Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is capitalist propaganda
 

I'd already called it during E3, but welp.

This game is overt propaganda for the far right. Don't support it. REALLY. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS GAME.

You are so good at asking me not to buy things that I wasn't going to buy in the first place. I love not having to try. Also:

Goddammit, every new thing I hear about this movie is terrible.

I'm real glad I thought Dark Knight Rise looked boring as shit.

You also shouldn't buy Pokémon anymore. It's about digital cock- or dogfighting. Barbaric.

I'm not saying this isn't tasteless, but you could probably do what I just did for a shitton of games, and come out with never buying games, ever again.

Such things are typically already recognized in our society as shitty and awful.

Far right conservatism is already embraced in America, the primary target for the game, and a one of the bigger games of the year being far right propaganda, not just tasteless but actual propaganda, is incredibly fucked up.

Pokemon's not trying to make a social statement or demonize the efforts of the working class to not be shat all over by the wealthy elite.

That's the difference.

.

Y'know... there is a trailer...



...and if that is that, what is this...?

Can i just point out, that going herp derp that isn't terrible because another game does the exact same terrible thing. Doesn't make the terrible thing not terrible it makes both of them terrible.

Who'd play Call of Duty anyway? I thought NPF had somewhat decent taste.

I'm already stumped trying to come up with a way to not buy crap just twice as hard as not buying it once, and there's like four separate reasons I would boycott this crap. You're tearing me apart Call of Duty!

But now I wonder when they're going to start making games specifically for the 1% and sell them for $5000. That'd be so funny.

Sort of like Steel Battalion, but maybe a crew comes and converts an entire room of your mansion into a mech cockpit simulator?

The 1% version of a Call of Duty game is to instigate a real actual war and make poors fight it for them.

and to keep the classy act... enter Anonymous

which of course led up to this...



Which is a hoax, except not really, except it is, except who knows because it's Anonymous...

And for a journey just check the related videos next to that...

I actually did a video about this. Using Oliver North (convicted felon from the Iran-Contra Scandal) to promote the game does NOT do this game any favors.

Seriously, though, I don't get why you're surprised Liz.

i'm not seeing surprise i'm merely seeing a completely rational call for others to not support something that is trying to paint the poor, as terrorists for not wanting to be shit on by the rich.

Is this what is actually happening in the Dark Knight rises- cause fuck that is the batman movie they should have made for years. It really embraces the true nature of Batman.

I mean, I said I called it during E3. Isn't that like the opposite of surprise?

While still making Batman the least interesting thing in a Batman movie...

I'm still surprised on how they manage to keep hitting that note ever since the Tim Burton ones!

Casting Batman as the villain will make him plenty interesting, in fact that is exactly the way to make him interesting.

More like: "When has the series ever been anything BUT propaganda? Why is this news?"

I think this one is far more blatant compared to any other CoD game. Using the Occupy movement as the basis for a terrorist group as well as Anonymous was a pretty controversial move by Activision. If anything, Moviebob does a good job in explaining the problems of this propagandist attitude.

It's an election year, there are huge cries of "Social Warfare" and "Class Warfare" being tossed around... the Tea Party, Obama getting elected, the birther movement, the Arab Spring movements, the occupy movements, the 1% vs 99%, Wikileaks, Anonymous, Megaupload, Sopa, Acta a a hundred other things that happened in the last 5 years... and on the Other side of the spectrum... Activision and EA.

Well, let's be fair. Valve is kicking their asses. Big time

Steam Greenlight is actually a terrible idea that I loathe. Were you sick of zombie shooters before? TOO BAD because the same boring shit that's been getting made is going to be swarming the marketplace in even greater number.

That said, it's off-topic here so if we want to talk about Greenlight there should probably be another thread for it.

Why shouldn't I buy it?

The first game had the best ending of any game ever!

I mean, they polled, like, several thousand people, so you know it's legit.

I thought you were over reacting to the usual warporn nature of COD Liz. Then I clicked the link.

You know they could of tried being subtle, not outright saying it.

The Second Great Gaming Crash cannot come soon enough.

Honestly, I was thinking it was a joke at first.

I, for one, look forward watching the benevolent, clear-sighted visionary Bane succeed in his revolution against the privileged, wealthy, oppressive neoconservative vigilante Bruce Wayne

Wait you mean, Batman's the good guy?

