Awesome job Pat! This one must have been extremely heavy and must have really weighed you down but it came out absolutely beautifully! You earned some fortnight und to drink some cola❤️
That part about Dale Dye being concerned that the FPS war games would be "exploitative, tone-deaf, irresponsible thing," just made me LOL, Because he was, pretty quickly, 10,000,000% right.
The other half of that story was that he didn’t feel that way about the finished product of Medal of Honor. He wasn’t right immediately, but it didn’t take long.
The case of "Saving Private Ryan" and of all the anti-war movies that ensued reminds me of what happens to gangster movies like Scarface, where they show you the path of criminals and their final ruin but many viewers instead focus too much on the glamour and fantasize about becoming as powerful as Tony Montana.
Generally agree but I don’t think Saving Private Ryan was an anti-war movie tbh, it was just “soldiers are the real victims” shite designed specifically for the Iraq war
“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” ― General William Tecumseh Sherman
Ironic giving what horrors he himself inflicted. Not just in fighting itself, but on the scorched earth policy he had when he tried wholly destroying the South.
@@drstrangelove307 no not really war is hell So it is merciful to bring it to a as quick as possible favorable conclusion Which breaking an enemies ability to resupply does
The only Call of Duty that really showed the dark side of war, was World at War. The aesthetics were brown and gritty. The brutality was all over the place. Even the Menu had a depressing feeling to it. Underrated game.
Black Ops from 2010 was pretty unnerving as well. The menu screen was basically presented from the view of the main character, Alex Mason, who was strapped down into a chair while being brutally interrogated by unknown people. The story was very twisted and unsettling, and you never knew what was completely real or not. Mason ended up completely going through hell physically and psychologically over the course of the campaign just trying to find out what was going on.
@@MrAsaqe Because at their core a lot of CoD games actualy do have more of a conscience than most people admit, in MW2 the entire war was orchestrated by US nationalists, in Black Ops the story gets so nihilistic it's borderline anti-american at times; In Black Ops 3 the only real villain is the CIA, somewhere in Black Ops 2 you take part in the most moraly dubious american-led coup I ever saw on screen (blindly following orders will get one of the main characters killed) and Cold War lets you join Russia at the end (not to mention hearing Soviet leaders saying word for word exact slogans the heroes use). There's more of it, you just have to stop and think about what the game is actualy portraying instead of what the heroes say but stopping and thinking is not really something CoD fans nor CoD critics do.
@@mister-BH I remember seeing the end of BO1 (The American Naval Armada iirc), and sort of rolling my eyes at the time, but I think it was supposed to be like "Look down the barrel of all these terrifying guns, then tell me whose side you're on"
smedley butler’s story is what made me leave the marine corps and influenced my out look as a young lance. in recruit training they teach you about him as a war god. a hero on the field and the exemplary warfighter. when i learned his true story, i saw what the corps (and the massive machine it serves) did to spite his name. the last thing smedley wanted his name to be used for was to motivate killing and death on the battlefield, and despite his life’s work to promote awarness of the brutality and immorality of all war, the marine corps used his name to serve against everything he truly believed in and fought for. a large part of me believes it was done out of spite. and the years they’ve spent portraying him the way they do, and neglecting everything else he spent the rest of his life fighting for, is one of the greatest and most foul forms of disrespect and dishonor i’ve ever seen. the knowledge of his later writings heavily changed my outlook and destroyed my support for the institution i served in. i spent the rest of my time in after that trying to tell other marines his true story and hoping to, in some way, undo the years of shame the marine corps put on his name.
And the thing is that the manipulation of populations by the elites - making them believe in a mythology that makes them feel greater and justifies the violence and even their own horrible demise, just to make such elites richer and more powerful - has been one of the most common aspects of what we call human civilisation, since it's inception. Around 10000 years of it, along with vast different cultural "experiences" worldwide, hasn't been enough to turn things around. Mainly due to ignorance and purposefully created lack of access to education and - mainly - factual history studying, from multiple perspectives. The factual and non-mythological mapping of human decisions and suffering, so that future generations can avoid the same mistakes, is the worst enemy of the powerful few that control governments, companies, etc. Edward Burnay's - Freud's nephew who used his findings to create the basis of the modern propaganda machines - is also a great person to study. And he didnt even felt the need to hide the techniques for mass manipulation. It's all essentially about stopping to actually understand how the human mind works and being cynical enough to understand and accept some of its animalistic deeper motivations.
"whether or not it was an effective piece of anti-war media didn't matter, because it was profitable" is one of the most succinct encapsulations of how the entertainment industry works I've ever heard, well fucking done Pat
Kind of reminds me of terminator. Terminator 1 and 2 are stories about how love can save us from war and destruction. But from terminator 3 and onwards its more spectacle than anything with terminator content after terminator 2 trying to justify its existence with more robots, explosions, future weapons, and new terminator models. The newer movies are more interested in justifying old Arnold than anything. Call of Duty in beginning was clearly antiwar but then it morphed into dude bro power fantasy. It stopped being an artist vision and became a product to sell to guys who want to shoot stuff. But hey, shooting stuff is pretty fun.
@@josesosa3337 IDK if it's mentioned in the vid, but Rambo is the most tragic. From a PTSD-inflicted cop-killing veteran jaded towards authority to village-erasing "war hero". Guess which one sold more. Because like you said, shooting stuff is pretty fun. Really helped the recruitment drive for the Gulf War, too...
Exactly why you see pickup trucks with Punisher stickers being driven by patriotism-drunk gun nuts. It's so fucking ironic. They have no idea what the Punisher symbolizes, they just see a cool vigilante who shoots guns really good. I have nothing against people who want to collect guns or think owning a gun is cool. Self-defense is fine. But when so many of these guys are complete idiots who don't even understand the characters they deify, there's a problem.
The thing is that not every depiction of war needs to be anti war. It is okay to have blind entertainment now and then. Not every game needs to be a social commentary piece
@@susamogus5693 That's debatable. I personally enjoy blind violence in action movies and games as much as the next person but I don't know if that's healthy. Certainly the entertainment industry has some level or moral responsibility and maybe that kind of media isn't really a good thing, however harmless the intentions are.
I remember as an adolescent playing Medal of Honor on PC (can’t remember exactly which) and decided to do it in the hardest difficulty. One shot can either kill or badly maim you, and explosives are even more effective. I had to save scum it, saving and replaying every few seconds, because no matter how patient, skilled or tactical, when faced against the odds, you just die. Every single time. Tanks were super scary, as were mounted guns. You don’t feel like a hero at all. That experience left me a lasting feeling that war was, except for pure luck, certain death. Combined with the very critic quotes of war veterans in games of that time, it really destroyed any kind of romanticisation of war afterwards for me.
I remember "Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault" and the very first PC-Exclusive "Call Of Duty" from 2003. Those games were extremely hard-core. You had to find health packs in the environment to replenish your health, and every single enemy was a real threat. The concept of regenerating health was just barely in its infancy at that time, so not many games knew how to properly implement it yet.
The note about how his first introduction to predator drones was through COD was kind of terrifying. The military has significant control of how a huge swath of the population is introduced to tactics potentially used for war crimes.
War Crimes only exist if they are punishable. Who is going to punish RU or China? Whatever punishments NATO has laid down on RU just caused RU to double down!
@@rpscorp9457 Who is going to punish Russia OR Ukraine. Pretty damming to see confirmed footage of both sides executing prisoners of war. Plus it breaks the law to even release a single photo of a POW, let alone releasing a whole video depicting a POW forced to phone their own mother.
@@jakew7982 While the video does seem to have been vetted, its one incident. Not that there arent more but im guessing Zelinsky will find those responsible and most likely imprison them for trial. The last thing Zelinsky wants is soldiers undermining hard won political efforts. I wouldnt doubt that in the coming days we will see an address from him regarding the disposition of this incident.
