On February 13, 2022, 10 days before the full-scale invasion began, I wrote an article "Is IT out of politics? No, IT is politics!". This was a kind of controversy with some journalist colleagues who, even amid the events of late 2021 and early 2022, tried to stick to the "IT is out of politics" position. Among other things, that article contains the following paragraph.
"I have bad news for those who are trying to hide in the house. Politics is pretty much everything around you. Sport is politics, just ask Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. Art is politics, because some paintings or poems could bring people to the barricades, and some books and movies dumb down and call for an end to resistance. And yes, technology is also politics."
There is no word "games" in this rant because I intended to write a separate article in a few weeks called "Games are Politics," but in February-March 2022, we all didn't have time for games, and then I decided that after the outbreak of a full-scale war, there was no need for such an article at all, because it seemed to be clear to everyone that yes, games are also politics.
But even now, two and a half years after the start of the great war, after the daily bombings, after tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths, after Bucha, Mariupol, and Izium, there are Ukrainians who justify their desire to play Russian Atomic Heart, Escape from Tarkov, War Thunder, or Space Marine 2 with the bizarre "These are just games, what's the harm in that? Games are out of politics!".
Bullshit! Games, like movies, books and almost any art, are politics. Without even touching on the fact that when you buy something made in Russia, in this case games, you are financing the production of bombs that will fall on you tomorrow or bullets that will kill your loved ones, the Russian game industry is guilty of another crime. It, along with Russian television, films, and other propaganda outlets, helped prepare this war. Cultivating hatred for Ukrainians and other people, building an ugly cult of Victory and supporting the narratives of Russian Nazism. And it all began in the late 1980s.
I was prompted to return to this topic by articles in other Ukrainian publications. In many ways, I completely agree with my colleagues, but in my opinion, they forgot some aspects, or maybe they didn't know, and some of the emphases were not quite right. I was there, 3000 years ago, and I watched the transformation of the Russian gaming industry into something ugly from the front row.
But yes, it all started back in the late 1980s, with the trend for everything Soviet.
Titles of Russian games, names of Russian developers, and some quotes in this article are in Russian.
The picture at the beginning of the article is a joint promotion of Atomic Heart and War Thunder games
Trend for everything Soviet
The United States had won the Cold War, and it was clear as early as the late 1980s. The USSR was bursting at the seams, the Union was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, conflicts broke out one after another in almost all the "republics of the free", and the Soviet planned economy was collapsing as planned.
Of course, against this background, the Americans were curious to see who they had defeated there, to get to know the culture of the natives, to give them a mirror, and to receive a terrifying handmade mask in return. The Americans' interest in Perestroika and the figure of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom they truly idolized, as well as the most successful propaganda campaign in history, skillfully created by Russian writers and intellectuals a hundred years before, the label of the "mysterious Russian soul," also played a role. Along with the various Tolstoyevskys, Sergei Diaghilev, who promoted Russian culture to the West through ballet in 1909-1929, and other "artists outside politics," also worked well. So the ground was already prepared.
In 1984, a good movie Moscow on the Hudson was released in the United States with the brilliant Robin Williams in the role of Vladimir Ivanov. In 1985, Rocky IV starring Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago was released, and finally, in 1988, Red Heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Captain Ivan Danko. (my nickname is in honor of another Danko, no, not from Maxim Gorky). In the last scene of Red Heat, Schwarzenegger's character salutes while standing on Red Square in Moscow. It was the first Western film whose crew was allowed to work in this "sacred" place for Russians. Interestingly, this was in 1987, shortly after Matthias Rust had fooled the vaunted Soviet air defense and landed his Cessna 172B Skyhawk near St. Basil's Cathedral. Red Heat marked the normalization of the Russians in the eyes of Americans as ordinary guys like themselves. The image of the enemy disappeared.
It is not surprising that when Tetris by Spectrum HoloByte was released in the United States in 1988, which, by the way, was originally subtitled Tetris: The Soviet Challenge, it was packaged in a red box with St. Basil's Cathedral on the cover and a hammer and sickle instead of the letter S in the word Tetris. The design of the game itself looked like this - Red Square, an astronaut in orbit, hockey, etc.
