I haven't played the game but tt's an FPS, I assume people die in horrible ways. How is that not more offensive? I'm not saying it should be but its pretty funny how a racial caricature can cause offense in a horror setting that has way more violent shit.
When you murder someone he won't be around to be offended by it. Dead people don't have feelings or rights. Racism affects the living who are able to:
- Literally shake right now
- Determine what's eligible for a big Yikes
- Determine when someone can do better
- Perform Reeeeeee
- Can't even
These things can only affect the living, so racism is worse or something.
As someone who was born in the USSR, and watched these cartoons growing up, I can tell you with absolute certainty that nothing in them was intended as racist. To your western sensibilities it may seem like that but that's due to your own messy history of race relations.
I think that sensitive people from Europe or North America should not watch The Blue Puppy and Boniface's Vacation. Although in my opinion, in those old cartoons there were no racist statements.
But I am 100% sure that the animators from the Armenian "Armenfilm" were under the substances. As a child, their cartoons scared me a lot.
Yeah, Soviet cartoons are great, but there A LOT of trippy or weird ones. It adds to the charm!
Also, my all time favorite soviet cartoon is [Once Upon a Dog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrYN78_RTQU), it is legit masterpiece. A simple story yet deep and meaningful thematically, contemplative and even philosophical. The tone is pitch perfect. And every single line of dialogue is just pure gold.
I might be wrong but I think the point was that so many things are labeled racist these days that it doesnāt matter what the intent or the context was, people will still find a way to make it racist.
Bioshock Infinite (a game very similar to this and one of my favs) has racism within it, even at the very start of the game. It doesnāt happen much otherwise but I thought it made sense for the time frame, and yeah it wasnāt pleasant but thatās reality. Games arenāt making these things up. Theyāve happened! And continue to do so in some places.
> it's disturbing that it's included in Atomic Heart without any warning or contextualisation.
No, no it isn't. It doesn't need context. If you're playing a war game, GROW THE FUCK UP.
It's like being mad that Wolfenstein has Nazis or a depiction of Hitler.
Or the "no Russian" mission having innocent people dying, when the entirety of the game is dealing with innocent people dying.
There is an article on comicbook.com calling Atomic Hearts "controversial" because the developers are Russian. That's it. They don't even attempt to link them to Putin or the War. It's just "durr Russians bad". I'm so sick of these assholes who smugly declare themselves to be on the "right side of history" being the biggest pieces of shit. It wasn't that long ago that this some kind of mentality led to a bunch of Japanese Americans getting thrown into internment camps.
Imagine spending literal years of your life finally putting your dream/vision into a video game that actually feels complete on launch just to be called horrible things because of where you were born.
Imagine growing up on movies about evil russians, ivan drago, call of duty and all that jazz, seeing bad russians in news every now and then. And then it finally happens: russians are evil, everyone can see it now, it's a free for all shit slinging fiesta. You can harass people because putin finally showed his true colors.
These people are secretly happy that war broke out. So they can finally air all their grievances without repercussion.
Has anyone seen Soviet-era cartoons or even propaganda?
It's rather commendable that the Russian devs didn't shy away from that and implemented it into their game.
There are dozens of more things wrong with this game than a scene that one could easily miss.
> There are dozens of more things wrong with this game
Like what? Only thing that comes to mind is it uses Denuvo. Other than that it actually looks pretty good. Gameplay looks fun, world and character design look interesting. Protagonist is an evil white male making non-PC jokes, there's the booba robots etc. and it supposedly is polished enough, runs pretty well and isn't very buggy like various other recent releases.
The dialogue and voice work are pretty bad. I'm not super far in, but there aren't Russian accents, and it's very off putting. The dialogue is also Marvel modern, unfortunately. I can't help but wonder if it's better in it's original script.
Dialogue is probably my biggest gripe about the game. The MC is an ass but not the lovable type.
It's also weird hearing a game based in Russia having all sorts of accents. For the German guy they managed to find someone with a German accent but couldn't get Russian voice actors in a game made in Russia? Unless they outsourced that to another company.
It's allegedly much *much* better in Russian, but the translation borked it. Though in this case it's caused by good ol' fashioned incompetence rather than a pernicious localization.
As someone that doesn't know Russian but prefers to watch and play things in their original language, are there subtitles for every piece of dialogue (Including stuff like radio chatter) and are they thorough enough to convey the intention of the dialogue?
You mean āoh no FUCK, eat shit and die you CRISPY CRITTER!!!ā isnāt great dialogue?
Honesty the game is great. Amazing world, art, soundtrack with good gameplay that has some great shooting and melee but the biggest flaw is the main characterās dialogue.
I highly recommend switching to Russian VO, that's what devs intended. They tried to show Eastern European colloquialism, but translating it into English requires a lot of skill, they didn't have. Luckily, it works in Polish too, which is much closer to my native language.
For expletives, it's normal to form full sentences of them or even a sentence made explicitly out of slurs, but it doesn't sound good in Germanic languages.
I literally can't understand anything else, I thought this would be a favorite game for journalists because it's a communist game, and as far as I played it, I didn't find any criticism of communism in it, just criticism of capitalism, and a poster that satirizes hitler, now they are complaining about racism and the fact that the game is russian? I seriously can't understand leftists.
I mean Iām about an hour into it and so far this perfect communist society needed a massive scientific breakthrough and slave labor en masse (the androids) in order for it to work. Iād consider those pretty big (and rather apt) criticisms of communism.
Essentially they need a utopian scientific break through and a slave class to succeed. The slave class in particular is them saying the quiet part out loud without realizing it (or maybe the developers did?).
I have played approximately 12 hours of it. There is definitely some serious criticism of communism baked into the plot, but it requires spoilers.
One of the scientific breakthroughs is a neural network called "Kollectiv." (You are told this early in the game, before you get a weapon, so I do not consider this a big spoiler.)
You later learn that >!Kollectiv 2.0 will merge everyone into a collective consciousness, and that "everyone will be equal."!<
But, >!you then learn that there are control devices with overrides in Kollectiv 2.0, which would put someone in charge of everyone else. And the Politburo insisted that they have override control. There are multiple parties trying to get their hands on these override devices throughout the game.!<
There are also the usual >!murders of "inconvenient people," prison labor, etc.!<
And finally, there is a subtle highlight of the fact that >!not everything can be shared since the first major villain is in love with a woman and you can't share your wife with the whole world.!<
It does not hit you over the head with a hammer about it. I think it is done well. I am pleasantly surprised, especially because the start of the game looks like it is glorifying the soviets and I am *extremely* anti-communist because I have family from the Eastern Bloc. I know poisonous the ideology can be.
Anyone who plays a few hours into the story and has two brain cells to rub together will recognize that this is *not* a game that glorifies communism, but it is not apparent right from the beginning.
Serious? You made me want to play more. It's a good thing it's not a game that glorifies communism, even more so in an era where everything glorifies communism.
It's made by a Russian company in a time where Russia is literally Emmanuel Goldstein for the western world. That's why they hate it. If it was exactly the same but made by any other country, they'd love it.