When I first saw this posted I thought “Oh sweet new Jacob Geller video!” Glad to see Pat entering the longer-form, stone-serious genre of video game video essay, and glad also to see you here!
When I saw this video on my feed, I was immediately reminded of yours! For anyone interested, it's "Does Call of Duty Believe In Anything?" ruclips.net/video/FtCV421T52s/видео.html
Honestly kind of stunned to see such a high-profile games journalism outlet take on one of modern gaming's cornerstones like this. Absolutely fantastic video, thank you Pat and thank you Polygon
Bro literally everyone complains about CoD. This isn't remotely new or unique lol. Remember everyone losing their minds over No Russian? These takes are colder than the north pole.
@@meidyot1672 I have a hard time believing war is hell while they blast magic carpet ride paint it black and sympathy for the devil. I know those songs are laced with anti war meaning but pop culture turned the songs cool which means their meaning was lost and people only hear the music. The only military shooter that was able to sell me on war is hell was spec ops the line but that was more mindfuck game than military shooter game.
This is why tacti-cool guys or airsoftbros always rubbed me the wrong way. I remember I had this classmate in uni and he basically grew up playing airsoft and Call of Duty. He's almost always wearing some sort of military inspired outfits from camo pants and combat boots to carrying tactical knives. It basically became his whole persona and it was his dream to join the Marines. I know not everyone is like this, but it does happen.
It's the same way with milsim players. They claim to dislike Call of Duty in favor of genuinely "authentic" simulations of war, yet their games still glorify war and reward killing
@@ssrpg9339 its kinda like the 1920s romaticization of crime coming from a certain gangster in chicago. We all want what we cannot have or cannot understand
I remember once when I was playing paintball in high school, a friend of my cousin's looked at the airsoft bros in their decked out tacticool gear and scoffed, derisively saying "if you want to dress up so bad, join the Marines." He did go on to join the Marines, but I'm fairly certain those airsoft bros never did.
There are warriors no matter where you go. People have an innate drive to fight, and the military gives them a look at modern warriors. You can debate the politics of war, but there will always be conflict at the end of the day, and we will always need people to defend our interests. “The war is bad” tagline is annoying. Wars are fought for a reason, and they are not always good, but we can't change our nature. As long as someone has a different enough idea, there will always be war.
@@stillvillian I have nothing against the military and I know conflict will ways exist so kudos to those who choose to serve. My criticism is towards those who romanticize war and have a skewed perspective on what it really means to serve the military. If you are driven by patriotism, no problem. If you are driven by a video game, better take a step back and reconsider your life choices
I worked in Intelligence for a few years. One of the things that still haunts me a to this day, almost twenty years later, was during our first drone strike. We literally popped popcorn and watched it go down in real time like it was some kind of movie. As we stared at the screen, drone circling miles above this truck stalled on this mountain road in Afghanistan, we sat there and just chatted about regular ass stuff. When the hell fire was finally loosed, and the target a smoldering reck, visible trails of blood where some had tried to crawl away from their vehicle, all my mind could muster was "wow, that looked just like call of duty...". My next year I spent in a Operations Center (TOC) and drone stikes were a frequent occurrence. At this point, the year before I'd lost a bunch of friends and met loads of locals and heard their stories. The humanity and horrible nature of war had been firmly implanted in me. I took great effort to ensure targets we were hitting at our level (brigade, so not a lot of say, but enough) were at least, for sure, enemy combatants with no potential collateral damage. But it didn't save me from the ever compounding guilt that I was assisting in killing someones brother, father, son, and realizing that it was just multiplying the issue. For everyone we hit, we were taking those fence layers and pushing them to a side, and causing more people to take up arms against us. Same as it would have been if my brother had been killed by a ghostly force sitting ominously on bases throughout our country. I have no regrets for my time in service, it's a time that helped shape the man in am today. But I have stockpiles of guilt, sadness and anger from it as well. And yet, in the off hours between these ghastly, almost unreal events, we would all hunker down and play a few games of, wouldn't you know it, COD. It as such a weird escape, in the face of everything. And yet there we were. Let me tell you, nothing punctuates a virtual drone strike like an enemy rocket landing on your base in some weird ass timing. After picking ourselves up and brushing ourselves off, we just laughed about it and went back to the game, knowing we had another shift in the TOC a few hours later and desperately trying to just blow off some steam while we could. So strange. Ah, the duality of modern war.
I don't think videogames are the cause for having a complete lack of respect for a human being you are about to kill. Probably a mix of peer pressure and cowardice.
"When the hell fire was finally loosed, and the target a smoldering reck, visible trails of blood where some had tried to crawl away from their vehicle, all my mind could muster was "wow, that looked just like call of duty..."." - Wow what a chilling quote When I heard some report on the news like "9 insurgents killed in a drone strike", it made me question if it really was 9 insurgents or maybe just 1 or 2 insurgents and an unlucky family or whatever. Thank you for at least trying to not cause collateral damage. War is hell - unfortunately _sometimes_ collateral damage is just completely unavoidable which is yet another reason why war is extremely horrible. It is probably not a surprise to anyone that Ukraine is using former gamers that are too young and inexperienced to be on the frontline, to be drone operators instead which they are really good at and I've even heard one of them describe how they felt it was actually kind of fun. Any nation on earth would do the same in an existential war. It's a smart move, there's lots of young men ready to defend their home country against a completely unjust invasion in an existential war who might not be fit for the most difficult and harsh roles in the military, yet they can still prove valuable in operating all kinds of unmanned vehicles.
The military's "America's Army" game was made for this reason, part of it is a de-sensitization to violence, to treat the real life as if it were a video game (fantasy), and thirdly to hone in on the desired skills that recruiters were looking for. It fell by the wayside as the Call of Duty games really kicked off. There is an irony in that video games themselves become a form of therapy.
This brought back a couple of not-so-pleasant memories. I remember my combat vet/Purple Heart recipient uncle watching me play Top Gun on NES in the late 80's. He had never seen video games before. I remember him mentioning to my family how games like that were basically just grooming future enlistees. He was right. After serving through OEF & OIF, I remember being grossed out by the over-the-top corniness of stuff like Call Of Duty, particularly when the Modern Warfare stuff started. Once you've seen real people burned to death, decapitated, buried alive, etc. it's disgusting to watch large gaming complanies reproduce the same thing for mass entertainment and $$$. Great video Pat, even if I'd prefer to never watch it again.
I gotta ask you though with all respect, maybe you know the answer to this. Why when soldiers have seen innocents killed like that why would a soldier still choose to fight in other wars? Hell even in this video its been talked about how drone shots usually kill more civilians than the intended target, dont you think soldiers should stand up for this kind of killing? And not choose to go to another war were killing civilians will happen again and again.
@@shinren_ Hi! I know you didn’t ask me specifically, but hopefully I might be able to shed some light on your question using my logic and reasoning. I believe that the accumulation of understandings of human culture (also know as “people”) have placed money above human life on a value hierarchy scale. I believe you might think that would be pretty easy, but money evolved from bartering, which evolved from fighting to the death over what we want. I believe all anyone wants to do is feel safe, but money is causing people to do whatever is in their power to get it because it is perceived as the only way to stay alive. I believe this is wrong of course, but people dont like thinking they are wrong, and you can only believe something if you decide to (convince yourself to) believe it. So to answer only your question in my own words: I believe money is the reason why others would kill. If contemplating this disturbs you, I remind you of the love people have for art, culture, and other people. I believe if somehow we can all wake up and decide to be honest with one another, we can refine our communication and possibly find out how to improve the world without such senseless loss of life. Thank you if you took the time to read this! Follow me on social media @jtraviscooper to keep up with my thoughts (CW: Admission of Fear and Guilt: I include this because I too need money and am thinking about becoming a philosopher and could use a large following to help build my case to get into a graduate philosophy program. Thank you if you read this and follow! I probably wont take the time to message everyone in the world, but I would love to talk to more people when I have the time to slow down and philosophize [I.E. feel financially safe enough to not die lol]. Colloquial language as well as forewarning about events that are certain to happen in the future make humans feel safe. The feeling of safety that arises from these tactics of communication is called vulnerability and when our vulnerability is met with perceived honesty, we establish a bond to someone. I simply hope to make a lot of bonds with people! No real alternate agenda besides the whole not dying thing.)