But it makes no sense to blame Tetris creator Alexei Pazhitnov for Russian propaganda; he himself had conflicts with the Soviet government, and as soon as he had the opportunity, he fled the USSR. He has long been a U.S. citizen, worked for Microsoft, and supported Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Pazhitnov had nothing to do with the design of the game in the United States. This was all the work of Spectrum HoloByte, which had only one goal: to increase Tetris sales by playing on fashionable Soviet-Russian symbols. By the way, the Tetris movie starring Theron Edgerton as Hank Rogers is a good representation of the events surrounding the game's publishing rights.
Let's be honest, if Pazhitnov lived in Kyiv, it is possible that the game's cover would have featured St. Sophia, the Golden Gate, chestnuts, and a pedestrian bridge, and instead of "Korobeyniks," which is better known in the West as the Tetris Theme, it would have been "Oh, there is a red viburnum in the meadow" or "The Cossacks are coming." And if Pazhitnov were a resident of San Francisco, we could see the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and Coin Tower on the cover. But the game was created in Moscow, so Spectrum HoloByte built its marketing around that.
So, St. Basil's Cathedral in Tetris was added for the same reasons that Codemasters and Electronic Arts added (or rather returned, because it had been there for a long time) in Grid Legends a track in Moscow in 2022, with a passage through the KGB/FSB building on Lubyanka, where thousands of people were killed, and through Red Square, past the mausoleum of the bloodiest dictator of all time. Codemasters and Electronic Arts are not upset by this in the slightest - it's just marketing, nothing personal. This game was symbolically released on February 25, 2022. The addition of locations in exotic countries, and for Western players Russia is exotic, gives a sense of diversity and inclusiveness, and also increases sales in the countries represented in the game, and Russia, unfortunately, is a fairly large market.
Among other things, Western users still love everything Russian/Soviet, which is partly why games like Escape from Tarkov and Atomic Heart are popular. From time to time, even the best Western developers turn to Soviet themes. Take, for example, the platformer Little Orpheus by the British studio The Chinese Room, or the urban planning strategy Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic from the Slovak studio 3Division.
The reason why the USSR and Russia, as its descendant, are so popular is that the communist government did not go through a Nuremberg-like trial and was not condemned as criminal and vile. That is why not only Western idiots, but also some Ukrainians see nothing wrong with wearing T-shirts with red stars or a portrait of the bloody maniac Che Guevara.
But sometimes the attempt to add Soviet/Russian exoticism to a game brings positive results. Such as the No Russian mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), Finnish tanks on Red Square in Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty (2023), the opportunity to walk through the destroyed Red Square in Metro 2033 (2010), storm the Kremlin in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (2001) or even burn the damn city in Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword (2009) or "Cossacks: European Wars" (2001). Interestingly, most of the above games are Ukrainian.
Soviet aesthetics
The fashion for all things Soviet and the successful use of this fashion in marketing prompted Russian and Ukrainian developers to use this aesthetic in their games, with the easy encouragement of Western publishers, but there was another good reason for this.
Back in the second half of the 1990s, when the Ukrainian gaming industry was emerging, and even in the first half of the 2000s, when it was booming, there were no inexpensive and easily accessible game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, and no libraries and marketplaces for game assets. You had to create everything you added to your game with your own hands. By the way, there were no online game development courses or forums where you could ask for advice.
Of course, it's much easier to create something that you're familiar with, that you see every day, that modelers can simulate and texture artists can skin. For developers from Ukraine and other countries of the former USSR, this was what surrounded them - scary panels, gloomy Stalinist buildings, rusty factories, and so on. Therefore, it is not surprising that many games of that time, including those created in Ukraine, used Soviet aesthetics.
Developers from GSC Game World photographed textures and objects for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) during trips to the Chernobyl zone, and sometimes just by walking out of the office to the cluttered territory of the Rostock plant, where the company's office was located. Precisely because they took what was at hand, 4A Games' Metro 2033 features Kyiv subway cars, not Moscow ones, they have different colors, and the entrance to one of the stations is copied from the pavilion of the Kyiv VDNKh.
Other Ukrainian games with Soviet aesthetics can be mentioned: You Are Empty (2006) by Digital Spray Studios and Mandel ArtPlains, Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason (2008) by Action Forms. To be fair, in almost all cases Ukrainian games had anti-Soviet overtones.
