As much as we all live in a world that champions the idea that speech should be as free as possible (rightfully so, of course), we make exceptions to that rule all the time (also, rightfully so). For example, it has been illegal to advertise cigarettes across much of the…
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The Call of Duty rumour mills were working in overdrive this week, with an “insider” claiming that Call of Duty 2024 will be set during the (more recent) Iraq War. This is just a rumour at this stage, so I’m certainly not reporting on that, but what I am here…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest problem that faces gaming as an art form is how easy it is proving to be for developers to use it for the purposes of pure propaganda. Whether it is an explicit recruitment tool for the army, or simply…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. It’s always a silly idea to talk about politics on a video game website. The best that ever happens is that in response to the article you get a bunch of people signing up to screech at you to “keep politics out of video games,” before…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. From 1945 through to 1991, the world existed in a state of perpetual tension as two superpowers – The Soviet Union and the United States – vied for control over the planet and its resources. Now, as the world heads into a second Cold War between…
Read MoreInterview by Matt S. “Those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” so the popular truism goes, and traditionally it has been the role of the arts to preserve history and make it palatable to the next generation – thus providing that source of collective “memory” across…
Read MoreVideo by Matt S. A recent article on Kotaku had me thinking about the way that video games depict war again, and I realised that I haven’t actually done a video where I consolidate all my thoughts into how war is treated as a subject yet. And so now I’ve…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. I’ve never forgiven Disney for what it did with Donald Duck. To call me a Donald Duck fanboy would be an understatement – my wife likes to joke that he even inspired my response to Things That Go Wrong (TM) – i.e I tend to go…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. I cannot make myself play the recently-released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare any longer. And I cannot review it. It is a piece of jingoistic, military hero worship propaganda, and the way that it blatantly re-writes history in order to prop up an aggressively nationalistic perspective…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. So of course the big new AAA-industry news had to happen while I was on my flight back from Japan. EA revealed Battlefield V, with the news that it will be based on World War 2, and it has a woman soldier in the promo art,…
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