I remember when the Record Book actually measured records, rather than popular opinion. Not to mention they bent over backwards to research said records to the absolute limits of human certainty rather than polling one six hundred thousandth of the population like that's a representative percentage of anything. "Best videogame ending"? Next year maybe they should find out who's the most beloved high school student in America.

Any video gamr world record aside from "highscore" is not really regarded as anything else beside a joke though...

Well they can say which videogame has sold the most in the world, but everyone already knows that's still going to be Super Mario bros 3.

Actually counting only retail box games that were not pack ins with the console, you could ether say the first generation Pokemon games or New Super Mario Bros were the best selling games.

If you do count pack-in/downloads, then it gets a bit messy.

Ya know, you folks should just realize I am always, always right at this point.

I'm not sure why everyone is down on The Dark Knight Rises without even having seen it, especially since The Dark Knight (imo) was fairly nuanced when it came to its socio-political issues (well, for a blockbuster film made by Hollywood ). That this
is an incredibly simplistic recounting of what is actually seen in the myriad trailers (there are 13 or more at this point, each offering differing footage and scenes) is not surprising to me, especially after how people reacted to the "cell phone wiretapping" scenes from The Dark Knight by saying it was CLEARLY in total support of the Patriot Act. Which is why Nolan has Lucius Fox protest it as "this is wrong. This is more power than any one man should have" and threaten to quit Wayne Enterprises. Having a character clearly state the negative downsides of the Patriot Act is the same as blindly supporting it? I think not. The same thing is happening here: Bane begins a violent revolution against the rich and powerful in Gotham and Batman has to stop him, so that means the movie will just blindly support the 1% with zero nuance. Right.

EDIT: All this is besides the point of CoD: Black Ops 2 being super jingoistic or whatever, since half the posts in the topic seemed to be talking about The Dark Knight Rises for some reason thought I'd give my two cents. I had no plans on buying Black Ops 2 in the first place.

? This kind of implies that maybe this dude isn't played as some kind of ultra villain but rather a morally-gray antagonist? Not sure how this automatically makes Black Ops 2 capitalist propaganda. How do you know the main character in this game doesn't end up disillusioned with the U.S. government just like the main character in the first one? Or thinks both sides lack the answers? I dunno, if people want to blow two-sentence third-party summaries out of proportion, they can, but I'd wait for more information. This is far less than people even have on The Dark Knight Rises. Hell, the trailer points out that Menendez uses the U.S.'s own drones and other weapons against it, so clearly its willing to concede that the U.S. has kind of a hard-on for advanced weaponry capable of blowing up half the planet.

It is when that character is shown as being wrong and the usage of it clearly saves the lives of multiple people from a terrorist attack.

And then the system is shut down for good.

Who wants to bet that someone came up with the phone sonar just so that Batman would have an excuse to use echolocation, and then thought of the politicized stuff later?

No, he wasn't wrong. It is too much power for one man to have. That's why Bruce says Fox is the one who should decide whether its used or not, because the fact that he feels that way shows he has the kind of foresight as to the abuses of it, and that's why Fox destroys it after they catch the Joker (something which didn't even necessarily save the day--the people on the boats could have still blown each other up through fear).

But Fox does decide to use it, and it is necessary to find and stop the Joker.

Eh, it may be necessary to use it in real life too? Just not willy nilly with total carte blanche on everybody hither and yon 24/7?

I dunno, people seem to want to paint Nolan's Batman as being entirely synonymous with George W. Bush when one is a vigilante and the other is the elected president of the United States. And the vigilante puts in a fail safe to destroy the machine that he gives to his best friend who expresses intense doubt about using it, basically ensuring its destruction once it serves its purpose. Like if you are saying Batman is George W. Bush then you are giving George W. Bush way too much credit, in my opinion.

Well, it stopped the hostages from getting sniped. I think. Batman checked them up close, but did he only find them in time because of the Echolophones? I can't remember.

Yeah, it allowed him to map the whole building. But they originally locate the Joker because they are able to figure out his location by tracking the GPS on his cellphone, and to do that they tapped all the cellphones in the city. Hence Fox's trepidation at using the machine, because it violates people's privacy illegally, because Batman didn't get a warrant to do it, obviously. And this is like how the U.S. government uses warrantless wiretapping under the Patriot Act.