@@shinren_ Some soldiers fight for ideological reasons or they think war is unavoidable, and might develop an "uncaringness" about the dead, just like morticians do. Also, a percentage of vets is surely traumatized to the point they are unable to change career due to a crippling fear of inadequacy or ongoing mental illness.
@@JTCooper well i understand that for the politicians and weapon makers its about money because they make the most out of war, but soldiers dont earn nearly as much compared to them 🤔
@@ardenorcrush649 true, it takes a while for soldiers to get back to civilian life. ive seen soldiers talk about how they were really harsh and uncaring for their family when they came back. Takes a while for them to get used to not being in combat and risking your life.
Dude I just want to say, I’ve seen a ton of videos on RUclips on every subject imaginable. I’ve seen videos about cod before, but not one written and presented like yours. This was phenomenal and I hope you keep up the great work.
Activision Writers: Dammit, we've made dozens of games about shooting nazis, communists, terrorists, and space robots. We're running out of bad guys for our Marine Corps advertisers! *turns on TV* Activision: Looks like Russia's back on the menu boys!
This is some of Pat's best journalism thus far in his work. While most of his videos are insightful and clever in their critiques and observations, I feel like this is an altogether different effect given the subject matter and depth he goes into. The kind of self-aware, morally cognizant dissection of a massive franchise is indicative of exactly why I respect Pat's quality of work. Juxtaposing the horror of the subject matter with the candy-coated visual spectacle it has become serves to highlight the insanity it ultimately is. Thanks for this video. I know it took time out of your Elden Ring grind and I'm grateful you put in this much work for our sake.
Call of Duty has been a franchise that has gotten so big that it feels past the point of critique. Like, its a multi-billion dollar enterprise with celebrity cameos and multiple entries and trying to take an analytical lens to it garners a response like you're trying to work out what sort of message an episode of Practical Jokers is sending. It's swept aside as "its call of duty, it ain't that deep" which is insane considering the biggest video game franchise in the world has essentially been about doing war crimes in an eternal cold war for the past decade. Like, the most profitable, mainstream video game on the planet (ik, fortnite exists, stick with me for a sec) has entries that include taking part in an airport mass shooting, torturing a captive in front of his family with the option of shooting him dead in front of them, a US general explicitly saying "I've caused numerous war crimes and atrocities so americans will join the military" and so so so so so many war crimes. How is that NOT worth talking about?
I remember seeing this EXACT critique of the game back in 20-goddamn-14 when Advanced Warfare was on its way. I think the video was by Innuendo Studios, I remember him saying something like, we'd already reached a point where the only critique you could offer of call of duty was within the context of the series, and trying to work outside that was treated as nonsense at best, and hostile at worst. The problem has only gotten worse and it somehow now applies to basically every media franchise.
@@DnallohLeoj and THAT fuckin game is about a PMC led by Kevin fuckin Spacey trying to kill everyone with gas bombs that target your DNA. COD is fuckin absurd
People who say "It's not that deep" or "It's not political" only say that because they agree with the politics of the series. They don't realize that the games have a message, because they simply believe the message reflects reality and common sense. That, and they don't understand how media shapes people's worldviews. They don't have that awareness.
Honestly I don't think you can say "it's not that deep" about any media. No matter what it is or how intentional it is with its message, it carries certain cultural assumptions or biases. Literally any media has potential for analysis.
I don’t want to criticize every cod player, but i still remember the one time my old classmates found out my chemics teacher had to join the military for a while (it was mandatory at that time of his life). My classmates loved and played a lot of cod and excitedly asked the teacher if he held this and that gun and if he shot with it and if he threw grenades or drove a tank. He answered some questions but he was so uncomfortable. He said it was not fun, several times, and still they insisted they envy him and made jokes. I felt bad for him. I told him i’m sorry he had to go through that and he said “i am sorry as well. It was not a good time at all” and he looked so depressed. Thank you for the video, it’s well made and structured. I hope more people become concious of the effects cod has and start being more aware of the actual realities cod is potraying
Dont blame your friends too much , their only source to knowing war is from videogames , unless they spend some time watching liveleak videos then they would perceive war differently
@@alahsiaboi8909 i appreciate your reply, but in all honesty they weren’t my friends and actually some of the meaner classmates i had. I also live in germany and considering our history i’d expect more respect and consideration, even from young students. But maybe i’m being too harsh, i don’t know. It just annoyed me a lot back then and still bothers me today. Thank you for replying though! I hope i didn’t come over as mean with this
@TheFrozenBiscuit i can give some basic stuff but don’t take my word for the entirety of the german population! There’s a lot of different complicated feelings about war and its themes. Generally though the younger a person is the further they feel from the past conflicts and will be more lax about it. We’re taught about ww2 in school a lot, so many also feel like never interacting with anything war related ever. The military is seen in a more negative light here and we generally don’t celebrate any victory besides the one of the nazis. There’s no parades and such from what i know. Old people tend to be very sensitive to war-related things which is understandable. Some want to forget the war because of trauma and some don’t want to face the consequences of having participated in it. I don’t want to make a super long comment though, i’m sure there’s better videos on german perspectives on war. And again i don’t want to put myself as the spokesperson of germany, the subject is a bit too sensitive for that. Hope this helped a little though!
@@theprince5573 Ah, so you share the blood of Nazis. You and your kind have no right to talk about war after what Germany has done to the rest of the world since the birth of your wretched nation.
This is a problem I been feeling for years but had a hard time putting into words. Vanguard is definitely the breaking point. I never seen a game so tastelessly depict WW2 before. It is embarrassing.
Agreed. Call of duty world at war was one of the last call of duty games to depict World War II In an authentic, Gritty Manner. I don’t think we’re gonna get a Call of Duty like that anytime soon
@@ZombieaidZ Yes. The developers also made a lot of boneheaded decisions and handled PR very poorly. In one such instance, They flat out told the people if they don’t like the game, don’t buy it.
@@drstrangelove307 Yeah, absolutely nothing political about modern warfare. It's funny to see that the "Videogames shouldn't anything to do with politics" types are still clinging to that sentiment so blindly.
@@nirav.raveesh The video's title is misleading. This is most likely intentional so as to garner enough clicks to get money. Many people in the gaming community have been scratching their heads as to why Call of Duty's quality has dropped so quickly over the past few years. The title of the video suggests that it might give a reason but doesn't do that. Instead it basically says that Call of Duty is a "circus" because it collaborates with the U.S. military to push narratives and influence the public. But here's the thing: Call of Duty can do all of what this journalist claims it does while also producing a good product in the end. Therefor the video doesn't answer the question on the community's mind. The journalist in question is a huge liberal and from his political philosophical viewpoint criticizes Call of Duty from a moral perspective throughout the video. Most people in the Call of Duty community aren't looking for that type of insight. Therefor it's natural why people don't like the video for it's "political leanings and biases". If the person who made the video actually wanted to answer the question on the community's mind, then it would take a deeper dive into the how the games mechanics and quality have changed over time from good to bad. "The Story narrative" is not the sole reason for the Call of Duty drop in quality. It doesn't even get into loot boxes, trend chasing, and only barely talks (60 seconds of a 27 minute video) about COD's active lying through claiming historical authenticity when that's not the case.
