the Soviet empire, part-funded by Putin with a connection to the son of his chief of staff.

 

I know this is the JKR/Hogwarts Legacy argument all over again but the principle remains the same.

[Strafe]

If I were looking for a game that glorified the soviet empire I probably wouldn’t be looking at the one showing how the soviet empire made insane robots that slaughtered their own population.

[Rex Grossman]

6 hours ago, Strafe said:

If I were looking for a game that glorified the soviet empire I probably wouldn’t be looking at the one showing how the soviet empire made insane robots that slaughtered their own population.

 

But this is basically what the Soviet Union is based on - the idea that it was the most technologically advanced in the world and that it would slaughter its own population on a regular basis.

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

But this is basically what the Soviet Union is based on - the idea that it was the most technologically advanced in the world and that it would slaughter its own population on a regular basis.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s glorious though.

[Uncle Nasty]

Shame, the trailer looked incredible, really creative and cool design and concepts, but the combat looks terrible in this video.

 

Gamepass though.

 

 

[Rex Grossman]

2 hours ago, Strafe said:

Yeah, I don’t think that’s glorious though.

 

It was to the Soviet leaders.

 

And the older generation in Russia who have gradually become nostalgic about the Soviet era have no problem with the slaughter either.

[Majora]

2 minutes ago, Uncle Nasty said:

Shame, the trailer looked incredible, really creative and cool design and concepts, but the combat looks terrible in this video.

 

Gamepass though.

 

 

 

God that YouTuber is so annoying, I had to turn it off after a minute. Sounds like he was determined to hate the footage from the first second.

[Uncle Nasty]

Just now, Majora said:

 

God that YouTuber is so annoying, I had to turn it off after a minute. Sounds like he was determined to hate the footage from the first second.

 

Yes he is but aren't they all.

 

Still, maybe the guy playing in that footage was just rubbish and hadn't figured out the correct weapons for those particular enemies.

 

Something else I noticed just now is your character doing voice-overs of the "I just need to get to that switch over there" variety, potentially annoying.

 

From this it looks absolutely incredible, I only heard about this game yesterday so sorry if this is all old news.

 

 

 

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

It was to the Soviet leaders.

 

And the older generation in Russia who have gradually become nostalgic about the Soviet era have no problem with the slaughter either.

Ok then, the key demographic of septuagenerian Xbox players might get misty eyed over idea of a homegrown invention going insane and murdering it’s creators and the general public but I suspect most people won’t.

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, Majora said:

 

God that YouTuber is so annoying, I had to turn it off after a minute. Sounds like he was determined to hate the footage from the first second.

He’s just watching a video of someone else, right? And he couldn’t understand why a quest was blurred out to prevent spoilers.

[Rex Grossman]

6 minutes ago, Strafe said:

Ok then, the key demographic of septuagenerian Xbox players might get misty eyed over idea of a homegrown invention going insane and murdering it’s creators and the general public but I suspect most people won’t.

 

Yes, most people will just enjoy pretending to be a violent Russian soldier in a game that financially benefits the Russian government at a time when they are funding a genocide in Ukraine. I wish it wasn't the case but that's the sad fact of it.

[Strafe]

2 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

Yes, most people will just enjoy pretending to be a violent Russian soldier in a game that financially benefits the Russian government at a time when they are funding a genocide in Ukraine. I wish it wasn't the case but that's the sad fact of it.

Most people will enjoy pretending to be a violent soldier full stop. But most people can separate an alternate history fantasy developed long before current events to things actually happening now. 
 

I do, however, get that people might not want to play this due to Russian government links but I’ve already funded the game by paying for gamepass at this point.

[SM47]

23 hours ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

He actually referred to it as denazification.

 

Er no, he used the phrase decommunization February last year, it's quoted in this article 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/22/putin-speech-analysis-ukraine-russia/

[Rex Grossman]

35 minutes ago, SM47 said:

 

Er no, he used the phrase decommunization February last year, it's quoted in this article 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/22/putin-speech-analysis-ukraine-russia/

 

Because he had described what Ukraine had been doing as decommunization, which is is usually understood as the process of removing Soviet monuments. Which is what he describes in that article.