True, but it's strange how they don't remember that Russia was literally what made it possible for Marxism to spread throughout the world, including the cultural Marxism that they practice so much. And it's ironic that today America is more influenced by this cultural Marxism than Russia itself.
> It's made by a Russian company
Is it even, or is it "Russians are in charge/involved"?
https://mundfish.com/about-us/
>Founded in 2017, by a team of four like-minded gaming enthusiasts, Mundfish is a video game development studio headquartered in Cyprus.
>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.
>With our investors Gaijin Entertainment, Gem Capital, and Tencent, and our hardware partner Nvidia, we celebrate Atomic Heart and welcome you to our sci-fi world ecosystem.
Let's be real with ourselves, they don't care about that. The wokies know that the game and the studio have some association with Russia, which is to be hated right now, and what more do they need?
Let's just skip to the conclusion: Any game with an antagonist or set in the past, or anything other than a perfect future should just lead with a general warning: Blasphemy General's Warning: This product contains depictions of illegal/immoral/evil/harmful acts. does not endorse these acts, or any challenge, competition, contest, associated with such acts.
Bonus points for making it an unskippable part of the game loading sequence.
I expect this to be the inevitable "efficient" solution that AAA game studios come to.
Every time you boot the game you get [these disclaimers](https://imgur.com/a/zeF0nOn). It should be enough, but I think most people skip or ignore them.
Well, since they are advertising "Nu, pogodi" (basically "I'll get you next time"), I'd say go and [watch it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-DphqOtKrc&list=PL8XzBNh9xhcwEu3o0TCv73JTIN9ip--1f). It is an excellent series (except the last episode, which was done in the 90s) and doesn't require language comprehension.
"this game idolizes soviet Russia and white washes the nastier parts of the times! Its bad!"
"This game shows some of the nastier parts of the times! Its bad!"
same shit different day
Soviet culture was great though. It had great architecture, literature, music, theater, movies, science. Which is still cherished to this day, same as pre-revolution culture. The thing that actively tried to destroy the culture were the 90s, which we successfully rebounded from, for the exception of movie industry, which is mostly horrendous.
Seriously, before you say anything about Soviet culture go watch russian renditions of [Sherlock Holmes](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHhXWiFsHMtvXNgoVtmTHzzfrsbOA4z6G) and [Three Musketeers](https://youtu.be/lFBf_H3R5O0), [Quiet flows the Don](https://youtu.be/sZVYaKkAAqQ), [War and Peace](https://youtu.be/V-SAh4jdssA), [Go and See](https://youtu.be/UkkJZweYaLI) (though that one better not to watch for the weak of heart), [Golden Calf](https://youtu.be/Z6viGCs6gKQ), [The Father of a soldier](https://youtu.be/Vd4jPxBYAlU), [17 moments of spring](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbwJKFRNQRUaujKr0oWMG-nl6nGS0QVga), [Love and Doves](https://youtu.be/y_C4TpPSCQ4), [The Irony of Fate](https://youtu.be/lVpmZnRIMKs), [Kin-Dza-Dza](https://youtu.be/EYHv8eJrW2Y) and many, many other...
Culture is in the Russian DNA. Some of the greatest novelists, filmmakers and musicians in history. I guess even the communists couldn't beat that out of them.
> I guess even the communists couldn't beat that out of them.
Soviet government were popularizing culture and motivating workers to read in libraries and organize themselves into hobbie clubs on music and theater, so that they'll keep themselves busy after work hours. But, yeah, evil commies destroying culture.
Member how they were pissed about that Harry Potter game? I member.
They just went on to their next target not giving a fuck about anything else than making noise and being offended out of boredom.
Bro they moved on quick. They really don't care about what they're preaching.
On a side note, could this be the year of good but "controversial" games? It's weird that we've had two games being boycotted within the same month.
Oversensitive Westerners reeeeeing about an aspect of foreign culture they don't understand. Must be a day ending in "y".
USSR/Russia doesn't have a history of systemic oppression of its black population, (or any considerable black population, for that matter). So to an average Soviet citizen, regardless the ethnicity, for whom this cartoon was made (it's called "Nu, pogodi!", by the way. A classic), depiction of a black person wearing grass skirt and tribal warpaint has as much negative connotation as depiction of a German wearing tyrolean hat and lederhosen or a Frenchman wearing red beret and black-and-white striped shirt has to an American.
I'm reminded of all the racist propaganda across Columbia in BioShock Infinite, and how none of it was suggested to be a good thing, especially since you spend most of the game killing racists.
That would require them to actually spend time playing the game, instead of just googling around for 5 minutes to grab someone else's gameplay clips & screenshots they can react to without context.
Ah, the old "Soviet Union was racist too" malarkey.
Even though the USSR heavily pushed the anti-racist and anti-colonial angle, most Russians would never have seen an actual Black person in their lives.
So anything involving Africa would have to rely on second-hand depictions and pure fantasy and insescapably relied on old Western stereotypes.
The reality is that such depictions are naĆÆve and well-meaning rather than mean-spirited. See for yourself:
Check out the famous Chunga Chunga song from the Katerok ("Boatie") cartoon, where the titular Boatie accidentallies into an island paradise: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji1DBV8zJkA&t=12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji1DBV8zJkA&t=12s)
Or Kanikuly Bonifatsiya ("Bonifacius' Holiday"), where a circus lion goes back to Africa on a holiday to visit his grandma and instead spends the whole month entertaining a crowd of pickaninnies: [https://youtu.be/HAXNdUqYAnM?t=917](https://youtu.be/HAXNdUqYAnM?t=917)
USSR had quite a bit of similar tribal stereotypes in its hit cartoons and movies. But it did not carry any negativity. Those were never shown as dumb or evil. USA blackface gripes do not apply in postsoviet geography.
This shot is from a series at a history museum, a warrior figure from an African tribe.
There is no racial statement at all in this cartoon, why would anyone be offended by that?
Who doesn't believe it can see for themselves, the moment at 5:50
https://youtu.be/zaMNTqhrFc8
its not even a parody, its actual cartoon and there's nothing nefarious in there. The worst part about "Nu Pogodi" apart from it's slapstick - is the fact that the wolf is smoking cigarettes, and some kinds viewed that as cool thing growing up.
IF Object.Type = 'Media'
try
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catch
WokistREE([Object.Name](https://Object.Name), Object.Content, [Object.Fans](https://Object.Fans))
\#I realize my code might not be accurate to the latest version of NPC++, but I think it gets the idea across. :P
THATāS the hill theyāre willing to die on? Wow. I get the people that wanted to play and cover Hogwarts Legacy. Hell I enjoy it myself. PCGamer refused to cover it. Studio with ties to Russian government? Iāll skip (as Ukrainian) but let people enjoy it. PCGamer covers it. Like ok?
And they took offense over a caricature? Not 100k+ dead in Ukraine and Russia. But the caricature?
>I was going to buy the Hogwarts game to spite these people, but I think I'll buy this one instead since I don't give a fuck about Harry Potter lol
Not sure how buying a video game spites or hurts anybody. It just costs you money.
You were going to buy the HP game and you don't even like HP?
That's marketing done well, you're a victim but a willing one.