BUT if it's right-wing propaganda why bother having a main character point out that it is a violation of people's civil liberties? I wouldn't have some dude in MY right-wing propaganda movie say such liberal-pussy nonsense. Heck, I'd avoid the issue all together and just show a bunch of marines rappelling down into the building, shooting the Joker to death, and then being high-fived by Batman who proclaims them, "The TRUE heroes." Why have the Joker point out that nobody has a problem with a bunch of soldiers getting blown up in Afghanistan or a gangbanger getting shot if it isn't to call people's attention to those issues? The reason the Joker is such a compelling villain is that everything he says has essential truth to it. If you're going to make right-wing propaganda you don't let your audience half-way empathize with your villain.

We're also talking about a video game that nobody here has played or seen the whole story aside from a few loose trailers created to generate more buzz than insight... so... that's why, i suppose...

As for the Dark Knight bit, Lucius clearly state that the new Batsuit will not protect Batman as well as before against dog against, and then the very last enemy Batman faces are Rabid Dogs. Dogs are men's best friend, so i think clearly this proves conclusively and factualy the overtones the Dark Knight has to sell itself as... something or other... ACTIVISM!

Why should anyone care? You don't hear people who play COD saying how amazing the single player campaign is, it's all about multiplayer. Hell, I'm sure most people who buy COD don't even play single player, they just skip over it.

I haven't played COD since Modern Warfare 2, but even if I did, I don't think this is really as big a deal you are making out of it.

I'm guessing it's because Black Ops was the only one in the series with a half-way compelling story other than maybe the first Modern Warfare, or something. So if it's straight-up jingoism that would annoy people.

Yeah but he says right afterwards it will do well against cats, so the movie shows a clear anti-cat bias. Plus it was a fun easter egg referring to Catwoman but that is besides the point.

Also I think Batman just like straight-up murdered some dogs in that movie, though I suppose he was throwing them into what appeared to be safety nets used for falling people.

IRL
 

The Patriot Act is horribly abused by law enforcement.

Also, I would say the Joker is a convincing villain because you have no idea what he's going to do. Hell, no one else has an idea of what he can or cannot do. He's not motivated by money, nor is he motivated by ideology. Unlike other villains, you can't figure out what he's going to do nor what is the best way to counter him. He's anarchy incarnate and it makes him compelling to see how he creates situations that others have to react to.

Yeah, I know the Patriot Act is horribly abused by law enforcement. The movie points out warrantless wiretapping can be abused. What more do you want? It's Batman, he does that shit all the time in the comics without any reference at all to the abuses of the Patriot Act. He just does it because he's Batman. So for Nolan to put that in there kind of made me think he wanted me to think about the facets of the current socio-political issues surrounding the Patriot Act.

In the new movie, there is a new controversial law called the Dent Act that increases the ability of the state's ability to incarcerate people for longer time periods, institute mandatory minimum sentences for more and more minor crimes, etc. Sound familiar? Like a current socio-political issue, perhaps?

If they had wanted to show the wiretapping as a negative they would have made it not work somehow, say via Joker outsmarting it, and played up the invasion of privacy angle more with more people's conversations being overheard and more scenes of it showing people in private moments when looking over the wall of the city.

Or they could have left out such a contrivance in its entirety.

They presented the negative talking points used by civil rights activists just enough to then dismiss them by having the very person making those points decide to use the tool regardless of all the power and invasion of privacy inherit in it.

It's a pretty clear message that even though this is entirely breaking all these civil liberties it's still necessary to stop these horrible villains and totally works.

When in the real world such measures don't actually work as it's far too much data to sift through, generally they lead to entrapment schemes, and are unnecessary to stop anything, where competent less invasive procedures have been shown to work better across the world.

The new one might be really good, as well. But it's also gonna be really problematic
 

It was a completely excellent movie, that doesn't mean it's not problematic in some areas.

As Greed was saying the other night, it's totally okay to enjoy problematic things so long as you recognize what is problematic about them.

For it not to work would be unrealistic. It can work. But at what cost, is the question? Hell, Lucius actually says "but at what cost?", now that I think about it.

Now I'm kind of hating the movie for being particularly unsubtle about this point.

But anyway, the Joker does in a way outsmart them. They spend all that time tracking him down, saving the people on the ferry, etc. and then he subverts it by revealing that his real plan was to turn Dent into a murderous vigilante. That this does more damage to the image of the city government than anything else. So in a sense they do pervert their moral base for naught as far as that goes.