I often feel extremely uncomfortable watching the Marines or Army show up to CoD and Halo events. This video hit every single correct tone explaining why. Thank you.
@@crazychase98 have u no soul at all marines at the end of the day are the armed hand of the state, trained to kill, and sometimes, all their actions amount to at the end of the day is not a safer country and a safer world but a big fat check in the pocket of some DC fat cat that's abominably grim. how do u not recognize how gross it is to blend that horror in with f'in mountain dew dancing video hoes
It’s honestly kind of a smooth-brain take. A couple soldiers went nuts and did some bad stuff so now the idea that combatants should think for themselves and make their own decisions is far right propaganda or something
I remember someone saying that you can't actually make an anti-war film by portraying war, it's too romanticized, too idealized. I think something like a Schindler's List or This War of Mine works better. Not showing the soldiers and confusing the audience into hero worship, but instead showing civilians, people like us trying to live -not strictly fighting- through the inhumanity. P.s, no war, but class war.
Generally the main issue for a lot of anti-war media is that combat generally always looks exciting on the big screen no matter what, but the thing about that is that combat is not what soldiers spend most of their time on and I think anti-war media would be a lot more effective if it replicated that. Most of the time of a soldier is down time and doing boring interrupted by brief moments of combat and I think anti-war media that spent most of it's time on that would actually work, you just have to make war boring and then the combat are brutal and senseless interruptions of that. Though that being said I do also think that a lot of anti-war media is generally successful, while some people undoubtedly will always fail to understand it clearly the majority of people do. The majority of Gundam fans definitely understand that it's at it's heart an anti-war franchise and clearly among the fandom that is the widespread consensus. Gundam does also spend a lot more time on all the boring aspects of war and that might be what helps but I think it also just does a good enough job of always making combat brutal and gut wrenching enough that people get the message across. It always puts a focus on showing us the collateral damage that'll always happen in a battle and makes it very clear that the battle itself is the problem.
This was really well done. I'm someone who walks that weird knife edge of loving the experience of first person shooters, while simultaneously absolutely despising and abhorring actual war, and the forces that drive and profit from it. I suppose I am part of the problem. But no matter how much propaganda entertainment I buy, I will never go fight old men's wars for them, and I will never support war in any case outside the imminent threat to myself, my loved ones, and my neighbor; i.e. invasion. Not quite sure how I feel about me right now. Thanks for this thoughtful presentation.
Outstanding work. Please continue to include clips of Geoff Keighley looking uncomfortable in future videos - even if you must orchestrate them yourselves.
I would absolutely recommend this video to anyone curious about COD as a cultural artifact or someone trying to build media literacy and critical thinking. Good roundup Pat and Polygon!
Pat pointing out that Modern Warfare was his first introduction into a predator drone really resonated with me and made me think how passively I had let the video game me and my buddies in middle school let those games shape my perceptions of war. So thanks! Good vid
I'm surprised there isn't a single mention of World at War because it offers one of the most realistic serious and accurate portrayals of the grey morality and trauma of war out of every CoD game. It doesn't treat itself like some fictitious propoganda piece and does a great job at portraying actual war tactics and the multiple angles of WW2. There's some genuine artistry to it I find to be very tasteful with an amazing soundtrack to boot.
Black Ops is also.... very dour. That being said it's still full of goof. Not surprised he didn't mention it, Treyarch made a somewhat traditional "War is hell" game after MW2, right before the whole franchise went off the fucking deep end.
The devs may have attempted to inject the same authenticity that people laud Saving Private Ryan for into WaW, but the gameplay and systems are still designed with pleasure and addiction in mind. The game is more even-handed with how it depicts senseless acts, but it cannot overcome that barrier. No Call of Duty game can.
@@failedrevolutionary9497 I mean at the end of the day it IS a video game and those are meant to be fun. I don't really think inherently so that making an enjoyable video game combined with serious subject matter is inherently some evil manipulative thing, I think that's a fairly overzealous perspective that comes with what I feel is a lack of understanding by what the developers intended. I feel like past a certain point yes the advertisement became egregious and blatantly painted the military in a good light. But to say they *all* did that just because the gameplay was addicting is ridiculous to me.
“I learned what a predator drone was through Call of Duty, where it was a fun weapon that you get at 5 kills in a row” is giving very “My roommate thought that a punji pit was just a fun name for a spike trap in Tony Hawk, not a UN-banned guerrilla warfare weapon” energy. I don’t think two times makes it a trend, but I am a little surprised that Polygon has had two separate incidents of people discovering that a fun video game mechanic from their childhood was a war crime.
Among the many great things people have already said about this excellent (and difficult) video, I’d like to add one: It’s especially refreshing to see it from someone who has played 100s/1000s of hours of CoD. It’s easy to take potshots at the military-entertainment complex. It’s much harder and more meaningful to do so as a consequence of introspecting about one’s own involvement in it. Thanks for the great vid, Pat.
For folks who want to know more about the topic of the Military Entertainment Complex Pat brings up, check out “Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11” by Matthew Thomas Payne
@@strangefeeling8901 Ooh! I wanted to do that for launch, but just getting the video out on time was the priority. Will try to do that in the next few days! - Pat
As someone from the middle-east, this video really addressed my discomforts with Call of Duty's blatant war propaganda. It has always made me more uncomfortable than most when seeing how they depicted Arabs in remarkably racist ways. One thing I ought to mention here is that around the time Black Ops 2 came out Activision started attempting to expand its market in the middle-east so I started getting accustomed to seeing Call of Duty in Arabic which really hit different when they released Modern Warfare remastered. The way that they sold us racist depictions of us to justify wars against us *in our own language* was frankly disgusting.
I think we, people from the modern day West, think we're above propaganda, that we're the ones that know the real and only truth. We don't and propaganda is still a very real thing.
You don't get to have a culture that oppressed half of your population and still complain when westerners make video games that seem a little insensitive or racist, especially considering if a white guy went down to Iraq he would get some pretty dirty looks and prob asked if he was Christian (at which point he would prob have to run if he didn't want to die by stoning or burning). I don't think that we have ever depicted the Saudis or turks in the same way as Iaqis or Syrians bc the first two don't regularly torture and execute mass amounts of people in horrible ways for religious reasons. If you don't want Iraqis and freinds to be depicted as bloodthirsty zealots then maybe cut down on the amount of bloodthirsty zealots in those areas.
"Not only will america go to your country and kill all your people. But they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad." - Frankie Boyle
@@levitatingpotato109 are you seriously taking a minority of disgusting people as a whole this stuff works at year 5 maybe.. anyways those who kill for so called religious reasons are obviously not religious to begin with.
I wish more games would portray war like Spec Ops: The Line does. I felt physically and emotionally drained at the end and questioned all my actions. I’ve never had a piece of media effect me as much as spec ops: the line did. Absolutely give it a try if you haven’t
The flight simulators are pretty accurate to the point that a Korean gamer took on an AI that at least one Air Force pilot couldn't take down in a dog fight.
I’m a high school history teacher and sometimes it’s really rough to contend with how constantly I have to reckon with kids’ dependency on Call of Duty as their frame of reference for war as a concept. Having spent my youth firmly in the “video games don’t cause violence” camp, I’m realizing we were right, but only because we confined our definition of violence to American soil.
Video games don't cause violence, propaganda does, sadly. No person will play gta and turn into a murderous maniac, but a kid that was brainwashed by the propaganda that the US military is actually pretty rad and that you can get an air strike with a 5 kill streak, will probably consider joining the army.