Another reason why in the late 1990s and early 2000s it was easier to recreate something Soviet in domestic games was the lack of familiarity of Ukrainian and other post-Soviet developers with the realities of life abroad. If any of them had started to create a game about the United States at that time, it would have turned out as ridiculous as some Hollywood movies about the USSR.
But now it's 2024, the USSR is long gone, and the Soviet aesthetics, or as they say, still finds its way into games. It is still used not only by Russian developers, who have a clear focus on the "beautiful scoop" and a corresponding demand for such games from the population, but also by some Ukrainian and foreign indie studios. Stop it, seriously, it's some kind of necrophilia.
Pobedobesiye Games
An important component of Russian Nazism is the cult of victory and the related cult of the special path and the peculiarity of Russians in general. The Russian gaming industry, along with official propaganda, filmmakers, and writers, had a hand in creating and strengthening this cult and continues to do so today.
But it cannot be said that in the late 1990s and early 2000s it was deliberate propaganda ordered by the Russian government. It was a rather organic process of responding to the hopes and demands of the masses.
After the collapse of the USSR, most of the Soviet messages about a powerful economy, friendship between peoples, care for the common man, the best education and health care system in the world were left in tatters. The only things that still somehow held on were the Soviet space and the Great Victory over Nazism. And that is only because Russia never declassified the World War II archives, and Russians never learned, or rather did not want to learn, the truth about the role of the USSR in the outbreak of World War II, its dubious successes during the so-called Great Patriotic War, the fact that without the help of the United States and Great Britain, the USSR had zero chances of survival, the vaunted "genius" of Soviet generals, and so on.
The Great Victory narrative, which was actively cultivated in the late Soviet Union, was inherited by Russia and was the only one that could somehow keep the so-called Russians and the peoples they enslaved together, restraining the Russians' primordial desire to kill each other.
Perhaps, in the case of the Russian film industry, there was some kind of state order for films about the so-called Great Patriotic War, but in the case of the game industry, it was just a move to meet money. Game developers and publishers were looking for opportunities to make money, and the masses wanted something about the Second World War.
The fact that after the release of the movie Saving Private Ryan (1998), Hollywood and the gaming industry became interested in the theme of the Second World War again played into the hands of Russian developers, and one by one, shooters about the Second World War went into development: Hidden and Dangerous (1999), Medal of Honor (1999), Mortyr (1999), Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001), Battlefield 1942 (2002), Call of Duty (2003), Day of Defeat (2003), Red Orchestra: Combined Arms (2003), Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (2005), Sniper Elite (2005).
And also tank and flight simulators, for example, only in 1998 Jane's WWII Fighters, European Air War, and Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator were released almost simultaneously!
At that time, the Russians were not doing well with shooters; they caught up with the West with IL-2 Sturmovik, which was a really good game with almost no propaganda, but what the Russians really succeeded in was strategy, and they even set the trend here.
For example, one of the first new wave strategies about the Second World War was Counter Action (1997) by Russian Fireglow Games, which would later be followed by the Sudden Strike series (2000-2009). It was followed by Blitzkrieg (2003) by Nival Interactive and its numerous sequels, add-ons, etc.; Pacific Storm (2005) by Lesta Studio; Theatre of War (2006) by 1C and its sequels. Company of Heroes by Relic Entertainment was released only in 2006.
It seems that at the beginning the developers of these strategies tried to maintain a neutral position and show the events of World War II from different sides of the conflict, but... the problem is that they gave the Russian parts of the game campaigns according to Soviet textbooks, which was very far from the truth and only cemented the label of "Great Victory" more tightly.
That is why, when Western developers tried to show at least a little bit of truth about the actions of the USSR during World War II, as in Call of Duty (2003) during the Stalingrad campaign, or in Company of Heroes 2 (2013), it provoked the anger of the USSR at the state level, with the involvement of television, letters from outraged citizens, a sales ban, etc.
It's a pity, but some Ukrainian game studios helped the Russians create the cult of Pobedobesia without even realizing it. A really good tactical strategy game Soldiers: Heroes of World War II (2004) from the Sievierodonetsk studio Best Way and its numerous sequels also worked in favor of Russian propaganda. So did tank simulators from Kharkiv-based Graviteam, Steel Fury: Kharkov 1942 and its sequels. Unfortunately, Best Way continues to work with Russians and make games about the Second World War, but Graviteam has refocused on other theaters of war.