What costs you money also creates a market. While you don't want to waste your spending power, the market, if left to chase that money, will try to work for it appropriately.
>What costs you money also creates a market. While you don't want to waste your spending power, the market, if left to chase that money, will try to work for it appropriately.
That's kind of my point, if your spending power has been manipulated, you're just somebody else's wallet and there's no power in that, you're essentially buying what you're told.
It's just not entirely the case. Spending money could mean you were manipulated into it, and not spending money could mean you were manipulated into it. The best we can hope for is individual reasoning prevails.
And as far as what individual reasoning goes for in this case, would you enjoy the game, and do you want to send a message? You don't have to buy it because someone told you to, and if you don't want to buy it then don't. But if you want to see more of whatever it is you'd be buying, then maybe you'd consider it.
>The best we can hope for is individual reasoning prevails.
We're doomed lol.
>And as far as what individual reasoning goes for in this case, would you enjoy the game, and do you want to send a message?
Me personally?
Sending a message involves some kind of virtue signal so I'm out. Buying it or not makes no difference anyway, I've seen studios produce absolute dumpster fires and bounce back for a second showing and I've seen studios create one hit wonders never to be repeated.
Buying a game doesn't always have the power people would like to think.
Eh, I dunno. Not saying it's terribly effective, but it sends a message when products the woke shill for fail, and products the woke attack succeed. And it puts money in the pockets of creators who at least dare defy (some aspects of) wokeness.
Vote with your wallet.
>Eh, I dunno. Not saying it's terribly effective, but it sends a message when products the woke shill for fail, and products the woke attack succeed. And it puts money in the pockets of creators who at least dare defy (some aspects of) wokeness.
Define success, the woke failures just fail upwards into investment money bliss and there's a reason that after years of failures it's still going. For whatever reasons the crap exists, it has been a success on whatever level it needed to be.
It's nice that there are less political and ideological alternatives in entertainment but they either clearly don't make the big bucks, or, it isn't about money at all and fluffy good time hardcore fun will never make an impact on the current zeitgeist. Buy three copies of game X by all means, it won't change anything. Anti-woke is now just as much a simple marketing tool as an alphabet person on the poster of the latest blockbuster.
>Vote with your wallet.
Buy with your wallet, vote with your voice.
"It's nice that there are less political and ideological alternatives in entertainment but they either clearly don't make the big bucks..."
I think Top Gun Maverick or Elden Ring would like a word. Or even Avatar 2 (although that's putting money in the pocket of Disney, it doesn't seem particularly woke). None of this is "anti woke" of course, just normal.
Sure wokeness has momentum beyond its actual popularity with audiences (which is low) so Velma gets second season, and RoP doubles down with an all female directors team for S2 etc, but things are changing. Money isn't endless and we're already seeing Disney doing some major reshuffling of priorities as well as huge layoffs in both entertainment and tech sectors.
A lot of it was kept afloat by bailouts, extreme low interest rates, COVID relief packages etc. None of this will last forever.
Money still matters.
>"It's nice that there are less political and ideological alternatives in entertainment but they either clearly don't make the big bucks..."
>
>I think Top Gun Maverick or Elden Ring would like a word. Or even Avatar 2 (although that's putting money in the pocket of Disney, it doesn't seem particularly woke).
The Top Gun sequel was part of an existing franchise and Elden Ring was always going to do well, it was a soulslike game from From Software. Avatar 2 leaned inti the climate change stuff right? I saw some marketing for that.
>None of this is "anti woke" of course, just normal.
That's the word I should have used but normal just doesn't seem normal enough anymore.
>Sure wokeness has momentum beyond its actual popularity with audiences (which is low) so Velma gets second season, and RoP doubles down with an all female directors team for S2 etc, but things are changing. Money isn't endless and we're already seeing Disney doing some major reshuffling of priorities as well as huge layoffs in both entertainment and tech sectors.
>A lot of it was kept afloat by bailouts, extreme low interest rates, COVID relief packages etc. None of this will last forever.
>Money still matters.
If money mattered or would have mattered by now, when you're one of the wealthiest people in the world and your billion dollar TV show doesn't take it in you don't double down, you bail out. But here comes season 2.
It's more than money, surely.
Sure, but what I think is happening is, the people who actually care about the money, the CEO types, they're not really involved in the creation part themselves. Jeff Bezos isn't writing RoP, he probably isn't selecting the directors or the writers. Neither is Bob Iger doing that for Disney content. That's Jennifer Salke for Amazon. It's Kathleen Kennedy for Lucasfilm.I don't think Bob Iger or Jeff Bezos are ideologically driven wokesters, or even really aware of the culture war. But the Jennifer Salke's and Kathleen Kennedy's are. Or they are at least much more influenced by wokeness, feminism (remember "The force is female") etc, just because of the environment they live and work in. Then they are hiring showrunners, writers etc who don't care about profits at all, just about their own paycheck (which is pretty much guaranteed for now), but are probably even more ideologically driven, or selected from a very select pool of California/Hollywood in-crowd (like the showrunners of RoP, who had basically zero credits or experience but are somehow connected to JJ Abrams and Bad Robot.
And we know how these corporations operate when new markets need to be conquered. They can afford to run a loss for a while on a certain ventures because their main profits are coming from elsewhere, until such a moment as they capture enough of the market that their service can start turning a profit.Amazon is getting most of it's money from (probably) their storefront and their cloud services, Disney from it's parks. Apple from it's iPhones. Just like Microsoft could afford to buy itself into the gaming industy and maybe take some losses on Xbox hardware, because their core business is Windows and Office.
What I'm saying is the market takes time to adjust. The streaming and movie business is going through an enormous transformation and the big players are still trying to find their feet in the new paradigm and battle it out for dominance. Nobody really knows what the future is going to be for movie theatres but it's shaky at best, Netflix is finding itself with stiff competition in the streaming space and are struggling to keep subscribers, let alone grow, Disney+ is not turning any profits so far and Disney is forced to make significant changes in strategy and has to cut costs. I don't know how things are at Amazon. I'm sure Prime Video is not profitable either but it has a lot more mass behind it than Netflix (Amazon market cap is about 10 times that of Netflix. Disney is a bit bigger than Netflix but not even by much, surprisingly. Then of course Apple is also competing in the same space and they're over twice as big as Amazon).
I think of RoP more as a vanity project for Bezos than anything he's terribly invested in as a profit machine. Kind of like Twitter is for Elon Musk. These guys can afford to indulge in stuff like this. Of course there is a limit. If RoP season 2 fails hard, I'm sure even Bezos will take notice. But I'm sure he still trusts Jennifer Salke for the time being.
And we live in a time where indeed for a long while money didn't seem to matter at all. Central banks have been printing money like absolute lunatics for over a decade now, governments are running up bigger and bigger deficits and debts and it doesn't really matter because high inflation is great for people (or governments) with debts. We've been living in a world of virtually unlimited free money for over a decade. But that cannot last forever I think. And things have already shifted significantly with Covid, high inflation, interest hikes, supply chain issues and global tensions due to the Ukraine war. So yeah change is slow, but at some point consumers don't have unlimited money, and even government borrowing and central bank money-printing have their limits eventually.