@@0BucketMask0 yeah, that's my point. Video games don't cause violence, US propaganda does. CoD doesn't cause violence because it's a videogame but because it is propaganda, y'all just didn't get what i was going for
In Germany where I'm from, there's a big gaming convention called the Gamescom every summer. Now while this is a good event to meet all kinds of gamers (and for companies to sell stuff I guess), it's also a space where the Bundeswehr - the German military - advertises to recruit young gamers. Notably CoD fans. One of their most tasteless lines has been "It doesn't get more open-world than this". Now personally, most of my friends who've gone to the Gamescom are big lefties, and have never felt very intrigued by this kind of marketing. But I don't actually know how the average German gamer feels about this stuff or how successful it is. Just thought this would be interesting. Great video, Pat.
That's wild given how, to the rest of the world, Germany is 'the place with the crazy amount of censorship in games', which I always thought was from some place of guilt/shame/whatever the actual cocktail of emotions it is German people feel about WWII, that having graphic military violence depicted on screen was just not okay for them in that light. But they still recruit kids at video games conventions? wild
If you've heard of PAX, it's a big gaming convention with events across the USA (and one in Australia). For PAX South, in Texas, one year I went the biggest booth in the whole convention was the US Air Force. There's ALWAYS military advertising at the shows, especially for the Army and Navy eSports teams. It makes me sick.
@@Cooldrew100 Why does it make you sick? We have an all volunteer military force which means recruiters need people to willingly sign up. Why is it so bad for military recruiters to utilize new media to their advantage to get more people to join the military? If they don't, then we will see a massive drop in recruitment numbers which leads to a whole host of other problems. I fail to see why it is so disgusting for the military to simply set up a booth at gaming conventions to see if people want to join. No one is forcing you to go to the both. No one is forcing you to sign the paper. The military needs volunteers in order to operate so again they need to find the new popular spaces that are popping up to help ensure they have the numbers needed in order to make our military and effective fighting force. Video games and video game conventions are ideal locations for just that.
I will never forget watching the game awards and seeing a trailer for call of duty cold war..... with war pigs by black sabbath playing. let me repeat that. *war pigs.* a song that is very distinctly and very explicitly about how terrible war is. in the trailer for a game where ronald reagan tells you to commit war crimes.
but cold war literally doesnt say america is good. It shows how shit they are along with soviets. There is literally an ending where the US nukes europe. Not to mention noone literally noone gives a shit about it. Noone plays cod for glorifiying war, people play cod to shoot stuff and rage, very rarely do people care about the campainq story.
Back when Medal of Honor Allied Assault came out, my dad sometimes watched me play for a brief minute or two. He always got this uneasy look about him as I mowed down scores of 3D rendered soldiers. "This hits too close to home", he would say. I couldn't fully appreciate what he meant by that when I was 12. My grandfather was in the navy during WW2 and the possibility that he may not come home was very real. Seeing that made into a videogame, and what is essentially a toy in my dad's eyes, must have been upsetting. I'm not completely against COD or other war shooters personally, his reaction has just always stayed with me.
Pat, this was so well done. The structure so visibly contextualizes how we got here, accompanied with your always endearing Pat-humor twists. Bravo - sending to friends!
This just makes me think of the fact I had been aimed at to try to be recruited into the military as soon as I was old enough to enter the age range of Call of Duty players. In the same time as Call of Duty sold millions of copies there were uniformed recruiters almost every day at my high school. Every week a different branch of the military would show up to try and get teens to sign up, there was a JR ROTC program at my school that I knew several people entered, and even as the recruiters would say "This isn't anything like Call of Duty, this is real life" they would still take advantage of people's expectation of what the military was from those video games to try and get kids to sign away the next years of their lives, possibly more. I personally would get calls from recruiters and even when I revealed I was overweight they would say "do you think you can lose that weight in [X] months," as though a 14 year old could plan that far ahead in his life. At my school there were really only two options presented as meaningful for our futures: If we were intellectual we would be pushed towards college, and if we weren't we'd be pushed towards the military.
Really great video. You always hear people talk about how they got tired of CoD for repeating the same game over and over. But love how this video directly comments on its influence in the gaming marketplace and how its used by the military industrial complex. Awesome work polygon!
Learning that the military gets final say on story scripts makes so much sense thinking back on CoD: Black Ops. The game tried to say something critical of war in that the protagonist suffers psychologically from his experiences in war, and specifically as a POW. It's clear that this story is supposed to end as a tragedy, where the traumatized protagonist would ignite nuclear war in his quest for wanton revenge. But at the last minute, the story takes a 180, and the game closes with a jet flyover, rock guitars, and the American flag flying over a decisive win for America. It's obvious that the writers got pushback on the final draft, and rather than rewrite it, they just cut out the last scene and replaced it with some patriotic nonsense that disagrees with everything that the story had been leading towards.
That's the strange thing about the black ops section of the franchise. Black ops has always felt different because it's always felt as if the writers at least in comparison to Infinity Ward, Treyarch understood a little more of what subject matter they were dealing with, but you can SEE when the DOD intercepts their scripts. I think the latest game cold war is far more transparent with what the original script could've been. As it takes a more neutral stance. Neutral is better than nothing but it's still not enough.
@@wyattborden1377 pretty much every one agreeing and commenting under this video either hasn't played CoD campaigns or played them like once 7 years ago. They really do not know anything on the subject matter.
@@archibaldmoore4514 it's pretty clear the ending of black ops was specifically made to give off this feeling of " yee yee brother we just killed thousands for a good cause and nothing bad will ever happen again because America". Which is juxtaposed to literally every scene within the game. I think it isnt too far fetched, especially since I distinctly remember the government talking to heads of Activision multiple times over the last 8 years or more. It's pretty obvious that since MW the games have had outside influence guiding a certain perspective on why war "must" be fought
This should be an educational video to be shared on schools. When I was a kid I used to shrug to my mother's bewilderment seeing me play COD or Medal of Honor, but now I understand that for her, war could never be this entertaining theme that it has become.
Here's the weird thing. I enjoy these games and I'm big time into firearms as a competitive sport, hunting, and as a hobby. That being said I can't help but agree on this one. While this doesn't apply universally to everyone, I have noticed that these games do desensitize some people and erase the concept of the true horrors of actual warfare. It trivializes it to the point where I met people who literally wanted to join the army so they could live call of duty, not love of country, not to create a career or get college paid for, not a deep ideological drive, nope just for shits and giggles. These same people will then virtue signal about how tragic one out the over 40 current wars is "so tragic" while simultaneously calling for the deaths and destruction of the side they don't like even though they know nothing of what , how or why the war started in the first. These people even join the war effort as untrained civilians lacking any military discipline, get a crash course on how to operate their rifle, assuming they're lucky and even get issued one, then sent off to the front where their 1000 hours of COD warzone does jack against an actual enemy airstrike. Its sad but also hilarious to watch just how stupid people can be .
If you want a more accurate portrayal of war, play something like Squad. It’s a lot more down to earth with 50v50 battles, and it focuses less on a Rambo main character and more teamwork and coordination. Driving a tank requires multiple people doing different jobs, and it’s claustrophobic and stressful. It’s great and I feel it does what COD was first planned to do but better
The issue with these games is not that you're encouraged to commit war crimes, is that you're doing it from the standpoint of a player character who is supposed to be on the "good guys' side". There are plenty of games where you can roleplay as the bad guy, where you can be as awful a human being as possible. But you _know_ you're doing that, you clearly know on which side you're standing. This, however, is just absurd. It is ever so lightly pretending to take a moral stance on something, but it really isn't, and it all just ends up as being meaningless. CoD games are ugly, boring for being repetitive and joyless, and ultimately, they're a shallow, empty and void experience. Since they're tackling such a delicate subject as war, death and destruction of human lives and communities you'd think they would be more criticized and less venerated. But they're not, and it shows one of the worst sides of the gaming industry and its fans. And the fact that the US Army is using violent entertainment designed for addiction, in order to profit and lure people in to their ranks just makes it even worse.