But back to Russian games, which have gradually moved from a neutral portrayal of World War II to an open whitewashing of the USSR. For example, in the stealth shooter Death to Spies (2007) by Haggard Games, players are invited to play as an officer of the SMERSH, one of the bloodiest services of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. The same ones who led the infamous barrier detachments and were guilty of unjustified repressions of hundreds of thousands of military and civilian citizens of the USSR and European countries. Of course, the game itself and its sequels do not mention this; here, the SMERSH agent is a good guy and a brave counterintelligence officer. The last installment of the series is hidden behind the neutral title Alekhine's Gun, which in Russia stands for Death to Spies 2.
Another game in which you have to play as a good MGB officer and save "Comrade Stalin " himself is The Stalin Subway (2005) by G5 Software (which seems to still be working in Ukraine). The fact that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, including Russians, had already been forgotten in Russia by that time. The game even has a sequel The Stalin Subway: Red Veil. Fortunately, both games are pretty bad.
You also have to play as the captain of Soviet intelligence in a game with a self-explanatory title: Hammer & Sickle (2005). The Soviet hero here may or may not avert a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. This is a kind of sequel to S2: Silent Storm (2003) and S3: Silent Storm - Sentinels (2004) by Nival Interactive. By the way, there are also questions about these seemingly neutral games, one of them, though I don't remember which one, had a mission to destroy a UPA unit.
In fact, this practice of whitewashing continues to this day, with Partisans 1941 (2020), a kind of Commandos clone from Russia's Alter Games, whitewashing Soviet partisans who were in fact mostly either NKVD agents or looters and murderers responsible for the destruction of many Ukrainian villages and the robbery and murder of Ukrainian peasants. In addition, one of the main tasks of these units was to counter the Ukrainian national underground, not to fight the Nazis.
To summarize. While there is nothing wrong with historical and World War II games, it all depends on how honest such projects are. In the case of Russian games and developers, they mostly offer players outright lies and cover-ups, and sometimes even whitewash Soviet criminals. All of this together has only helped to strengthen the cult of Pobedobesiye, and thus Russian Nazism.
Prison aesthetics and racism as the basis of Russian culture
Another important component of the Russian Empire and Soviet/Russian Nazism is prison aesthetics and racism. Of course, they have seeped into Russian games as well.
In the USSR, where "every second person was in jail, and every fifth was guarding," even children from working-class neighborhoods understood fenia (Russian criminal jargon) and tried to live "by the book" (according to unwritten criminal rules of conduct and laws). In the "turbulent" 1990s, criminal authorities became heroes of films and serials, including those with positive connotations. Later, when Russia finally turned into a kleptocracy, the prison aesthetic became almost the country's official style.
TV series such as Brigada (2002) and Bandit Petersburg (2000-2007), movies such as Brat 2 (2000), Bumer (2003), and others heroized gangsters and the gangster world. Of course, this could not help but spill over into games, as users demanded a sequel.
Some might say that both Hollywood and Western game developers do not neglect criminal themes. The most popular GTA series, with 430 million copies sold, is about gangsters; the Mafia series is about gangsters, Red Dead Redemption 1/2 is about gangsters, and there are more than enough similar Western games. All this is true, but no Western game has ever stooped as low as Russian games in their animal hatred of everyone around them and their approval of the prison hierarchy and prison laws. Almost all Western developers have tried to add some kind of universal morality to their crime stories, but the Russians have not.
Dmitry Puchkov, also known as "Senior Operative Officer Goblin," is a former St. Petersburg cop who considers himself an expert in everything. He gained initial popularity thanks to his "humorous" translations of the first two films of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which actually consisted of mathematics and the same phenia. In the same style, Goblin began working with game developers, who, again, responded to the demand for such content from Russian players.
The games Bumer appeared with Puchkov's direct participation: Sorvannye bashni (2003) based on the aforementioned movie of the same name, Bratva and the Ring (2006), an unfunny racist parody of Tolkien's trilogy and its sequel The Two Torn Towers (2009), "The Truth About the Ninth Company (2008), which we will discuss later, as well as role-playing games like "Russian Fallout" - Dungeon Keepers (2006) and Dungeon Keepers 2: Hunt for the Black Square" (2008).