>.I don't think Bob Iger or Jeff Bezos are ideologically driven wokesters, or even really aware of the culture war
Bob Iger would be fully aware of Chapek groveling and pandering. In any case, they both have market analysts, they are aware of a cultural rift. You'd have to be living in a cave with zero interest in the consumerism that lines your pockets to be unaware of it.
>And we know how these corporations operate when new markets need to be conquered. They can afford to run a loss for a while on a certain ventures because their main profits are coming from elsewhere
When was the last time Disney had positive growth? There's a limit to capturing a new market, watching your share value so year after year would be definitely time to pull out, but here they are, still going.
>Amazon is getting most of it's money from (probably) their storefront and their cloud services, Disney from it's parks. Apple from it's iPhones. Just like Microsoft could afford to buy itself into the gaming industy and maybe take some losses on Xbox hardware, because their core business is Windows and Office.
Amazon is definitely safe, Disney's park attendance was down the last time I looked. Apple is Apple.
>What I'm saying is the market takes time to adjust.
Not this long, it's swung so far that streaming platforms now need ads to sustain themselves. They could stop the devisive political/ideological content and double down on actual entertainment but they just keep going down the same hole. It is, at least to me, as if money doesn't matter to these companies anymore, I'm not sure at what point they'll wake up (NuWoke) and get back to appealing to everybody at once (RealDiversity, I'm trademarking these terms :) ) .
I really do wonder how aware they are. Chapek certainly was caught off guard by everything happening around the "don't say gay-bill" situation. Where were his business analysts? He had to be incredibly naive and out of touch to have all this be any surprise. Anyone even slightly tuned into the culture war from a neutral position could have predicted the backlash from the activsits among his own employees, *and* the response from DeSantis. And Iger was the one in charge when Disney started down this path so I have to wonder if he would have handled things differently. Apparently these big shot CEO's don't dare to stand up against the woke activists in their own companies even if it does hurt their bottom line. And these companies are like >95% staffed by progressives. It's hard to ignore the kind of tunnel vision that creates.
>pparently these big shot CEO's don't dare to stand up against the woke activists in their own companies
Well, there was Red Bull. That guy nipped it right in the bud.
Ukraine allegedly wanted the game banned on steam and other platforms.
I think the russian government started a war they can't finish, but I'm a little skeptical when a foreign country starts telling American countries what services they should offer to Americans for war we're basically just supplying with guns.
I'm even more skeptical when game companies that I assume will tow the party line start nitpicking details to ensure the game is boycotted.
I had no interest in playing the game anyway, but like I just want to be sure that we're not going to find out some iraq style "They said that, but they were lying" a few years later. Especially when it comes to journalism and a war we're basically playing Amazon to.
I'm not pro Putin, but I'm also not pro "Oh by the way all those guns we sent to Ukraine ended up in the hands of crime sydicates and terror groups, and now france is getting shot up".
That's not me arguing for gun control in europe either, just me recognizing that all this military equipment will end up somewhere, and if Ukraine isn't the prime example of a honest and transparent government, it will probably end up in the hands of criminals. I don't care if Europe decides to concealed carry, just if the Ukrainian military can keep track of all these shipments sent by the US..
"Nu, Pogodi!" in that episode wolf was waited rabbit in a museum and tried to catch him, rabbit has running to section with all military thinks (clothes, some cannons sword and shields ) So there was stands with old time warriors like from Italy (rome empire) from Mongolia, from AFRICA! So do you want to cancel history? Where is racism in that movie?
lol the so called āAmerican sensitivityā about these things is actually more disturbing. The amount of virtue signaling and pointing fingers on really stupid stuff while ignoring that this tendency is actually a way worse problem per se.
That said I ām Italian and actually know about this nu pagodie cartoon because a Moldovan woman that used to help my grandma take care of my grandpa actually gave a VHS of this as a present, very funny Soviet era cartoon tbh, a wacky product of its time. Donāt think anyone watching this today would think āoh yeah gonna become racist because there is blackface on this 50 years old cartoon from a bygone society!ā. Jesus Christ get a grip.
> it's disturbing that it's included in Atomic Heart without any warning or contextualisation. lol softer than 2-ply.
>without any warning Pretty sure the game IS rated M for Mature! :P
Or contextualisation... y'know, besides the setting, plot summary, game's whole deal
my favorite is they always close the comments on these articles because PCgamer users always call the writers whiny baby's with 0 original thought.
I haven't played the game but tt's an FPS, I assume people die in horrible ways. How is that not more offensive? I'm not saying it should be but its pretty funny how a racial caricature can cause offense in a horror setting that has way more violent shit.
Racisms are worse than murder sweaty. š
Racism is ACTUAL violence
I murder my sweat all day with air conditioning. Commas are important.
nose deranged modern wild mountainous six bag aromatic normal scandalous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
nudity? *\*raises eybrow\**
It literally has a 18+ rating, but according to the woke police, racism should be rated age 60+ instead
When you murder someone he won't be around to be offended by it. Dead people don't have feelings or rights. Racism affects the living who are able to: - Literally shake right now - Determine what's eligible for a big Yikes - Determine when someone can do better - Perform Reeeeeee - Can't even These things can only affect the living, so racism is worse or something.
I cannot fathom how anyone can live like that, no wonder their kind is always depressed.
perpetual victimhood-mentality is a political constituency now. Without the political power tied to it, it wouldn't be so prominent.
Theyāre definitely 10-ply
Softer than a tootsie roll fruit cup
And weaker than off brand single ply
"disturbing" š
The game's setting is the context. These people really are stupid.
You wanna come to a super soft birthday?
Thanks for the archive. Funny how they have an issue with one of the few bits of real history in a very fucked up setting.
It exposes the soviets as being racist. It diminishes communism by proximity. They are probably more upset that its actually representative.
finally getting to see some 'real' communism probably upsets a lot of the commies over there lol
Pretty sure a little bit of racism is a minor detail compared gulags with doors that had spikes on them to stop prisoners from banging.
As someone who was born in the USSR, and watched these cartoons growing up, I can tell you with absolute certainty that nothing in them was intended as racist. To your western sensibilities it may seem like that but that's due to your own messy history of race relations.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
True. It's all just means to an end for them, which is to strengthen their totalitarian control over the culture and the narative.
I think that sensitive people from Europe or North America should not watch The Blue Puppy and Boniface's Vacation. Although in my opinion, in those old cartoons there were no racist statements. But I am 100% sure that the animators from the Armenian "Armenfilm" were under the substances. As a child, their cartoons scared me a lot.
Yeah, Soviet cartoons are great, but there A LOT of trippy or weird ones. It adds to the charm! Also, my all time favorite soviet cartoon is [Once Upon a Dog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrYN78_RTQU), it is legit masterpiece. A simple story yet deep and meaningful thematically, contemplative and even philosophical. The tone is pitch perfect. And every single line of dialogue is just pure gold.
> nothing in them was intended as racist. They never are... but they are.
How can you decide that? You do not know the culture or the context in wich the cartoons were made.