Mw2019 and Vanguard are the perfect example of shallow, it's always either russia or china that are the big badies meanwhile the US and UK are the mighty heroes (not a perfect timing for say because of Ukraine but whatever) Then there's Vanguard with their "aLtErNaTiVe HiStOrY" At the very least cold war in the end showed the good guys literally brainwashed/MKultra'd you and there's even the option to betray them and join the bad guys instead, which i loved it
But that is okay, because as America have portrait in Holiwood, only American lives matter. War crimes are only war crimes when they are committed against Otan members. I think that it is kind of funny how American can be so blind in criticizing Russia for invading Ukraine when they did worst invading Iran, Iraque, etc. It's mind blowing how blind to the actions of their own country Americans can be.
So I must contend that the "No Russian" scene actually had value to society, just not in the way the developers intended. C.O.D. makes war look fun and accessible when in actuality it tests the morals, minds, hearts, and muscles of those who fight in it until they break even if they are what we would deem to be a hero. The "No Russian" mission actually breaks that for a moment. I remember when I first played that scene the day the game became available for sale. Flat out that scene shocked me. I had spent thousands of hours killing random NPC's, and player characters but never before had a game put so much time and effort into showing me an actual depiction of evil. The callus disregard for life. . . the screaming. . . the blood. . . the death. . . it was a hell of a lot more than what I thought I was going to see when playing a game. Everyone I have talked to has said the same, they were shocked. Many of these people when asked if they shot any of the innocent NPC's in that scene responded with a "NO!, Of course not!" They found the idea of doing so morally repugnant. The "No Russian" mission I would say has value because, for just a moment, it forced people to be uncomfortable with war, death, and killing. It forced millions of youth here in the U.S. to ask themselves "Jesus. . . is this what war is like?"
Extraordinary video. I can see why it was taking so much out of you to make - it's huge, and it gets to the heart of the thing in such an insightful, crucial way. Thank you so much, Pat & the gang, I hope this video comes to those who need it
Also, wanted to specifically shout out the very end of "part 7." It was really, really striking, I had to pause and regroup (which I mean as a good thing). Just really stellar
That AC130 mission from MW1 is fascinating to me. I feel like it does a better job than the white phosphorous mission from Spec Ops at showing the cold, detached, inhuman, mass slaughter of modern war, where one side is overwhelmingly, impossibly armed against a force that have been reduced to a little bright blob on a screen; but at the same time it's genuinely hard to tell if that's what it's trying to say or if it's intended to be cool and satisfying.
I played the mw and mw2 campaigns for the first time this year. As a socialist and a gamer I had heard all the controversies. It was only when I played the games for the first time that I truly understood just how powerful these games were. It was a lot of fun, and that kind of scared me.
So, I'd love to add something to this as someone who has ended up working in the Defense Industrial Base (a polite name for the private half of the military-industrial complex). I can't say whether it's because people who played these games are now a big chunk of the military and its providers, but if you read any industry media it's clear that the common view of military hardware is that they're toys to be played with, and a lot of the advertising really leans into this "YOU ARE A TRAINED KILLER, GO GET EM TIGER" vibe that's deeply upsetting. There's a really wild issue of Defense Industry Magazine where they talk about Augmented Reality's future in military, and while they blithely talk about using it to feed intel to troops and "help them identify targets", you have military brass quoted as saying they've always wanted technology like this since they saw "Iron Man" and "Starship Troopers". Knowing that studios have consultants from inside the defense department, I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude is actually bleeding through from the original source. For what it's worth, I think this attitude is more representative of administrators and the industrial sector than boots-on-the-ground soldiers. But seeing people at a high level talk about conflict like it's a game is really concerning.
Pat is such a great presenter. He really puts his personality forward and knows how to write in his voice so comfortably, which isn't easy to do. It's succint and well-worded enough to show it's scripted and thought out, but natural and flowing enough that it comes off as improvisational and conversational. All that and the editing coming together makes a magic thing. Thing is, too, all the Polygon folks have this talent and pair it with their own interests and styles. Really something for everyone made by someone cool. 7/10 with rice. ETA: Also, what hat is he wearing? Looks cool.
Its incredibly difficult to make an anti war film actually be anti war. There's a quote out there that describes the issue as "because war is intrinsically exciting". I recommend the film Come and See as probably the only ww2 film that actually makes me 100% uncomfortable. Not a single moment can be mistakenly taken as "exciting" in its portrayal of ww2. The main character is naive and helpless. They think they have agency in the conflict but quickly realize how utter screwed everything is.
saw this movie recently and i agree 100%, the way it portrays the Nazis getting wasted and killing the people in that village for fun basically just shows how fucked up war actually is
@@demonomancer same. That part messed me up. My gf told me about how a lot of the German military was high on speed and other drugs to stay "alert", especially on the eastern front. I never knew that before...so f'ed up
This, I feel like TWOM was lacking for that reason was it lacked the sense of helplessness that Come and See had, it's ironic an Assymetical slasher game would have better mechanics for an anti war game than what TWOM had and I do applaud 10bit for taking popular media genres and giving a sombre introspection Imagine a game where you play as a bunch of pacifist refugees fleeing a ruthless and invincible invading force and you have to sell out your mates or make sacrifices so they can flee the warzone.
Damn, Pat, this was excellent. This is what journalism is about, and this is the kind of discussion and criticism I'd like to see more of in games. Thanks for the work you put into this!
I was a Marine from 03-07. Butler is my favorite Marine hero/legend, mostly because of his post-Corps life. I love that you had a Veterans For Peace member read his writing, I think that's a very fitting way to do it.
I'm glad you don't suck the boot polish. Especially in today's climate, it's nigh unconceivable to have a national war hero essentially come out of a pro peace Socialist who confesses his services in the name of Democracy were actually rendered in the name of greed.
Patrick, my boy, this is remarkable and excellent. I'd love for more long-form deep dives like this on serious/semi-serious topics related to games media
Conservatives(let’s be honest) and reactionaries are physically incapable of ever looking at media at anything other than a completely surface level. It makes their brains hurt.
Highly recommend anyone that enjoyed this to go watch Jacob Geller’s “does call of duty believe in anything” video. Feels like the natural follow up to this.
If Call of Duty ever had anything to say it definitely lost the plot once MW2 came out. It always seemed like the series was just chasing "the nuke" moment, but it never understood that what made that moment so powerful was because of all the quote-unqoute ass you were kicking through the campaign up until that point, and suddenly you were just reduced to a statistic in the blink of an eye. BO4 was probably the most honest CoD since it didn't even bother with a campaign - it knew what the series had become at that point and ran with it.
Fantastic video from Pat as always, but what I thought was especially effective was his use of his own experiences enjoying Call of Duty. Rather than condemn a faceless group of fans, he engages with his own memories of playing the game and criticizes the problems with the franchise from there.
This is a fantastic video about how media is neither produced nor consumed in a vacuum. And how it's a lot more complicated than "video game good" or "video game bad"
I hate how it felt like he started to pull his punches at the end tried to give a somewhat happy ending, this thing is bad and should be treated as such, it’s not as Pat said “ok” it’s really really fucking bad actually. That being said the rest of the video was actually really good especially considering I think making something like this was an actual risk for polygon.
I agree, the end of the video felt like an attempt at a clean wrap-up, when I'm not really sure this topic deserves that. I understand why the ending is there, it's good writing to wrap everything up at the end, but surely in this case, the message is that we don't _want_ the Dew Bunker? That there's something _wrong_ with all of this? That seems to be the tone of the rest of the video, but it's dropped at the end, and I wonder if that sense of "good writing" undermines the video's larger point.