All of these games are full of toilet, prison, and openly racist "humor." Here, for example, is the official advertising description of the game "Bratva and the Ring". Enjoy the real "friendship of nations", and there are already Banderites there.
"The game tells the story of two little kids Fedor Sumkin and Senya Ganjubas, who escape from the army of urok and pedophiles sent by Sauron and his six - the bad man Sarumyan (son of Wasserman). They must take the evil ring to Mordovia and drop it into the mouth of a Mordovian blast furnace. On their way they are assisted by Major Pendalf the Gray, the short lark Givi Zurabovich Tsereteli, the younger krascom Agronom son of Agroprom (aka Bomzh), a Baltic elf named Logovas (aka Bezottsovshchina), and the captain of the Main Department of Internal Affairs Baralgin of Honduras. In addition, the heroes will have to face packs of werewolves in shoulder straps, organize a barbaric hunt for the last red-billed Octopus, face Baralgin's treason, and Pendalf, covering for his friends, enters the ring with the dreaded Banderlog. In between there will be Mordovian urks, Nazgul burghers, and a mummy troll."
As for the "Dungeon Orderlies," I will allow myself to quote a review by Maksym Kapinus that was published in DPK No. 12/2006:
"When you start a conversation with a local, you immediately think of Goblin. Outright matting is not filtered out, and toilet humor with a harsh admixture of swearing prevails. The most unpleasant fact is the division of people by skin color. The racism in Sanitarians is blatant and manifests itself in every second phrase, seasoned with swear words, which we, of course, will not quote. At such moments, you regret that we don't have an age rating system and that every child can buy the game.The tasks are full of the same content: to destroy a group of Chinese illegal immigrants who arrived on a barge, to help slave traders collect prostitutes sent on a capsule. At the same time, all this is accompanied by humor, which does not make you smile at all, but an incredible sadness from realizing how many people worked to release such a game. Needless to say, a brave imbecile paratrooper decides to "play" with a girl from a brothel before freeing her for a guy in love."
Very eloquent and very similar to the usual behavior of ordinary Russian soldiers of the "liberators".
And although almost all of the games Goblin was involved in, developed and published by Gaijin Entertainment (yes, the same one that still operates in Ukraine) and 1C (now Fulqrum Publishing), turned out to be hateful trash, they found their fans among Russian players because prison "culture" and racism are something that Russians breathe.
As for the owner of the silver (2015) and gold (2018) YouTube buttons (Google, hi, supporting a Nazi is very cool!), winner of the Komsomolskaya Pravda Media Personality of the Year Award (2017) and the Most Famous People of St. Petersburg Award (2009), Dmitry Puchkov, he called for the destruction of Ukraine and Ukrainians, raised funds for the so-called LPR/DPR, published a book entitled Ukraine is Russia, spread disinformation, and so on. In December 2022, Puchkov was added to the sanctions lists of the European Union and Switzerland, and in January 2023, he was added to the sanctions list of Ukraine. These are the cream of the Russian gaming industry.
With the advent of smartphones and online games, prison "romance" has migrated to numerous Russian simulations of prison life. But I'm sorry, we're not going to dig through this dump anymore.
Tanks, airplanes and ships
Like some of my colleagues, I'm not going to portray all World of Tanks users as bald, short-sighted middle-aged Russians who spend their entire family budget on the game every month. I know very well that at one time, absolutely everyone in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine played World of Tanks. Schoolchildren, their parents, and their grandparents. People with 8th grade education and two university degrees. And those who invested a lot of money in the game, and those who didn't pay a penny. And I know very well that some of those who once played World of Tanks are now in the trenches on both sides of the front, but with completely different motivations. But perhaps the first, still bloodless shots of this war were fired on the virtual fields of World of Tanks.
World of Tanks is a really well-made game about tanks, it doesn't carry a special propaganda load, there have always been plenty of such military-technical games. It's an ordinary military-historical multiplayer action/simulation game for players from the US, UK, Germany, Poland, and other Western countries, but... not for Russia. For Russia, it is part of the great cult of Pobedobesiya, the message of the Great Victory. And this mood has been diligently maintained by game developers and publishers in Russia. With mandatory events and discounts for Victory Day, the Day of the Soviet Army, the Day of the Armored Forces of Russia, the days of the great, albeit somewhat mundane, battles of the Great Patriotic War. With honoring the heroes of tankers, etc.
