Patriotism in computer games: the opinion of the former gamers

This article is a written outpouring of my thoughts as a person who was passionate about games in the past and still has some interest in them today. Therefore, no one will forbid me to hope that there will be a little more benefit from it than from abstract reasoning in the deputy chairs. Let the owners of these not consider my point of view for an unreasonable “hitting”, for there are plenty of arguments, and only the lazy one is not grumbling at the legislators. But more about that later.

With the permission of readers, I will tell a little about myself. I am a housewife (almost a “freelancer”), who is “a little over thirty”, there are two children who are still small. My acquaintance with computer games began in high school. Now, of course, I practically don’t play - there is neither time nor great desire, and the spouse doesn’t share my past hobbies at all. I am not proud of the former computer games, and frankly, I would not want my children to be fond of them. At least not in childhood or adolescence, when there are no established convictions.

Although in my case, it was not without positive moments - at one time, it was the enthusiasm for games that pushed me to learn English. Many games at that time could only be bought from pirates, and machine translation did not suit me at all. Then there was the first reason to think about why there’s practically no patriotic, but there are practically no games in Russian. My "track record" consisted of shooters, strategies and quests. I’ll make a reservation that the games I passed were mostly from 1998-2008.

What search shows

At some point, it became interesting to me, but are there exactly patriotic games of domestic development, or at least those where the “valiant American soldiers” are not shown as the embodiment of “white and fluffy” good? Began to search. But almost everything that search engines give out refers to the request in the same way that the name “Oats” refers to horses. A lot of references about patriotism in games lead to articles about how the State Duma has attended to the creation of computer games with a patriotic message. And the articles of the years 2010-20. That is, talked and safely forgotten. For in 6 years it would be possible to show the result, but it is not.

When you try to find a game, you often had to stumble upon real rubbish. Despite the fact that sometimes the ideas and the plot were quite good, this could not save publishers and developers from being honored by throwing in stale products. Hello "Patriot" with its "Democratization" ... What prevents us from creating good (as a result - popular), and at the same time patriotic games, and what do players want? I will try to answer this question at the same time addressing the gentlemen / comrades / their high nobility (underline) the deputies. What the hell is not joking, suddenly hear and understand correctly?

Patriotism in computer games - to be

Personally, I would be very interested to hear the answer to the question firsthand: why did the Duma suddenly take up patriotism in games? The question is not rhetorical. Do not think of something bad, I - for all the limbs. But there is a big BUT: lawmakers would be nice to decide what moves them. The desire to drive the air and distract people from other problems can also be taken as an answer, then the question is exhausted. But after all, something quite different is being voiced - raising the young generation in the spirit of love for the Motherland, and this is clearly not the case for one-time actions for a tick. Then, sorry for the banality, it would be worth starting with yourself. To begin with, at least stop rewriting history and finally figure out what is good and what is bad. Suppose that the parliamentarians succeeded in this, and that they were honest. And immediately other questions arise:

Not only the theme of the Great Patriotic

What is meant by patriotism in games? It would be wrong and naively limited only to the themes of the Great Patriotic War. There is also the Patriotic War of 1812, the topic of the Civil War and foreign intervention, the Caribbean crisis ... Just fighting with all sorts of criminals - from “Makhnovists” and “Vlasovites” to international terrorists and provocateurs, from state secretaries to bribe takers in a single town (Oh, I already imagine this sort of real-time strategy). Patriotism is not only the extermination of enemies, shouting slogans like tribute to time. It is also respect for elders, and the preservation of unifying folk traditions, and the maintenance of cleanliness on the streets of his native city, and making decisions with an awareness of responsibility for them, and much more, which can be written more than a dozen individual articles. There is one soulful song - "Where does the Motherland begin . " If you do not go into details, then true patriotism is not intrusive, not showy, but natural and necessary, like clean air. You can breathe dust, exhausts and the stench of Chinese plastic for years, even get used to them and consider them the norm, and then, after being in nature, instantly understand what's what. Although, maybe not instantly - this is someone like that.