Feels as if he's Not Allowed, in any way whatsoever, to acknowledge that there is a bad thing happening that he can't do much about. Instead, he just says "Ah its ok" but its not, and yeah I was also disappointed with the end of the vid. America is the kinda country that will invade your land, kill your people, and back home, the citizens will have fun by virtually invading your land and killing your people while drinking the new flavor of Mtn Dew.
@@BattlefireTV I don’t really think you’re acknowledging the ways in which art effects how people perceive things, especially because COD is literally used as a recruiting tool by the U.S. military. I also think it’s a little bold to say there’s nothing wrong with COD specifically due to all the racism present in the series. It’s ok to like things that have problems with them, just don’t ignore the issues present.
This is the kind of hard hitting game journalism I LOVE to see. Breaking down the whys and the meanings behind a type of media that all too often goes overlooked, despite being as influential as film, if not more. Keep it up!
Man I remember watching pat’s dew bunker stream and that was a riot but I wasn’t thinking that intensely about what went into that event at the time. Great video pat! Honestly terrifying
This was a very insightful and well thought out video and I really appreciate the care with which Pat and the team tackled an incredibly difficult topic.
no russian made me physically sick when i played it, i was 13 and bought mw2 at a garage sale. i didn't know that would be in the game and my parents didn't know. i just had friends that told me the game was good and to get it. i remember continuing to play even though it made me nauseous because that's what my friends played and i thought i was somehow weak for how i was feeling, not to mention the toxic online culture of that game. looking back now i've often thought of that game as the one that desensitized me to violence, and not just in games but also in film. the shock value is gone because i told myself it wasn't real so many times in the past so i wouldn't feel sick. at some point something flipped in my brain and i started chasing that feeling, seeking out games that made me feel anything at all. i got really into horror games and films but the adrenaline/shock feeling quickly faded and i feel nothing again from that media. i feel like i've ruined my brain and i know a lot of other people enjoy violence like this too and i wonder whether they also had a piece of media they were exposed to that acted as a catalyst in a similar progressive loss of empathy. i'm 26 now and i miss when things used to affect me more. i stopped playing violent games for a while and started getting into romance and other lighter topics that also make me feel good and i hope i can somehow repair the emotional scarring, for lack of a better term, from a period of my life when i had become extremely calloused. i know this isn't everyone's experience, just thought i would share in hopes someone else might have experienced something like this too.
Fun (or unfun) fact about No Russian: The orders never tell you explicitly to shoot any of the civilians. It simply says, "Follow Makarov". The entire game series is built on you following the instructions or actions of a NPC, and in this moment its a subtle slap across the face far better than MW2019's "gloves off" moment: "Follow your job. You're a soldier, you have your orders" vs. "This isn't war, this is terrorism on an unprecedented scale of evil"
I forgot spielberg was involved with medal of honor but when you said he worked on a game i realized immediately...it felt so real and like you were a part of a movie with characters and consequences and terrifying moments. Masterpieces the early games especially allied assault
I don't put those games on any kind of pedestal, but I view their original rendition of Omaha Beach as inadvertently symbolic in its execution. Due to how limited graphics technology was at the time, the MG bunkers really were just concrete shapes that shot at you, there wasn't a person or anything besides the facade. Distancing yourself from the horrors of war literally made the human side of it disappear.
This definitely seems like a video only Pat could pull off well. Not just within polygon, I don't think any other youtuber I watch could have made this video better than this.
That was an insane watch. Thank you for putting in the time, Pat. I'm going to do the obvious thing and wonder why we gave up on asking questions with Spec Ops: the Line - seems like that's the only game that tried to start a dialogue around all this.
I remember the hype for the 7th gen being huge. I read in EGM that Call of Duty 2 had people sweating from how supposedly intense it was and that was a huge selling point to me. So yeah, this video is relevant as hell and really well done.
This is great, I was just thinking the other day how much I wished polygon would do more long, deep videos like this. I really appreciate some of the shorter stuff but they really showed off to me how much I value the minds of everyone there and want to hear them dig deeper into things they are passionate about. This is exactly that.
Phew, okay. Pat's been working on this video for a really long time so I'd just like to say: Thank you, Pat. You're a good writer.
Thanks Pat! Great video.
Also thanks Simone, the subtitles are fire.
Awesome job Pat! This one must have been extremely heavy and must have really weighed you down but it came out absolutely beautifully! You earned some fortnight und to drink some cola❤️
thank you pat
i didnt know but ive been waiting for a video like this since the first mw came out
yes i would also like to say that
That part about Dale Dye being concerned that the FPS war games would be "exploitative, tone-deaf, irresponsible thing," just made me LOL, Because he was, pretty quickly, 10,000,000% right.
He was proven wrong by how much further down the mud the games industry could take it lmao
@@Guimhj Me a time traveller from the future "Boy you don't even know what exploitative even looks like"
The other half of that story was that he didn’t feel that way about the finished product of Medal of Honor. He wasn’t right immediately, but it didn’t take long.
I hate this series so much.
@@Guimhj gibberish
The case of "Saving Private Ryan" and of all the anti-war movies that ensued reminds me of what happens to gangster movies like Scarface, where they show you the path of criminals and their final ruin but many viewers instead focus too much on the glamour and fantasize about becoming as powerful as Tony Montana.
Yes, that's an excellent parallel. - Simone
Generally agree but I don’t think Saving Private Ryan was an anti-war movie tbh, it was just “soldiers are the real victims” shite designed specifically for the Iraq war
The Fight Club effect
@@tobysinbad I might be misunderstanding you, but didn't Saving Private Ryan predate the Iraq war by like five years?
I don’t think SPR or Scarface intended put people off war or crime. The idea that violence=bad is very out of date in cinema
“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
― General William Tecumseh Sherman
A hell some could prove to enjoy... Provided they don't get hurt of course.
Ironic giving what horrors he himself inflicted. Not just in fighting itself, but on the scorched earth policy he had when he tried wholly destroying the South.
Words from a hypocrite.
@@drstrangelove307 no not really war is hell
So it is merciful to bring it to a as quick as possible favorable conclusion
Which breaking an enemies ability to resupply does
Some enjoy that life style. Savage warriors and barbarians I think wouldn’t mind that at all.
The only Call of Duty that really showed the dark side of war, was World at War. The aesthetics were brown and gritty. The brutality was all over the place. Even the Menu had a depressing feeling to it. Underrated game.
Black Ops from 2010 was pretty unnerving as well. The menu screen was basically presented from the view of the main character, Alex Mason, who was strapped down into a chair while being brutally interrogated by unknown people. The story was very twisted and unsettling, and you never knew what was completely real or not. Mason ended up completely going through hell physically and psychologically over the course of the campaign just trying to find out what was going on.
Modern Warfare did a good job as a "If you look at yourself in the mirror America, what the player is fighting is actually you."
@@MrAsaqe Because at their core a lot of CoD games actualy do have more of a conscience than most people admit, in MW2 the entire war was orchestrated by US nationalists, in Black Ops the story gets so nihilistic it's borderline anti-american at times; In Black Ops 3 the only real villain is the CIA, somewhere in Black Ops 2 you take part in the most moraly dubious american-led coup I ever saw on screen (blindly following orders will get one of the main characters killed) and Cold War lets you join Russia at the end (not to mention hearing Soviet leaders saying word for word exact slogans the heroes use). There's more of it, you just have to stop and think about what the game is actualy portraying instead of what the heroes say but stopping and thinking is not really something CoD fans nor CoD critics do.