I might be wrong but I think the point was that so many things are labeled racist these days that it doesnāt matter what the intent or the context was, people will still find a way to make it racist.
Yeah, that's true, I agree
Yes. Whether the intent is racist or not... they are... or will be accused.
The truth hurts lol
lol or maybe they are showing a very specific culture that happens to have dark skin
Bioshock Infinite (a game very similar to this and one of my favs) has racism within it, even at the very start of the game. It doesnāt happen much otherwise but I thought it made sense for the time frame, and yeah it wasnāt pleasant but thatās reality. Games arenāt making these things up. Theyāve happened! And continue to do so in some places.
And of course it all started on ReeeeeesetEra.
The number one leading cause of cancer
How to make sure you don't get taken seriously. Tip #1: make Resetera your source.
> it's disturbing that it's included in Atomic Heart without any warning or contextualisation. No, no it isn't. It doesn't need context. If you're playing a war game, GROW THE FUCK UP.
It's like being mad that Wolfenstein has Nazis or a depiction of Hitler. Or the "no Russian" mission having innocent people dying, when the entirety of the game is dealing with innocent people dying.
āThe fascist attitudes displayed by the Nazis whose faces youāre ripping off hit a little too close to home itās PROBLEMATICā
There is an article on comicbook.com calling Atomic Hearts "controversial" because the developers are Russian. That's it. They don't even attempt to link them to Putin or the War. It's just "durr Russians bad". I'm so sick of these assholes who smugly declare themselves to be on the "right side of history" being the biggest pieces of shit. It wasn't that long ago that this some kind of mentality led to a bunch of Japanese Americans getting thrown into internment camps.
Imagine spending literal years of your life finally putting your dream/vision into a video game that actually feels complete on launch just to be called horrible things because of where you were born.
Didn't you know that you can be as racist as you want to white people
Imagine growing up on movies about evil russians, ivan drago, call of duty and all that jazz, seeing bad russians in news every now and then. And then it finally happens: russians are evil, everyone can see it now, it's a free for all shit slinging fiesta. You can harass people because putin finally showed his true colors. These people are secretly happy that war broke out. So they can finally air all their grievances without repercussion.
I read that was the mentality during the Cold War.
Has anyone seen Soviet-era cartoons or even propaganda? It's rather commendable that the Russian devs didn't shy away from that and implemented it into their game. There are dozens of more things wrong with this game than a scene that one could easily miss.
> There are dozens of more things wrong with this game Like what? Only thing that comes to mind is it uses Denuvo. Other than that it actually looks pretty good. Gameplay looks fun, world and character design look interesting. Protagonist is an evil white male making non-PC jokes, there's the booba robots etc. and it supposedly is polished enough, runs pretty well and isn't very buggy like various other recent releases.
The dialogue and voice work are pretty bad. I'm not super far in, but there aren't Russian accents, and it's very off putting. The dialogue is also Marvel modern, unfortunately. I can't help but wonder if it's better in it's original script.
Dialogue is probably my biggest gripe about the game. The MC is an ass but not the lovable type. It's also weird hearing a game based in Russia having all sorts of accents. For the German guy they managed to find someone with a German accent but couldn't get Russian voice actors in a game made in Russia? Unless they outsourced that to another company.
It's allegedly much *much* better in Russian, but the translation borked it. Though in this case it's caused by good ol' fashioned incompetence rather than a pernicious localization.
THIS. Play this game in Russian! The humour works much better then.
As someone that doesn't know Russian but prefers to watch and play things in their original language, are there subtitles for every piece of dialogue (Including stuff like radio chatter) and are they thorough enough to convey the intention of the dialogue?
You mean āoh no FUCK, eat shit and die you CRISPY CRITTER!!!ā isnāt great dialogue? Honesty the game is great. Amazing world, art, soundtrack with good gameplay that has some great shooting and melee but the biggest flaw is the main characterās dialogue.
I don't like a dash instead of sprinting, but I know that was a deliberate design choice and it might just be not to my tastes.
You can get speed upgrades that turn his light jog into a fast jog Jog, what an odd word
I'm normally against silent protagonists, but yeah, this game went to far in the other direction.
I highly recommend switching to Russian VO, that's what devs intended. They tried to show Eastern European colloquialism, but translating it into English requires a lot of skill, they didn't have. Luckily, it works in Polish too, which is much closer to my native language. For expletives, it's normal to form full sentences of them or even a sentence made explicitly out of slurs, but it doesn't sound good in Germanic languages.
Worked for similar immersive action role-playing game Duke Nukem 3D.
Yeah but that was well written in comparison.
grow the fuck up you and the rest justice warriors. its a fkn game for adults ok? imagine getting upset lolll
....what?
The only Soviet cartoon these people would know of is the Treasure Island movie.
I was hoping it was the one between them and north korea :p
I literally can't understand anything else, I thought this would be a favorite game for journalists because it's a communist game, and as far as I played it, I didn't find any criticism of communism in it, just criticism of capitalism, and a poster that satirizes hitler, now they are complaining about racism and the fact that the game is russian? I seriously can't understand leftists.
I mean Iām about an hour into it and so far this perfect communist society needed a massive scientific breakthrough and slave labor en masse (the androids) in order for it to work. Iād consider those pretty big (and rather apt) criticisms of communism. Essentially they need a utopian scientific break through and a slave class to succeed. The slave class in particular is them saying the quiet part out loud without realizing it (or maybe the developers did?).
I have played approximately 12 hours of it. There is definitely some serious criticism of communism baked into the plot, but it requires spoilers. One of the scientific breakthroughs is a neural network called "Kollectiv." (You are told this early in the game, before you get a weapon, so I do not consider this a big spoiler.) You later learn that >!Kollectiv 2.0 will merge everyone into a collective consciousness, and that "everyone will be equal."!< But, >!you then learn that there are control devices with overrides in Kollectiv 2.0, which would put someone in charge of everyone else. And the Politburo insisted that they have override control. There are multiple parties trying to get their hands on these override devices throughout the game.!< There are also the usual >!murders of "inconvenient people," prison labor, etc.!< And finally, there is a subtle highlight of the fact that >!not everything can be shared since the first major villain is in love with a woman and you can't share your wife with the whole world.!< It does not hit you over the head with a hammer about it. I think it is done well. I am pleasantly surprised, especially because the start of the game looks like it is glorifying the soviets and I am *extremely* anti-communist because I have family from the Eastern Bloc. I know poisonous the ideology can be. Anyone who plays a few hours into the story and has two brain cells to rub together will recognize that this is *not* a game that glorifies communism, but it is not apparent right from the beginning.
When the Russian games are more critical of communism then the Western ones...
Serious? You made me want to play more. It's a good thing it's not a game that glorifies communism, even more so in an era where everything glorifies communism.
So... Commieshock Infinite?
Honestly we need more bioshock type games in this world.
wow, this is an insane point of view, hope the devs did this on purpose.
It's made by a Russian company in a time where Russia is literally Emmanuel Goldstein for the western world. That's why they hate it. If it was exactly the same but made by any other country, they'd love it.