Do not make yourself obstacles

I remember that the legislators proposed to focus on the genre of quests. And immediately the question: why immediately such restrictions? Is this the only thing capable of domestic igrodely? And then, quests - this is only part of a huge list of computer games, moreover - far from the main. Needless to say, not everyone likes quests. This is the first. Secondly, a lot depends on what is meant by quests. This may be a picture, pretty or not, which you need to poke the mouse in the right, often non-obvious places, sometimes in a certain order. It can be a role-playing game in essence, with a developed system of dialogues and heaps of options for the choice of interaction. This can be an interactive movie, with rare inserts like “click here to find out what happened next,” and a walker in locations to collect and read various notes that reveal a story like a book, only three-dimensional. Have the legislators ever bothered to get into the topic? The question is rhetorical.

If computer games were in the USSR

To create a special program and a commission on patriotism in games, as proposed in 2011-2012, would not be too right and effective. A lot of talk and little knowledge of the case, and confusing - zero. And the desire to learn something from the legislators is also not observed. Perhaps because the games are still considered exclusively children's hobby. But the players are not only children, and they see everything perfectly, because such skepticism is on their part. If there is no intention to seriously solve the problem, then they would stop making noise. Efforts to create visibility of vigorous activity are not interesting to anyone.

I can assume that the Duma really wanted the best. But the computer industry and games are not their specialty. Let this be done by experts in their field. In the Soviet Union was the state ideology, propaganda and the relevant department. Patriotism - part of ideology, no matter how cool. No its - will be someone else's. But while someone's "golden kids" are studying abroad, propaganda is unlikely to help. In the USSR, they remembered this.

Export American patriotism

As a player, I would love to play a game where fellow countrymen are good heroes. And I read a lot about similar wishes of other players. But there are few such games, and even fewer quality ones. The main producer and consumer of games is the West, which is guided by profit. At the same time, Americans are very indicative in the sense of patriotism in games. I do not know of any game created by the Americans, where it would be possible to fight against the American soldiers, but against the rest - as many as you like. Let me give an example of the game CS Condition Zero: guess who the main evil person is there? There in one of the missions there is an American flag on the roof, a shot on which automatically leads to game over . At the same time, we quietly sell games in which one of the tasks is to destroy Soviet propaganda by tearing down portraits, but not Stalin, as one would expect, but ... cosmonauts. What they have done is incomprehensible, but the promise is clear. Draw conclusions.

The tip of the iceberg

They talk a lot about the difference in budgets of Western and domestic games. I think that in terms of the budget, it is very difficult to compete with the West - here it is not long to break, because the printing press decides. Especially on state order to create studios for creating patriotic games - again, there was a lot of noise, as a result - zilch. Why is that? Since I mentioned I.V. Stalin, I will quote here his statement: “ If you criticize, offer. Offer - do. Do - answer . Actually, here the system of patriotic education proposed by deputies through games and begins to desperately slip. I will try to make out points of the statement in more detail:

1. Criticism of the content of computer games

It is not enough just to criticize the existing state of affairs, discussing in Gd he knows who, according to his account, is a widespread violence in games, disrespect for national history, harm and the use of computer games, etc. The theme of games needs to be seriously investigated, including on the subject of what idea they carry. It is no secret to anyone that the Soviet cartoons of the 40-50s were strictly checked for compliance with the values ​​of that time, and the cartoons themselves were created to be interesting not only for children, but this did not prevent cartoons from becoming masterpieces. Quite the contrary.

2. Budget and implementation

It is not enough to propose funding for the development of patriotic games, especially from the budget, one must also figure out what the consequences of such a step will be. The budget is not rubber, there are more priority tasks at the moment, so it’s unlikely to create a “game of all times and peoples”. Games with funding from the budget can not and should not be paid , for that matter. But if you create a quality product in a reasonable time frame, you cannot do without costs. The point is not always a simple time-money relationship: you can learn programming or drawing to write the code yourself or create a graphic design of the game, but you can hire the appropriate specialists for this. If the manager does not have the talent to compile a technical task, this also means additional costs, etc.