Yes, the World of Tanks website mentioned German tank aces and battles in which the Allies took part, but the impression that the USSR was paid much more attention remained. In addition, these Soviet matches were automatically broadcast to all the countries of the former USSR, because "we are all brothers" and other nonsense. Later, the Ukrainian segment of World of Tanks separated from the Russian segment, and we almost didn't have this bullshit anymore, but in Russia it became even more! So a simple neutral game about tanks helped build the cult of Victory in Russia.
In addition, it was probably World of Tanks where the most violent quarrels between Russian and Ukrainian players took place.
It should be understood that the audience of players, especially players in competitive online games, is aggressive in any country. It started with DOOM and John Romero's attempts to transfer his own playstyle, which he infected the entire id Software, to online competitions with ordinary users. Romero swore, teased others, and expressed his aggression in words and deeds, and players began to imitate him. Soon, aggressive behavior became the norm in online competitions, but in Russia, it was combined with the natural hatred of Russians for everyone around them.
The Russian gaming community is the most aggressive and disgusting in the world, and no one has ever wanted to play with them because racism, insults based on skin color, political and sexual preferences are the norm for Russian lace games, and no one pays attention to them, not even moderators. Therefore, when the Russian segments of some games began to be separated from the European segments, many people, including Ukrainians, breathed a sigh of relief.
In the case of Ukrainians, who had been playing on the Russian segment of World of Tanks for a very long time, things were even worse. Russian moderators not only ignored the behavior of Russian players, but even supported it by punishing Ukrainians. In fact, the persistent online confrontation between Ukrainian and Russian players in competitive games began shortly after the Orange Revolution, which the Russians, accustomed to slavery, simply did not understand, and, of course, intensified after the events of 2013-2014. And yes, Russians and Ukrainians shot at each other on the virtual fields of World of Tanks very often putting much more than just sports excitement into these shots.
After the outbreak of a full-scale war , Wargaming withdrew from the markets of Russia and Belarus and fired the odious science fiction writer and Russian imperialist (a very familiar combination, by the way) Sergei Burkatovsky. But he had been working for Wargaming since 1998, and everyone in the company's management was happy with his openly imperial stance.
A lot of my friends and former colleagues work or have worked at Wargaming Kyiv. I know them as true patriots of Ukraine. I know that many of the company's employees went to defend Ukraine, and Wargaming itself regularly donates funds to UNITED24, the reconstruction of Okhmatdyt and other humanitarian projects. I know that Wargaming is one of the largest taxpayers in Ukraine.
But I also know that the Russians are trying to recruit soldiers through War Thunder and World of Tanks (the former Russian version of World of Tanks), and that World of Tanks continues to rebuild the cult of Pobedobesiy and foster hatred of Ukrainians. It is symptomatic that some of Wargaming's already separated Russian games have settled on the .su domain, the national domain of the Soviet Union, which has not existed for 33 years.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about War Thunder at all, the developers of this game directly support the killing of Ukrainians, buy ads in videos with DNR militants, and it's not the first time that secret military documents of NATO countries have been leaked in the game, etc. It is strange that War Thunder has not yet been banned on Western platforms, the vaunted Western intelligence seems to be asleep.
The pro-Kremlin propaganda in games has reached such a scale that even The New York Times has taken notice. Among the games mentioned in the article and the study it refers to are Minecraft, Roblox, Fly Corp, Armored Warfare, War Thunder, World of Tanks, and World of Warships.
But there were also games that almost directly prepared Russians for war. They will be discussed below.
Games that prepared Russians for war
After a period of cementing the "Great Victory" message, the Russian game industry, along with filmmakers and writers, moved on to the next stage: glorifying the Russian army and justifying the wars of aggression in which it participated. In this way, the degree of cheerful patriotism was raised in Russians, preparing them for the next wars.
Again, I can't say that game developers received any orders from the FSB or the Ministry of Defense for such projects, although for the film industry, such an order seemed to exist. For game developers, it was an organic process. As it turned out, among the seemingly intelligent and intelligent people, there was a significant percentage of outspoken Russian imperialists who dream of returning to the times of the USSR and the former "might", usually without having any idea what they want. That is, there was a demand for such games from the players, and a desire to create them from the developers.