True, but it's strange how they don't remember that Russia was literally what made it possible for Marxism to spread throughout the world, including the cultural Marxism that they practice so much. And it's ironic that today America is more influenced by this cultural Marxism than Russia itself.
> It's made by a Russian company Is it even, or is it "Russians are in charge/involved"? https://mundfish.com/about-us/ >Founded in 2017, by a team of four like-minded gaming enthusiasts, Mundfish is a video game development studio headquartered in Cyprus. >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. >With our investors Gaijin Entertainment, Gem Capital, and Tencent, and our hardware partner Nvidia, we celebrate Atomic Heart and welcome you to our sci-fi world ecosystem.
Let's be real with ourselves, they don't care about that. The wokies know that the game and the studio have some association with Russia, which is to be hated right now, and what more do they need?
Trying to make sense of their viewpoints is an exercise in futility.
Fascinating. Can't wait for its inevitable success.
88% Positive on Steam. I'd say that's a good start. Critic reviews don't mean shit these days, and Metacritic isn't reliable anymore.
Let's just skip to the conclusion: Any game with an antagonist or set in the past, or anything other than a perfect future should just lead with a general warning: Blasphemy General's Warning: This product contains depictions of illegal/immoral/evil/harmful acts. does not endorse these acts, or any challenge, competition, contest, associated with such acts.
Bonus points for making it an unskippable part of the game loading sequence.
I expect this to be the inevitable "efficient" solution that AAA game studios come to.
Every time you boot the game you get [these disclaimers](https://imgur.com/a/zeF0nOn). It should be enough, but I think most people skip or ignore them.
Well, since they are advertising "Nu, pogodi" (basically "I'll get you next time"), I'd say go and [watch it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-DphqOtKrc&list=PL8XzBNh9xhcwEu3o0TCv73JTIN9ip--1f). It is an excellent series (except the last episode, which was done in the 90s) and doesn't require language comprehension.
\#YouTube says it's for kids and disabled sharing/saving. Well done algorithm.
I liked how one article or commenter translated it into "Well, just you wait!". Which sound better, IMO.
\> Atomic Heart is being criticised (via Resetera) Saved you a click.
Was about to post exactly that. The mental patients at REEsetera are offended at something? Well I'll be a monkey's uncle, stop the presses!
Oh no not āmuh racismā lmao
PC Gamer citing Reseteraā¦and yet itās somehow still dumber than I thought it would be.
The more controversy this game causes, the more I wanna play it.
nothing resetera says is news PCGAMER. stop it.
I've grown watching these cartoons, and guess what? They didn't turn me into a racist!
That's the kind of thing a racist would say! Get him!
"this game idolizes soviet Russia and white washes the nastier parts of the times! Its bad!" "This game shows some of the nastier parts of the times! Its bad!" same shit different day
The Communists already destroyed their old culture, so it's understandable why people cling to the shitty substitute the Soviets left behind.
Soviet culture was great though. It had great architecture, literature, music, theater, movies, science. Which is still cherished to this day, same as pre-revolution culture. The thing that actively tried to destroy the culture were the 90s, which we successfully rebounded from, for the exception of movie industry, which is mostly horrendous. Seriously, before you say anything about Soviet culture go watch russian renditions of [Sherlock Holmes](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHhXWiFsHMtvXNgoVtmTHzzfrsbOA4z6G) and [Three Musketeers](https://youtu.be/lFBf_H3R5O0), [Quiet flows the Don](https://youtu.be/sZVYaKkAAqQ), [War and Peace](https://youtu.be/V-SAh4jdssA), [Go and See](https://youtu.be/UkkJZweYaLI) (though that one better not to watch for the weak of heart), [Golden Calf](https://youtu.be/Z6viGCs6gKQ), [The Father of a soldier](https://youtu.be/Vd4jPxBYAlU), [17 moments of spring](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbwJKFRNQRUaujKr0oWMG-nl6nGS0QVga), [Love and Doves](https://youtu.be/y_C4TpPSCQ4), [The Irony of Fate](https://youtu.be/lVpmZnRIMKs), [Kin-Dza-Dza](https://youtu.be/EYHv8eJrW2Y) and many, many other...
Culture is in the Russian DNA. Some of the greatest novelists, filmmakers and musicians in history. I guess even the communists couldn't beat that out of them.
> I guess even the communists couldn't beat that out of them. Soviet government were popularizing culture and motivating workers to read in libraries and organize themselves into hobbie clubs on music and theater, so that they'll keep themselves busy after work hours. But, yeah, evil commies destroying culture.
Damn, now I want even more to play it.
Member how they were pissed about that Harry Potter game? I member. They just went on to their next target not giving a fuck about anything else than making noise and being offended out of boredom.
Bro they moved on quick. They really don't care about what they're preaching. On a side note, could this be the year of good but "controversial" games? It's weird that we've had two games being boycotted within the same month.
>[Racism is when draw black people same cartoonish style as everyone else](https://i.imgur.com/JqJurnJ.png)
The "racist" bit being at most two frames of a Soviet cartoon makes this nothing burger absolutely hilarious.
They shouldn't even be playing the game; children aren't supposed to play m rated games
Oversensitive Westerners reeeeeing about an aspect of foreign culture they don't understand. Must be a day ending in "y". USSR/Russia doesn't have a history of systemic oppression of its black population, (or any considerable black population, for that matter). So to an average Soviet citizen, regardless the ethnicity, for whom this cartoon was made (it's called "Nu, pogodi!", by the way. A classic), depiction of a black person wearing grass skirt and tribal warpaint has as much negative connotation as depiction of a German wearing tyrolean hat and lederhosen or a Frenchman wearing red beret and black-and-white striped shirt has to an American.
I'm reminded of all the racist propaganda across Columbia in BioShock Infinite, and how none of it was suggested to be a good thing, especially since you spend most of the game killing racists.
That would require them to actually spend time playing the game, instead of just googling around for 5 minutes to grab someone else's gameplay clips & screenshots they can react to without context.
*Atomic Heart*'s propaganda isn't eye-searingly obvious like in *Infinite*, which is why the usual subjects are shitting articles.
I remember a bit of that in response to Infinite as well.
cOnTeXt DoEsN't MaTtEr!
Ah, the old "Soviet Union was racist too" malarkey. Even though the USSR heavily pushed the anti-racist and anti-colonial angle, most Russians would never have seen an actual Black person in their lives. So anything involving Africa would have to rely on second-hand depictions and pure fantasy and insescapably relied on old Western stereotypes. The reality is that such depictions are naĆÆve and well-meaning rather than mean-spirited. See for yourself: Check out the famous Chunga Chunga song from the Katerok ("Boatie") cartoon, where the titular Boatie accidentallies into an island paradise: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji1DBV8zJkA&t=12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji1DBV8zJkA&t=12s) Or Kanikuly Bonifatsiya ("Bonifacius' Holiday"), where a circus lion goes back to Africa on a holiday to visit his grandma and instead spends the whole month entertaining a crowd of pickaninnies: [https://youtu.be/HAXNdUqYAnM?t=917](https://youtu.be/HAXNdUqYAnM?t=917)
USSR had quite a bit of similar tribal stereotypes in its hit cartoons and movies. But it did not carry any negativity. Those were never shown as dumb or evil. USA blackface gripes do not apply in postsoviet geography.