True, but I guess they wanted that super-cool CGI sonar thing in the movie, despite how it working making little sense.

Like I said, that was why Bruce thought Lucius would be the best candidate to wield that power. I suppose this brings up the "benevolent dictator" issue, of course. This is referenced earlier in the film when they are talking about Julius Caesar, where Dent and Dawes argue about how much power one man should wield.

I could argue some minor nitpicks about it not being necessary or not working, but I want to look at your main point, that this is the clear message, and I don't think it is. Or if it is it is not as simplistic as you are making it out to be. I think it's more a mistake in execution than a clear message that "Patriot Act is totally great, George W. Bush is totally great" like people dismiss it as, since in the context of the rest of the movie this does not seem to be the case at all.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, The Dark Knight is problematic. No argument there. I probably forgive its flaws (some fundamental) both due to being a massive Batman fan and a massive Chris Nolan fan. So I do try to ignore the imperfections to an extent. But my main issues is it is presented as being particularly black-white/good-bad in a thread about a black-white/good-bad video game when it's definitely more nuanced than that.

Actually let's just blame this all on David S. Goyer, since that was the original point made, that David S. Goyer designed the villain of this game and also co-wrote the script to The Dark Knight, where I presume he foisted in this contrived subplot with the wiretapping machine. As you pointed out, it could have been left out entirely.

David S. Goyer was also responsible for pretty much all of Begins (much more than the Dark Knight, from what I understand, which had a lot more of Nolan in its actual script/plot), including entirely contradictory things like, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." Even though he basically is responsible for the train crashing in the first place in that he tells Gordon to go blow up the train tracks ahead of it. He also murders a crap-ton of ninjas, though I guess he wasn't fully Batman at the time or whatever excuse we want to make for that part of it.

It's also a movie, and there is only so much time you have to explore certain things... the whole bat-tapping (?) is problematic sure, but it would be less so if they showed that Batman was responsible enough to deal with that such power... the Justice League cartoon did that.



Batman can handle it, the Nolan Movies just don't really do much to establish batman as a Long Career super hero.

Well, I don't want to dismiss people's concerns with it with a simplistic, "He's Batman, so it's okay", myself.

Though I could totally make that point. I mean, he is Batman, after all. Batman. Why wouldn't you make him President For Life?

But no, there are definitely fascistic aspects to Batman's nature that are troubling. But there are also philanthropic aspects, too. He fights crime as a vigilante who feels government is corrupt and useless, and takes the law into his own hands. So that's fascistic. But he believes his foes can be rehabilitated, that everyone, no matter how seemingly vile, has some basic worth to society.

Except probably the Joker, I guess. And any of the criminals who aren't clinically insane. At least he stops at being an executioner, though arguably for his own mental benefit, since he doesn't want to go down that path or he'll never be able to stop.

What I'm saying is that Batman can be a nuanced, interesting character, or he can simplistically propagandistic. It all depends on the execution of the portrayal. I thought Nolan's take was better than a lot of things that have been done with him, ala Frank Miller for example.

EDIT: Also this thread has been thoroughly derailed by all this Bat-talk so maybe a mod would be kind enough to copy-paste all the Batman posts and make a "Let's Talk About Batman" thread or something. I apologize for contributing to the intense Batmanity of this thread.

Because there's only so far you can go in politics with a well-placed batarang.

That's funny, because I was on Youtube the other day and was watching the episode of Justice League entitled, "A Better World" which involves a parallel Earth where Superman murders President Lex Luthor (it's implied that Luthor was the worst president of all time and was about to start World War III) and he and Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League create a police-state dystopia to eradicate all evil.

In the comments someone put something like, "Superman is way better than Batman because he can kill people. Look, he just straight up kills Luthor here. No fuss no muss." And I was like, "Well, Batman would have just used Waynetech voting machines to rig the election in the first place so Luthor never won at all."

So he could easily do that himself to become president. Chilling! He's like a fictional Koch brother or something. Everyone on fictional Earth is entirely at the mercy of Batman's good nature holding out.

Pfffahahaha.

lol at magus defending right wing propaganda

Actually, Batman would've watched Luthor up close to make sure that the election was legal and Ok, and if everything was ok than he would just keep tabs on Luthor's every move just waiting for him to slip up somewhere. Probably saying that "Sooner or later he will slip".

Cause, that's Batman.

