World Politics in Videogames`

CiDeRmAn

Perhaps this is the wrong forum to post this on but I have noticed a rather disturbing trend in games of late.
I have been reading various articles, the one in Edge on the new Tom Clancy game Endwar, being developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, and having played many of the other war games out there and one thing has stuck out like a sore thumb, something that appears to be ignored by all and sundry and doesn't seem to be raising any eyebrows at all.
And its this.
China is nowhere to be seen in any of the above.
Its not in Endwar, nor has it been in COD4, nor most of the others I've played, in fact the last game I've played where the Chinese are portrayed as aggressive is in Mercenaries, and I'd be quite surprised if they turn up in the sequel.
I have a feeling that most games devs and more importantly the media colossi that publish the games themselves are terrified of ticking off the Chinese authorities, thereby reducing the chances of their getting access to that massive market in the future.
I believe that perhaps this is the thin end of the wedge, in a similar vein to Fox, Yahoo and Google providing censored services to the Chinese people.

I wonder what you folk out there think, at the very least it'll reduce the realism of the games we play, taking the worlds second biggest military power and letting it hide from the action, not allowing developers to make games portraying the very real influence China has on global politics as well as any future military actions.

L31mr0d

The reason is because the populace is being conditioned to hate the middle east and russia by the NWO. They plan to form Canada, America an Mexico into the North America Union, expand the EU and form a concrete union between most of the far east asian countries. Once these unions are complete they will amalgamate to form one world union. By this point America and China will have overtaken much of the middle east and russia.

humanji

In fairness, China hasn't really done anything lately that would be good for a games story, so there's little reason to make up anything about them. Granted, there may be a tendency to not piss off the locals in case you need them later on, but it could just be a case that they're not exciting enough to use.

Stephen

They were featured in C&C generals using ridiculous stereotypes (as were the arabs), and they featured in Battlefield 2... as were the arabs.

Jack Sheehan

Well C and C Gen was banned in China so you have to consider that if they portrayed them negatively then they would be cutting off an entire market.

steviec

Endwar specifically can't include China - it's being developed in Beijing and the authorities wouldn't allow them to release it if they portrayed China in any way that could be considered negative. I read an interview with one of the devs about it somewhere a while ago.

Outside of that, I don't think there's any specific political plan to avoid China, China's just not the hot topic at the moment.

Maximilian

Like they buy legal software in China....