 

Quote

Today the ‘grateful progeny’ has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization

 

He has justified the invasion of Ukraine as denazification.

 

Here's the Washington Post on that https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/24/putin-denazify-ukraine/

[MechE]

No, he's saying that proper decommunism would mean Ukraine rejoining Russia as he sees its independence as an act of the communist revolution.

[SM47]

He's using decommunization in reference to Lenin and the Bolsheviks creating Ukraine as an independent entity in 1917. He's therefore 'decommunizing' Ukraine by canceling the process of sovereignty he sees as being begun by the Bolsheviks, which he believes never should have happened as Ukraine belongs to Russia. Whether or not he's used the phrase 'denazification' is irrelevant to what I posted. 

[Rex Grossman]

OK.

[layten]

 

[MansizeRooster]

https://www.eurogamer.net/questions-remain-over-atomic-heart-developers-russian-origins

 

There's no way that I could in clear conscience buy this game.

[MechE]

I fully welcome a spotlight being thrown on the developer and getting them to answer some fairly important questions about their funding, etc. but the whole conflating of the actions and beliefs of the Soviet Union with modern Russia's illegal war seems pretty ignorant. It flattens some very complex history and politics into a universal "Russia = Bad".

 

(Just for 100% clarity I'm not in any way trying to make a pro Russia point here - "Russia's current actions = very bad".)

 

Also I'm not trying to excuse the developer's rather vague public statements, I just think we should judge them on something more substantial than the alternative history 1950's setting of the game. 

[Eighthours]

4 minutes ago, MechE said:

I fully welcome a spotlight being thrown on the developer and getting them to answer some fairly important questions about their funding, etc. but the whole conflating of the actions and beliefs of the Soviet Union with modern Russia's illegal war seems pretty ignorant. It flattens some very complex history and politics into a universal "Russia = Bad".

 

(Just for 100% clarity I'm not in any way trying to make a pro Russia point here - "Russia's current actions = very bad".)

 

Also I'm not trying to excuse the developer's rather vague public statements, I just think we should judge them on something more substantial than the alternative history 1950's setting of the game. 

The developer’s in a bind here, given that even if they don’t support the war, any public statement by them could lead to much more serious real-life consequences than being cancelled on Twitter. But their stance isn’t clear, their funding isn’t clear… there’s not really enough information to go on, to determine whether the game should be boycotted or not.

[dreamylittledream]

Have to admit this take on the game being allegedly pro Soviet nostalgia seems rather odd given as far as I can tell it’s set in a world where this Utopia has fallen apart due to crazy robots being unleashed by said regime.

 

The game seems to be strongly channelling Bioshock and therefore we see the remains of the propaganda whilst wandering by around the ruins.

 

Until we see some thing different I hardly see this aspect as being problematic…the thorny question of where the money it makes is going is a different one of course.

[MansizeRooster]

The developer's political stances and posturing are irrelevant. The issue is that, if they are in any way connected to a business originating from Russia, then some of the money from the sales will eventually end up in the hands of the Russian government. It will be contributing to the funds of the Russian war machine. That is unacceptable, and I refuse to contribute to that.

[RubberJohnny]

On 08/02/2023 at 09:51, Rex Grossman said:

It was to the Soviet leaders.

 

And the older generation in Russia who have gradually become nostalgic about the Soviet era have no problem with the slaughter either.

 

Only just read this thread, but "actually people are nostlagic for AI apocalypse stories because y'know that's what it was actually like in history" has to be the stupidest, most reaching take in the 20 years that this forum has existed.

[Strafe]

I’m taking the line that as it’s on gamepass I’ve basically contributing to funding it already. (Though I understand there is likely some additional revenue share based on downloads and player count).

 

I don’t envy the developers position, that’s for sure.