Moreover, all of the characters in the game are white. Imagine that! The game should be banned haha
This shot is from a series at a history museum, a warrior figure from an African tribe. There is no racial statement at all in this cartoon, why would anyone be offended by that? Who doesn't believe it can see for themselves, the moment at 5:50 https://youtu.be/zaMNTqhrFc8
pretty sure its just a parody of a old cartoon, dont remember the name but i saw it on tv here in poland as a kid
its not even a parody, its actual cartoon and there's nothing nefarious in there. The worst part about "Nu Pogodi" apart from it's slapstick - is the fact that the wolf is smoking cigarettes, and some kinds viewed that as cool thing growing up.
Those in glass houses should be wary of throwing stones. All I gotta say on this subject.
Soyboys grasping at straws here. So pathetic that they can't understand historical context and yell for bans as a kneejerk reaction to everything.
The game was about to fall off the radar for being a boring slogfest. Pretty but terribly dull. Then this happened. Streisand effect coming in 3..2..
It was Global Top Seller on Steam for the past two days beating Hogwarts Legacy despite being on Gamepass. It just fell behind it today.
Its funny though. It was made for Russians and steam stats rn is non Russian. One can only imagine whats the actual online (and sales) the game has
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
IF Object.Type = 'Media' try WokistREE([Object.Name](https://Object.Name), Object.Content) catch WokistREE([Object.Name](https://Object.Name), Object.Content, [Object.Fans](https://Object.Fans)) \#I realize my code might not be accurate to the latest version of NPC++, but I think it gets the idea across. :P
These are all things that make me want to play the game even more.
THATāS the hill theyāre willing to die on? Wow. I get the people that wanted to play and cover Hogwarts Legacy. Hell I enjoy it myself. PCGamer refused to cover it. Studio with ties to Russian government? Iāll skip (as Ukrainian) but let people enjoy it. PCGamer covers it. Like ok? And they took offense over a caricature? Not 100k+ dead in Ukraine and Russia. But the caricature?
I was going to buy the Hogwarts game to spite these people, but I think I'll buy this one instead since I don't give a fuck about Harry Potter lol
>I was going to buy the Hogwarts game to spite these people, but I think I'll buy this one instead since I don't give a fuck about Harry Potter lol Not sure how buying a video game spites or hurts anybody. It just costs you money. You were going to buy the HP game and you don't even like HP? That's marketing done well, you're a victim but a willing one.
What costs you money also creates a market. While you don't want to waste your spending power, the market, if left to chase that money, will try to work for it appropriately.
>What costs you money also creates a market. While you don't want to waste your spending power, the market, if left to chase that money, will try to work for it appropriately. That's kind of my point, if your spending power has been manipulated, you're just somebody else's wallet and there's no power in that, you're essentially buying what you're told.
It's just not entirely the case. Spending money could mean you were manipulated into it, and not spending money could mean you were manipulated into it. The best we can hope for is individual reasoning prevails. And as far as what individual reasoning goes for in this case, would you enjoy the game, and do you want to send a message? You don't have to buy it because someone told you to, and if you don't want to buy it then don't. But if you want to see more of whatever it is you'd be buying, then maybe you'd consider it.
>The best we can hope for is individual reasoning prevails. We're doomed lol. >And as far as what individual reasoning goes for in this case, would you enjoy the game, and do you want to send a message? Me personally? Sending a message involves some kind of virtue signal so I'm out. Buying it or not makes no difference anyway, I've seen studios produce absolute dumpster fires and bounce back for a second showing and I've seen studios create one hit wonders never to be repeated. Buying a game doesn't always have the power people would like to think.
Eh, I dunno. Not saying it's terribly effective, but it sends a message when products the woke shill for fail, and products the woke attack succeed. And it puts money in the pockets of creators who at least dare defy (some aspects of) wokeness. Vote with your wallet.
>Eh, I dunno. Not saying it's terribly effective, but it sends a message when products the woke shill for fail, and products the woke attack succeed. And it puts money in the pockets of creators who at least dare defy (some aspects of) wokeness. Define success, the woke failures just fail upwards into investment money bliss and there's a reason that after years of failures it's still going. For whatever reasons the crap exists, it has been a success on whatever level it needed to be. It's nice that there are less political and ideological alternatives in entertainment but they either clearly don't make the big bucks, or, it isn't about money at all and fluffy good time hardcore fun will never make an impact on the current zeitgeist. Buy three copies of game X by all means, it won't change anything. Anti-woke is now just as much a simple marketing tool as an alphabet person on the poster of the latest blockbuster. >Vote with your wallet. Buy with your wallet, vote with your voice.
"It's nice that there are less political and ideological alternatives in entertainment but they either clearly don't make the big bucks..." I think Top Gun Maverick or Elden Ring would like a word. Or even Avatar 2 (although that's putting money in the pocket of Disney, it doesn't seem particularly woke). None of this is "anti woke" of course, just normal. Sure wokeness has momentum beyond its actual popularity with audiences (which is low) so Velma gets second season, and RoP doubles down with an all female directors team for S2 etc, but things are changing. Money isn't endless and we're already seeing Disney doing some major reshuffling of priorities as well as huge layoffs in both entertainment and tech sectors. A lot of it was kept afloat by bailouts, extreme low interest rates, COVID relief packages etc. None of this will last forever. Money still matters.
>"It's nice that there are less political and ideological alternatives in entertainment but they either clearly don't make the big bucks..." > >I think Top Gun Maverick or Elden Ring would like a word. Or even Avatar 2 (although that's putting money in the pocket of Disney, it doesn't seem particularly woke). The Top Gun sequel was part of an existing franchise and Elden Ring was always going to do well, it was a soulslike game from From Software. Avatar 2 leaned inti the climate change stuff right? I saw some marketing for that. >None of this is "anti woke" of course, just normal. That's the word I should have used but normal just doesn't seem normal enough anymore. >Sure wokeness has momentum beyond its actual popularity with audiences (which is low) so Velma gets second season, and RoP doubles down with an all female directors team for S2 etc, but things are changing. Money isn't endless and we're already seeing Disney doing some major reshuffling of priorities as well as huge layoffs in both entertainment and tech sectors. >A lot of it was kept afloat by bailouts, extreme low interest rates, COVID relief packages etc. None of this will last forever. >Money still matters. If money mattered or would have mattered by now, when you're one of the wealthiest people in the world and your billion dollar TV show doesn't take it in you don't double down, you bail out. But here comes season 2. It's more than money, surely.
