The Video Game That Broke Apart China
from the wow.--that's-powerful dept
Who said video games can't change the world? That seems to be the fear of the Chinese government, who has banned the video game "Hearts of Iron" for (they claim) "distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity." To be honest, I don't know enough about the video game in question or the specific complaints concerning Chinese history to understand what their specific problems are (and the article is somewhat vague), but, honestly, who could possibly feel threatened that the events in a historical video game could damage a nation's sovereignty? If one little video game can damage both the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation, you have to wonder how strong those things are in the first place.
Reader Comments (rss)
(Flattened / Threaded)
Because China is treated trivially
In that game, you can play as the Russians, Germans, Americans, Japanese, or Chinese. The Chinese are treated as an almost trivial option of essentially worthless peasant armies who don't stand a chance against anyone else.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Separate republics within China
I think it also mentioned separate "republics" of Tibetans or Uighurs forming within China, a topic that is rather un-PC in China today.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
No Subject Given
The game is basically a historical strategic wargame where you can play _any_ country in the world at the time. It models rebellions, and if the rebellions go on for too long they will eventually break away from the main state.
The specific complaint in the article is that the geographic areas are not modelled properly. A possibly fair complaint, some areas in the game are done for gameplay as well as historic reasons, but I don't know if the provinces cited in the article are particularly badly modelled.
Ironically in the news section of Paradox's website is this:
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/news.asp?ArticleID=159&Page=News
:)
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Banned wargames: supporting article
Thanks for this striking article.
I've put together some supporting material to better understand the facts and to know more about what happened.
Read it at: Can video games change the World?
Regards.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Add Your Comment