3. Helping potential players

I think no one will argue that it is necessary to establish communication with young people. You can search in the domestic environment of promising developers, it is highly desirable for those for whom enthusiasm and patriotism are not empty words. Gathering or finding a team - start creating a prototype, creating a prototype - conduct a closed beta test to identify bugs and other shortcomings. About the promotion, too, do not forget. For example, for students it is an increased scholarship, or benefits for payments at the institute, as well as the prospect of employment in the appropriate studio being created, etc. Here - yes, funding from the budget is permissible. But expect to get a full-fledged commercial game only by the students - not worth it.

4. Without morality - nowhere

If a private company develops games, then a number of requirements should be applied to it. In this case, it would be worth not so much to limit as to send in the right direction . Many people can say how not to do it, but they cannot give a clear answer to the question - how should it be? Here the results of research (market as well), as well as surveys will be useful. Maybe even my five kopecks in the form of this article.

Developed games that claim to be patriotic must meet the specified requirements (hello to Roskomnadzor). And the moral among them should not be in the last place. If in the West, games can be “only business and nothing personal”, then with us they should remain an art, along with cinema. There are enough good reasons for this. You can certainly argue that "this is just a movie," or "this is just a game." But whether you like it or not, the most real emotions are tested in games or while watching a movie, their influence is not at all illusory, and the notorious “sediment” tends to remain and accumulate, resulting in surprises like health problems. About this, too, you can write more than one article. And try, for example, to publish a game in America where Americans would look unattractive against other nationalities! Trouble guaranteed. Look at the well-known film “The Man from the Capuchin Boulevard” at leisure - the power of the movie in it is shown very eloquently. Approximately the same role is played by computer games at the present time. Major game publishers are well aware of this. Of course, private gaming studios strive to make a commercially successful game in the first place. But do not forget that any big business rests primarily on human weaknesses. Therefore, state intervention may be required here.

5. Non-commercial modifications to popular games.

There is an opinion that creating an analogue to already existing popular games is a notorious failure, with rare exceptions. But what to do if you really want to make a similar, but yours? For many popular games there is an option - to create modifications. Pros: ready-made designers, with which you can change the basic game almost beyond recognition, thematic forums, free distribution. The downsides in this case are the flip side of the pros: insufficiently flexible editing tools, the inability to sell their creations. Option suitable for small amateur studios and single enthusiasts like me. At the moment I am creating a mod for the Tomb Raider 4 game called Project Time of Shadows . Of course, in terms of technology, the game is not new at all, but there is an opportunity to make the mod for it the way I would like to play myself, completely in Russian, and in my understanding - patriotic. Perhaps in the future I will transfer the mod to the Unity engine, and then it will no longer have to do with Tomb Raider and its copyright holders. Time will tell.

As an example of a patriotic modification game, we can recall “Heroes 3: In the Name of the Gods” , with a new castle, in which there are creatures such as Grandmas-Yozhki and Kota Banyuns.

6. Victory has many brothers

Defeat, as is known, is always an orphan: we have come to the point of responsibility. Who will determine how successful the outcome of the new policy of fostering patriotism will be with games? Who will oversee the process of creating such games, report on where and how the budget resources were spent? It is highly desirable that a person who is not indifferent, interested, and at the same time prepared and knowledgeable is engaged in these issues. Which could clearly answer the questions about what was achieved, what mistakes were made, and how to improve the result. Be sure to take into account the opinion of those for whom, in fact, designed patriotic computer games. An example is the forums of specific popular games where developers could communicate with fans. About 10 years ago such a forum was at the games of the series "Corsairs" . Another example is technical support services: they usually ask if specific information was useful, and why it was so and not otherwise.

What is the result

I think I will not reveal the secret that, taking into account all the above, patriotic computer games of domestic production, and at the same time decent quality will appear in the near future if they are, then they are clearly not like mushrooms after rain. Rather, it will be individual instances. But do not rush to conclusions. In my not very experienced opinion, it is even not bad. Perhaps, in conditions of increasing competition, there will be less willing to produce raw products and frank slag. Even if this is not the case, the games created, as they say, with a soul, will still gain much more fans. Our developers are able to create such games. The brighter the worthy domestic games will look like on the background of low-end handicrafts, produced exclusively in order to “cut down the cabbages”. Sounds naive? Perhaps. But it works, and not only in relation to computer games. If you set a great goal and do not hang your nose - everything will turn out.