CoH2 apparently offends entire Russian nation

[Panda with issues...]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/25/4553536/is-company-of-heroes-2-anti-russian

Firstly (flippant comment): A massive shame, if they were playing this then maybe there wouldn't be quite so many of these clowns playing uncooperatively in DOTA2!
(To clarify, this is a massive generalisation with a grain of truth. Russians have their own language filter for DOTA and can play the game with people they can actually communicate with, yet many of them seem to choose english and spam the chat function with Cyrillic. From personal experience, whilst plenty of them have been competent, there have been a lot that have been vehemently non-functional team players. It's difficult to really tell whether this is a greater number than any other demographic, but the inability to communicate even using the same alphabet doesn't help.)

Secondly, interesting article, seems to me to be a sad function of a multitude of things:

• Western historical bias, leading to the poor understanding of events on the Eastern Front among much of the western (and presumably primary) audience for the game, and possibly the developers. This has apparently led to the playing up of (probably minor) historical tropes in the game for mechanical purposes in an attempt to differentiate gameplay.
• Russian patriotic bias and censorship, which, similar to that of the west, focuses upon the positive aspects of the Red Army and plays down the negatives.
• General Cold War hangover.

 

[Zooggy]

Hoy,

I found the first comment particularly inspiring. Gaming is growing up and these games need to exist. The broader point is not that this game is or is not offensive, but rather, that legitimate people are now taking offense at legitimate games.

That in itself is all kinds of awesome!

Cheers,
J.

 

[Panda with issues...]

Hoy,

I found the first comment particularly inspiring. Gaming is growing up and these games need to exist. The broader point is not that this game is or is not offensive, but rather, that legitimate people are now taking offense at legitimate games.

That in itself is all kinds of awesome!

Cheers,
J.

I fully agree. The comments (potentially heavily moderated?) were actually rather good on the whole.

Your comment I've bolded to pick up a point: I'd amend to:

but rather, that legitimate people are now taking [legitimate?] offense at legitimate games.

We deserve high standards, and perhaps one day we'll get them.

 

[Nanor]

Was going to read this article but got too engrossed in Potato Famine Simulator.