One of the first games of this kind was Alfa: Antiterror by MiST Land South and GFI/Russobit-M. Here, the player in the role of an officer of the infamous Russian Alpha has to complete missions during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989), interethnic/anti-imperialist conflicts in the USSR (1988-1991), the first (1994-1996) and second (1999-2000) Chechen wars, armed clashes in Dagestan (1999), and so on. Of course, "Alpha" and the Russians are the "good guys" in all cases, while everyone else is a terrorist who must be destroyed. Typical whitewashing and justification of wars of aggression and war crimes.
By the way, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989) is a special topic for the Russian game industry and Russians. There is no repentance for the more than 1 million (according to some estimates, up to 3 million) civilians killed and the crimes of Soviet soldiers and officers, murder, rape, and genocide, only pride and pride in the heroism of Soviet soldiers.
Games such as 9th Company: Roots Of Terror (2008) by Lesta Studio and Novy Disk, The Truth About the Ninth Company (2008) by Extreme Developers, KranX Productions and 1C, Combat Mission: Afghanistan (2010) by Apeiron and Snowball Studios.
Lesta Studio's 9th Company is based on a propaganda film of the same nameby Fyodor Bondarchuk, another Russian "cultural figure" who supported the invasion of Ukraine.
But "The Truth About the Ninth Company" is the work of our friend Dmitry "Goblin" Puchkov, who allegedly conducted a special investigation of that battle, talked to the participants, and produced a selected propaganda product. For this, the game was even invited to participate in the "Round Table "Computer Games as a New Factor in Education" as part of the XII World Russian People's Council." There, the game was described as "[the game] not only fosters patriotism among young people, but also provides objective knowledge of military affairs, history and geography." Thus, the Russian government began to realize the importance of propaganda in video games.
Of course, there are also games in which the Americans are directly accused of wanting to seize the natural resources of "Mother Russia." For example, just read the synopsis of the tactical strategy Marauder (2009) by Apeiron Studio.
"Pro-American forces came to power in Russia, and American "peacekeepers" were sent in to "restore order and finally declare democracy." In reality, the foreigners were only interested in natural resources."Almost all of the games mentioned, with the possible exception of Alpha: Anti-Terror, were of very mediocre quality and received negative reviews in specialized media (even Russian ones), but the developers earned their money, society perceived such projects quite normally, and central Russian propaganda channels finally paid attention to video games and their creators. Everyone is happy.
Against this backdrop, of course, we could not do without games that whitewashed the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. One such game, the shooter M.I.A.: Mission in Asia (2009) by Burut CT and Russobit-M. Although the game is supposedly set in the fictional Eastern European country of Slavia, the developers did not hide the fact that they were inspired by the invasion of Georgia.
But more famous, primarily due to its provocative cover, is the strategy of Confrontation: Forcing peace (2008), which was assembled by Red Ice and published by Russobit-M in December 2008, is very well known for its low standards of quality and morality. This is a kind of mod to Sudden Strike 2 (2002), but the preparatory stage of the game's development began right during the war in August 2008, with many units and objects recreated from photographs taken in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. That is, the authors were directly assisted by the Russian military.
There was also a project to create a strategy game called Tskhinval on Fire based on the GEM2 engine by the Ukrainian studio Best Way. The game was supposed to be developed by the Finnish (!!!) studio Aarre Games, which once created a game about the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 called Talvisota : Icy Hell (2007) on the Blitzkrieg engine. The Finns promised to be neutral and add missions of the Georgian company after the release, but, thankfully, this project died before it was born. By the way, Talvisota: Icy Hell is officially classified as an educational game in Finland.
After the global financial crisis of 2008, the Russian gaming market went into decline, most developers ceased to exist (unfortunately, this also affected Ukrainian studios), and publishers significantly reduced the number of games from external developers, switching to moving boxes with Western releases.