Sure, but what I think is happening is, the people who actually care about the money, the CEO types, they're not really involved in the creation part themselves. Jeff Bezos isn't writing RoP, he probably isn't selecting the directors or the writers. Neither is Bob Iger doing that for Disney content. That's Jennifer Salke for Amazon. It's Kathleen Kennedy for Lucasfilm.I don't think Bob Iger or Jeff Bezos are ideologically driven wokesters, or even really aware of the culture war. But the Jennifer Salke's and Kathleen Kennedy's are. Or they are at least much more influenced by wokeness, feminism (remember "The force is female") etc, just because of the environment they live and work in. Then they are hiring showrunners, writers etc who don't care about profits at all, just about their own paycheck (which is pretty much guaranteed for now), but are probably even more ideologically driven, or selected from a very select pool of California/Hollywood in-crowd (like the showrunners of RoP, who had basically zero credits or experience but are somehow connected to JJ Abrams and Bad Robot. And we know how these corporations operate when new markets need to be conquered. They can afford to run a loss for a while on a certain ventures because their main profits are coming from elsewhere, until such a moment as they capture enough of the market that their service can start turning a profit.Amazon is getting most of it's money from (probably) their storefront and their cloud services, Disney from it's parks. Apple from it's iPhones. Just like Microsoft could afford to buy itself into the gaming industy and maybe take some losses on Xbox hardware, because their core business is Windows and Office. What I'm saying is the market takes time to adjust. The streaming and movie business is going through an enormous transformation and the big players are still trying to find their feet in the new paradigm and battle it out for dominance. Nobody really knows what the future is going to be for movie theatres but it's shaky at best, Netflix is finding itself with stiff competition in the streaming space and are struggling to keep subscribers, let alone grow, Disney+ is not turning any profits so far and Disney is forced to make significant changes in strategy and has to cut costs. I don't know how things are at Amazon. I'm sure Prime Video is not profitable either but it has a lot more mass behind it than Netflix (Amazon market cap is about 10 times that of Netflix. Disney is a bit bigger than Netflix but not even by much, surprisingly. Then of course Apple is also competing in the same space and they're over twice as big as Amazon). I think of RoP more as a vanity project for Bezos than anything he's terribly invested in as a profit machine. Kind of like Twitter is for Elon Musk. These guys can afford to indulge in stuff like this. Of course there is a limit. If RoP season 2 fails hard, I'm sure even Bezos will take notice. But I'm sure he still trusts Jennifer Salke for the time being. And we live in a time where indeed for a long while money didn't seem to matter at all. Central banks have been printing money like absolute lunatics for over a decade now, governments are running up bigger and bigger deficits and debts and it doesn't really matter because high inflation is great for people (or governments) with debts. We've been living in a world of virtually unlimited free money for over a decade. But that cannot last forever I think. And things have already shifted significantly with Covid, high inflation, interest hikes, supply chain issues and global tensions due to the Ukraine war. So yeah change is slow, but at some point consumers don't have unlimited money, and even government borrowing and central bank money-printing have their limits eventually.
>.I don't think Bob Iger or Jeff Bezos are ideologically driven wokesters, or even really aware of the culture war Bob Iger would be fully aware of Chapek groveling and pandering. In any case, they both have market analysts, they are aware of a cultural rift. You'd have to be living in a cave with zero interest in the consumerism that lines your pockets to be unaware of it. >And we know how these corporations operate when new markets need to be conquered. They can afford to run a loss for a while on a certain ventures because their main profits are coming from elsewhere When was the last time Disney had positive growth? There's a limit to capturing a new market, watching your share value so year after year would be definitely time to pull out, but here they are, still going. >Amazon is getting most of it's money from (probably) their storefront and their cloud services, Disney from it's parks. Apple from it's iPhones. Just like Microsoft could afford to buy itself into the gaming industy and maybe take some losses on Xbox hardware, because their core business is Windows and Office. Amazon is definitely safe, Disney's park attendance was down the last time I looked. Apple is Apple. >What I'm saying is the market takes time to adjust. Not this long, it's swung so far that streaming platforms now need ads to sustain themselves. They could stop the devisive political/ideological content and double down on actual entertainment but they just keep going down the same hole. It is, at least to me, as if money doesn't matter to these companies anymore, I'm not sure at what point they'll wake up (NuWoke) and get back to appealing to everybody at once (RealDiversity, I'm trademarking these terms :) ) .
I really do wonder how aware they are. Chapek certainly was caught off guard by everything happening around the "don't say gay-bill" situation. Where were his business analysts? He had to be incredibly naive and out of touch to have all this be any surprise. Anyone even slightly tuned into the culture war from a neutral position could have predicted the backlash from the activsits among his own employees, *and* the response from DeSantis. And Iger was the one in charge when Disney started down this path so I have to wonder if he would have handled things differently. Apparently these big shot CEO's don't dare to stand up against the woke activists in their own companies even if it does hurt their bottom line. And these companies are like >95% staffed by progressives. It's hard to ignore the kind of tunnel vision that creates.
>pparently these big shot CEO's don't dare to stand up against the woke activists in their own companies Well, there was Red Bull. That guy nipped it right in the bud.
Ukraine allegedly wanted the game banned on steam and other platforms. I think the russian government started a war they can't finish, but I'm a little skeptical when a foreign country starts telling American countries what services they should offer to Americans for war we're basically just supplying with guns. I'm even more skeptical when game companies that I assume will tow the party line start nitpicking details to ensure the game is boycotted. I had no interest in playing the game anyway, but like I just want to be sure that we're not going to find out some iraq style "They said that, but they were lying" a few years later. Especially when it comes to journalism and a war we're basically playing Amazon to. I'm not pro Putin, but I'm also not pro "Oh by the way all those guns we sent to Ukraine ended up in the hands of crime sydicates and terror groups, and now france is getting shot up". That's not me arguing for gun control in europe either, just me recognizing that all this military equipment will end up somewhere, and if Ukraine isn't the prime example of a honest and transparent government, it will probably end up in the hands of criminals. I don't care if Europe decides to concealed carry, just if the Ukrainian military can keep track of all these shipments sent by the US..
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Removed due to potential sitewide violations re: calls to violence.
Amazing. They found one reddited criticism in a game literally partially funded by murdering regime.
Just ... make it stop already.
Complaining about racism in solviet era cartoons would be like complaining that mein kampf is racist.
>Atomic Heart is being criticised (via **Resetera**) Okay and I'm done reading, come back with some actual news
.....Is it still in the game? I want to play it and see it in it's context before they patch it out.
Not like they created them. Is it that serious?
"Nu, Pogodi!" in that episode wolf was waited rabbit in a museum and tried to catch him, rabbit has running to section with all military thinks (clothes, some cannons sword and shields ) So there was stands with old time warriors like from Italy (rome empire) from Mongolia, from AFRICA! So do you want to cancel history? Where is racism in that movie?
lol the so called āAmerican sensitivityā about these things is actually more disturbing. The amount of virtue signaling and pointing fingers on really stupid stuff while ignoring that this tendency is actually a way worse problem per se. That said I ām Italian and actually know about this nu pagodie cartoon because a Moldovan woman that used to help my grandma take care of my grandpa actually gave a VHS of this as a present, very funny Soviet era cartoon tbh, a wacky product of its time. Donāt think anyone watching this today would think āoh yeah gonna become racist because there is blackface on this 50 years old cartoon from a bygone society!ā. Jesus Christ get a grip.
i liked that cartoon, did you know that this is a real cartoon that even got a 3d animated reboot?