“Call of Duty is a CIA tool for spreading its war propaganda. Activision Blizzard hires CIA and NATO agents as advisors. Its current chief advisor, Frances Townsend, is a director of NATO’s Atlantic Council and supported torture in Iraq.”

The new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 was recently released, a game that millions of people will play… it’s important to remember that it’s pure CIA propaganda and pure US and NATO war psyop, and it’s even used as a method to encourage local youth military recruitment.

Literally, CIA and NATO agents are the ones writing the scripts for the war video games in this franchise. Video games are now the CIA’s main niche due to the enormous number of users they attract, starting at a very young age, along with streaming platforms like Netflix and HBO, which they use to spread their propaganda massively, just as they historically did with television.

Video link -> https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2113859837234761728/vid/avc1/720x1280/5s1pY71KgP9o93RN.mp4

Source -> https://shitter.thepixora.com/DaniMayakovski/status/2113861269304279438#m

  • Jeanne-Paul Marat@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    14 days ago

    Joke I make every year: “yknow I see all these indie games where you play as the bad guy getting praised for subverting expectations, but COD does it every year and no one bats an eye”

        • Luffy@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          13 days ago

          The bo2 campaign was probably the last one to have an understandable antagonist.

          Next we got:

          • literal AI that turned self conscious from the CIA training it on tortured humans
          • egomaniac PMC who ran a way too elaborate scheme to gas the world
          • Mars Hitler. (Now featuring pink blood because of a default color correction)
          • A Russian apparently Russian terrorist terrorising Russia even tho he got killed russia had planted a doppelganger of him to bomb burgerland and at the same time nuke themselves not themselves because after all he’s not Russian and only pretends to be while killing them at the same time who could only be stopped by a rogue fraction of the us military with way too buff suits who somehow travelled from the middle east to a casino with blackjack and hookers just to kill him.
          • and best of all: South america building orbital Tungsten rods, which are not quite as potent as that of america, but way more™
  • Nyx@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    14 days ago

    This game genuinely annoys me. The DPRK is already antagonized enough and are once again being actively dehumanized. Kids will end up playing it and grow with the general idea that DPRK soldiers are all evil kill-bots with no emotion and that it is morally correct to mow them down with big shootybang stick. Not like they haven’t done things like that before. I wouldn’t feel comfortable killing people who have done me no harm even in a video game.

  • I mean not allowing kids something they want from cultural pressure will just end up with your kids being opposed to your world view really. My parents forbidding me literally everything made me discard Christianity as soon as puberty hit because it was a prison. I am not too mad at them because their believes are trash but still it was a tactical faux pas.

    Like educate them on why you think it is government propaganda trash but don’t put them down for playing it. Kids want to belong with their peers. Only if you sustain a good relationship to them will you be able to influence them.

    • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      14 days ago

      Which is why you should offer kids an alternative instead of banning it outright. Is there a similar video game where the USA are the bad guys?

      • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        13 days ago

        I think the point isn’t to literally find a “call of duty but based”, but rather to let them have their fun but also educate them on the subject matter so they don’t get brainwashed.

      • Lowleekun [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        edit-2
        14 days ago

        No clue and I have no kids tbh.

        I am also unsure if my parents offering me alternatives to pokemon, star wars, yugioh and the other stuff that my peers played would have helped. In the end I hated being the outsider, very much envied my peers and blamed my parents beliefs.

        I did play this shit slop (cod, battlefield) and I still ended up an anti imperialist. Like sure I should not have spend money on that garbage and I very much think people should try to convince others that this garbage is not worth it. Alternatives might help but again, if your child begs you to get COD but you are like “we don’t play garbage propaganda in this house” I bet its doing more damage than good.

  • blueberries@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    14 days ago

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but this game is being sold in China right? I just can’t wrap my head around how China can allow something as war mongering as this to be sold

    • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      13 days ago

      I’m not sure it’s that straightforward, from what I can find. Under Tencent as a publisher, there was Call of Duty Online which seems to have been the foray of the franchise into China but that was shut down: https://change.qq.com/act/a20210830codol/index.html

      Then the continuation was put into Call of Duty Mobile. I’m unsure how overt the propaganda is in that, but wikiNATOpedia describes it as a multiplayer battle royale game with Activision as publisher and TiMi Studio Group as developer, a developer group based in Shenzhen that is a subsidiary of Tencent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Mobile

      Too annoying to try to hunt down the sourcing for that part outside of wikipedia, but it’s probably true.

      I’m unclear concretely on whether the other games can be sold in China or not, but this reddit thread seems to imply you’d need a VPN for online play doing Modern Warfare II (circa 4 years ago): https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernWarfareII/comments/ygckgq/playing_in_china/

      So I am leaning toward thinking there are restrictions of some kind. It would fit with what I recall in the past. I think China usually has restrictions of a kind for imported media, if its messaging is something that contradicts with the country’s ideological goals. An example I think of is that the MMO Guild Wars 2 has a Chinese version, but it is developed separately from the original, so can have differences.

    • Orcinus@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      14 days ago

      Perhaps their people are well-enough equipped to not fal victim to Call of Duty’s propaganda.

      • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        13 days ago

        Or maybe the truth is something else? I could not find much of anything (searching MW4 and China together brought up very little in terms of concrete evidence).

            • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              edit-2
              13 days ago

              I think you peeps might be assuming too much based on a question from someone (is there even proof for CoD:MW4 being popular in China?)

              Edit: I searched up whether or not it was popular in China, and the most I got was a substack article explaining in one line (with no source) that China was the biggest wishlist country for the game, and I found nothing else even relating to China in that context. Also, I should have typed “sold” instead of “being popular”.

  • Mels@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    12 days ago

    Good thing is that most COD players either do not give a further fuck past the gunplay and maybe cool scenes, or they just don’t even play campaign because they’re atrocious after WAW (an arguable opinion there, some would say after Cold War, or the MWs).

  • znsh@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    12 days ago

    Yeah I got messages from my cousin saying to buy it because it’s a really cool game. I didn’t have the patience or even the hope that explaining why this is propaganda would deter him from playing it, he just doesn’t give a shit. If it has cool graphics that’s all it takes.