But when the financial situation improved a bit, propaganda games whitewashing the crimes of the Russian army reappeared. Such as, for example, the real-time strategy game Syrian Warfare (2017) by Cats Who Play, a studio created by former employees of the Russian GFI. In this game, Cats Who Play diligently whitewashes Russian war crimes in Syria in 2012 and 2015-16. The game was inspired by the "work" of Russian propagandist Yevgeny Poddubny, who is under sanctions from the UK, Australia, and Ukraine (in August 2024, Poddubny was seriously wounded by a Ukrainian FPV drone). Speaking about the game, the Cats Who Play staff frankly said, "For us, this is not a game, it is a principled civic position." By the way, it was Cats Who Play that worked on the seemingly completely neutral Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance commissioned by Slitherine Ltd. so be careful when choosing games and don't pay money to Russian propagandists.
Aleksandr Zorich, actually the pseudonym of former Kharkiv residents Dmitry Gordevsky and Yana Botsman, is a very good example of a traitor writer. Zorich positions himself as a "Russian writer originally from Ukraine" and because after 2004 he/she was "harassed" in Ukraine and their "Russian was deteriorating," in 2010 they finally moved to Moscow and received Russian citizenship. Now the traitors and members of the Union of Russian Writers allegedly live in Balaklava in the temporarily occupied Crimea.
Zorich, like Puchkov-Goblin, worked very actively with game developers. They created scripts for 11 games, six of which were even released: "Behind Enemy Lines, Behind Enemy Lines 2, Tomorrow's War, Tomorrow's War: Factor K", "Balance Vault: Beltion" and Men of War: Red Tide (2009). As we can see, three of the six games are about the Great Patriotic War, the last one showing mostly the martial exploits of the Soviet marines on the Black Sea.
And what about now
Let me return to the point I made at the very beginning of the article. It is better to stay away from any games made in Russia. The developers of these games, if they live in Russia, pay taxes there, buy products and services, i.e. pay VAT, and all this money goes to weapons. That is, by buying Russian products, you are directly financing your own murder, which is somehow ridiculous. In general, it is worth staying away from any product created in the aggressor country, because, as we well remember, with Russian products, literature, cinema, ballet, and now games, they promote the "Russian world" and death.
In other words, everything Russian is bad, but in some cases, Russian game developers manage to hit the ground running. This is the case, for example, with Atomic Heart (2023) by Mundfish. First, this game shows a utopian, technologically advanced and attractive Soviet Union. Second, it is funded by the Russian Gazprom. Thirdly, this game has drones with geraniums, dead pigs with Z-swastikas carved on them, sexualized gynoids, i.e. fembots, in the form of a famous Ukrainian politician, and so on. To play such games is to disrespect yourself.
Another similar developer is the authors of Escape from Tarkov (link will not work) (2017) by Battlestate Games. These developers are simply friends with Russian terrorists, work in partnership with the Russian military-industrial complex and support the AFU.
The bad thing is that, unlike the infamous action/RPG Smut (the link is in the ru zone, so it won't be available either) about the events in the Moscow principality in 1612, for which the Russian studio Cyberia Nova "burned" 1 billion budget rubles (most likely, the money was simply stolen), Atomic Heart and Escape from Tarkov are quite high-quality, well-made games that, unfortunately, Western players like. And Steam and other services didn't give a damn about the problems of Ukrainians, all the above-mentioned games feel good on Valve's service, moreover, the company is bending to Russian laws, having recently removed 260 materials banned in Russia, to the delight of Roskomnadzor.
I would like to address Ukrainian developers separately. Don't cooperate with Russian publishers, even after repainting, as in the case of Fulqrum Publishing, the same people who published the games that brought this war closer work there. There are no innocents, all Russian publishers released propaganda crap, and 1C was ahead of the pack. Respect yourself and those who gave their lives for our freedom.
And one more request to domestic developers. Of course, you are very good, and the number of Ukrainian projects is growing every year, but... Why do the Russians have games like Partisans 1941, which whitewashes Soviet partisans, while in 33 years of independence we have not created a single game about the UPA that at least protects the participants in the liberation struggle from attacks by the same Poles, for example. Yes, this is a risky project, yes, it is not known how other countries will react to it and whether it will work, but at one time, Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were also risky projects without any guarantee of success.
Create games about Ukraine, about the struggle of our people for freedom, because, as the author of Mount & Blade said in an interview with Mezha: With Fire & Sword author Maxim Horban said in an interview with Mezha: "Because yes, either you tell your own story, or someone else will tell their version for you."