As for that JLU Storyline, wasn't Luthor Killing Flash that triggered Superman Killing Luthor and creating the Justice Lords?

Except that everyone's proof for it being right-wing propaganda is 10 minutes of a 2 and a half hour film taken entirely out of context of the rest of the film, let alone the series as a whole. The first movie had a fascist for a villain, after all.

As for The Dark Knight Rises, I think most people on the internet think it is about Occupy Wall Street. It is not. The script was written before the Occupy Wall Street protests took off. It is actually based on A Tale of Two Cities/The French Revolution. Bane is Robespierre, I guess. If you are going to call it right-wing propaganda, at least get what leftist movement it is saying was negative correct, internet.

Or if you mean me sort-of defending this game, I don't really care about it much. It probably is dumb since it straight-up made the dude Julian Assange-as-a-terrorist or whatever, instead of just a dude that leaks government secrets from four years ago that we're all better off knowing.

He did that, too, but the episode starts out with him causing a war to break out, and then he threatens to push a big red button if Superman tries to stop him, presumably launching the nuclear payload of the U.S.

of course it's dumb, it's flat out stupid... have you played the first Black Ops? The only hint of any slightly interesting storyline was when it got insinuated that your character was brainwashed into killing JFK... and even that was only brushed by during the ending, never explained and done after 6 hours of shit flying at your face while everybody yells at you.

It was the first time ever where i rushed to the end of a game without never understanding why the hell i was in such a hurry, but it was mostly cause i couldn't tell the game to "calm the fuck down"

And as it was said in this thread already, a major slice of the people buying this game would tell ya that "The multiplayer has no story y'know..." cause that's what they care about. The other half would be split between those who even see or care about any of the underlying themes of the plot and those who simply don't

They are just trying to be somewhat topical to poke and nudge the midia into getting attetion / sales and see just how much they can get away with it. As soon as their modern warfare bubble bursts, they will be right back at WW2 again...

Can't they make a Korean War video game for once?

Well it would be pretty uncharacteristic of Activision/Treyarch to innovate from their usual modern warfare/WW2 more of the same kind of formula haha.

Remember when the very idea of Modern Warfare seemed fresh after 15 years of WW2 FPSes? What halcyon days those were.

Hey! Hey hey hey!!... Drop it! Last time they tried that we got Homefront!

Clearly we need to take a new approach to modern warfare gaming. And by that, I mean throw dinosaurs at it. We've done it for the WWII sims and admittedly it was kinda dogshit, but second time's the charm, right?

Turok: Terrorist Hunter?

How about Post-Modern Warfare? It's like...really weird. The villain (or hero?) looks suspiciously like Jackson Pollock.

It's all like: Shapes! Guns! COLORS MAN here and there! No one understand this abstraction! *glues an upside down urinal on top of a tank* What is war? Is there even war?

I think anyone who gets their morals from COD was probably an idiot to begin with so I doubt this game is going to do any particular damage.

So a CoD game made by Suda 51?

Liber8! Liber8! Liber8!

Batman would be the fucking worst president imaginable.
I'm still tickled by how
"We shouldn't do this, it's bad"
"No it's totally ok to catch the bad guy"
"Ok then"- uses it to catch the bad guy
Is apparentely a nuanced discussion of civil liberty violation and apparentely not just a oppresionsupporting shitfest.

Good thing people are in 100% conscious control of the ways in which media influence their attitudes and opinions.

...wait...

They should make a war video game in which you are our the second coming of Christ trying to bring peace to the world and you get penalized for shooting people. After you've beaten the game once you'll unlock American Jesus who can use firearms and is also white. After that you unlock True Jesus, who is not only white, but also blonde and blue eyed. He's invincible and shoots lightning.

I imagine that, in the Justice Lords universe, that version of Batman used a similar device. All the time.

Man, I loved those episodes. I miss that show.

It was nuanced for a 200 million dollar Batman movie, yeah. Which is not particularly nuanced, of course, but in comparison to say, Transformers or something...although there are some '80s action flicks that are more nuanced than Transformers. I think Death Wish III had a more intelligent discussion of socio-political issues than Transformers.

That said, I think it is more nuanced than any CoD game, in any case.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I have a compelling argument for why The Dark Knight was pretty good all things considered. Armond White disliked it.

He also didn't like Transformers 3.
Also- you are better than this absolutely terrible thing so you are good?