Subcathoin

There’s a fascinating piece in today’s USA Today about China’s struggle in a growing pop culture war in their country.

One of the key components of that war, according to Chinese leader Hu Jintao, is video games.

“International hostile forces” use thought and culture “to Westernize and split” China, Hu stated in a speech publicized in January in the party magazine Seeking Truth. He was, USA Today says, referring to video games.

China is waking up to the fact that pop culture can and will shape not just culture but ideologies. So they’ve increased their crack down on the sorts of culture allowed into their country. Television shows and music are regularly banned in China.

But the country seems to be taking a slightly different approach to video games, backing “serious” games meant to reinforce the core values of socialism.

Those games range from titles designed to teach young men how to court young women, to a civilian version of the Chinese Army’s training game Glorious Mission.

While China seems to be focused on their own population right now, it isn’t a stretch to imagine a time when the country starts to export their culture through video games as a first offensive in a pop-culture war.

The idea of winning over hearts and minds with propaganda isn’t new. That video games could become the latest tool in this arsenal shouldn’t be surprising. America’s Army, developed within the U.S. Army and released in 2002, was an early, obvious form of that.

Kuma Games has been accused of creating games developed specifically as propaganda and then marketed as entertainment. The accusation, refuted by the company’s founder, is a tangential link to gaming in the troubling death sentence recently handed down by Iranian authorities against accused spy Amir Hekmati.

The question is what sorts of distinctions should be drawn between a game created to be entertaining and one created to subvert cultural identities. Is it unethical for a game developer to create and market a video game as entertainment with the backing of a government or political agenda?

While games like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Medal of Honor are all created by publicly-held companies for profit, do they inherently carry with them the seed of propaganda because of where they’re created?

What about when a developer works with the Department of Defense, as was the case with Medal of Honor, to increase the authenticity of a game? Does that create ethical issues?

Heck, should a developer or publisher even be worried about these blurring of lines?

I’d love to hear from some developers on this issue. What do you think about the ethics of game development and propaganda?