@@mister-BH I remember seeing the end of BO1 (The American Naval Armada iirc), and sort of rolling my eyes at the time, but I think it was supposed to be like "Look down the barrel of all these terrifying guns, then tell me whose side you're on"
Naw the missions in mw2 where we are fighting in America on our turf hits different. It's just the future I assume.
smedley butler’s story is what made me leave the marine corps and influenced my out look as a young lance. in recruit training they teach you about him as a war god. a hero on the field and the exemplary warfighter. when i learned his true story, i saw what the corps (and the massive machine it serves) did to spite his name. the last thing smedley wanted his name to be used for was to motivate killing and death on the battlefield, and despite his life’s work to promote awarness of the brutality and immorality of all war, the marine corps used his name to serve against everything he truly believed in and fought for. a large part of me believes it was done out of spite. and the years they’ve spent portraying him the way they do, and neglecting everything else he spent the rest of his life fighting for, is one of the greatest and most foul forms of disrespect and dishonor i’ve ever seen. the knowledge of his later writings heavily changed my outlook and destroyed my support for the institution i served in. i spent the rest of my time in after that trying to tell other marines his true story and hoping to, in some way, undo the years of shame the marine corps put on his name.
I'm going to go check out his books. Also can I recommend "on killing" by dave grossman
And the thing is that the manipulation of populations by the elites - making them believe in a mythology that makes them feel greater and justifies the violence and even their own horrible demise, just to make such elites richer and more powerful - has been one of the most common aspects of what we call human civilisation, since it's inception. Around 10000 years of it, along with vast different cultural "experiences" worldwide, hasn't been enough to turn things around. Mainly due to ignorance and purposefully created lack of access to education and - mainly - factual history studying, from multiple perspectives. The factual and non-mythological mapping of human decisions and suffering, so that future generations can avoid the same mistakes, is the worst enemy of the powerful few that control governments, companies, etc.
Edward Burnay's - Freud's nephew who used his findings to create the basis of the modern propaganda machines - is also a great person to study. And he didnt even felt the need to hide the techniques for mass manipulation. It's all essentially about stopping to actually understand how the human mind works and being cynical enough to understand and accept some of its animalistic deeper motivations.
Smedly would be proud of you, the real Smedly would be proud of you.
Hope you know that
@@MrSphandor There's several audio books for War is a Racket online, it's not a long text. It is very good.
@@MrSphandor i’ll give it a look. appreciate the recommendation
"whether or not it was an effective piece of anti-war media didn't matter, because it was profitable" is one of the most succinct encapsulations of how the entertainment industry works I've ever heard, well fucking done Pat
Kind of reminds me of terminator. Terminator 1 and 2 are stories about how love can save us from war and destruction. But from terminator 3 and onwards its more spectacle than anything with terminator content after terminator 2 trying to justify its existence with more robots, explosions, future weapons, and new terminator models. The newer movies are more interested in justifying old Arnold than anything. Call of Duty in beginning was clearly antiwar but then it morphed into dude bro power fantasy. It stopped being an artist vision and became a product to sell to guys who want to shoot stuff. But hey, shooting stuff is pretty fun.
@@josesosa3337 IDK if it's mentioned in the vid, but Rambo is the most tragic. From a PTSD-inflicted cop-killing veteran jaded towards authority to village-erasing "war hero". Guess which one sold more. Because like you said, shooting stuff is pretty fun. Really helped the recruitment drive for the Gulf War, too...
Exactly why you see pickup trucks with Punisher stickers being driven by patriotism-drunk gun nuts. It's so fucking ironic. They have no idea what the Punisher symbolizes, they just see a cool vigilante who shoots guns really good.
I have nothing against people who want to collect guns or think owning a gun is cool. Self-defense is fine. But when so many of these guys are complete idiots who don't even understand the characters they deify, there's a problem.
The thing is that not every depiction of war needs to be anti war. It is okay to have blind entertainment now and then. Not every game needs to be a social commentary piece
@@susamogus5693 That's debatable. I personally enjoy blind violence in action movies and games as much as the next person but I don't know if that's healthy.
Certainly the entertainment industry has some level or moral responsibility and maybe that kind of media isn't really a good thing, however harmless the intentions are.
I remember as an adolescent playing Medal of Honor on PC (can’t remember exactly which) and decided to do it in the hardest difficulty. One shot can either kill or badly maim you, and explosives are even more effective. I had to save scum it, saving and replaying every few seconds, because no matter how patient, skilled or tactical, when faced against the odds, you just die. Every single time. Tanks were super scary, as were mounted guns. You don’t feel like a hero at all.
That experience left me a lasting feeling that war was, except for pure luck, certain death. Combined with the very critic quotes of war veterans in games of that time, it really destroyed any kind of romanticisation of war afterwards for me.
Don't play Tarkov
Modern wars for sure
In tarkov you can just hide in somehwere with good armour and wait for some stupid people who just walk around like idiots
But its better to grab a book when nothing happens xD
I remember "Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault" and the very first PC-Exclusive "Call Of Duty" from 2003. Those games were extremely hard-core. You had to find health packs in the environment to replenish your health, and every single enemy was a real threat. The concept of regenerating health was just barely in its infancy at that time, so not many games knew how to properly implement it yet.
"Too silly to live, too big to die." This video was really great. I wasn't expecting it to be this good. Pat went hard.
The note about how his first introduction to predator drones was through COD was kind of terrifying. The military has significant control of how a huge swath of the population is introduced to tactics potentially used for war crimes.
War Crimes only exist if they are punishable. Who is going to punish RU or China? Whatever punishments NATO has laid down on RU just caused RU to double down!
@@rpscorp9457 huh?
I love using them
@@rpscorp9457 Who is going to punish Russia OR Ukraine. Pretty damming to see confirmed footage of both sides executing prisoners of war. Plus it breaks the law to even release a single photo of a POW, let alone releasing a whole video depicting a POW forced to phone their own mother.
@@jakew7982 While the video does seem to have been vetted, its one incident. Not that there arent more but im guessing Zelinsky will find those responsible and most likely imprison them for trial. The last thing Zelinsky wants is soldiers undermining hard won political efforts. I wouldnt doubt that in the coming days we will see an address from him regarding the disposition of this incident.
Thank you for making this, Patrick. Outstanding stuff.
When I first saw this posted I thought “Oh sweet new Jacob Geller video!” Glad to see Pat entering the longer-form, stone-serious genre of video game video essay, and glad also to see you here!
When I saw this video on my feed, I was immediately reminded of yours!
For anyone interested, it's "Does Call of Duty Believe In Anything?" ruclips.net/video/FtCV421T52s/видео.html
Now THATS high praise polygon!
My boy got shouted out by Polygon? Neato!
If you’re reading this then go watch Jacob’s headshot video
Honestly kind of stunned to see such a high-profile games journalism outlet take on one of modern gaming's cornerstones like this. Absolutely fantastic video, thank you Pat and thank you Polygon
Are you for real? CoD is the games media's favourite punching bag.
Polygon is built different
@@lbsc1201 CoD, sure. Not so much the military industrial complex and whatnot though.
"Journalism"
Bro literally everyone complains about CoD. This isn't remotely new or unique lol. Remember everyone losing their minds over No Russian?
These takes are colder than the north pole.
Kudos to Polygon for not shying away from tackling a more serious and difficult perspective on video games. This is why I love this channel.
Kudos to polygon for taking a huge game studio to task for glamourising American imperialism and the military industrial complex
@@yungjoemighty879 kudos to polygon for producing better content than half the GaMInG RUclipsrs.
They still hold some punches though. The way to prove that war is hell is let the person experience it.
0000⁰0
@@meidyot1672 I have a hard time believing war is hell while they blast magic carpet ride paint it black and sympathy for the devil. I know those songs are laced with anti war meaning but pop culture turned the songs cool which means their meaning was lost and people only hear the music. The only military shooter that was able to sell me on war is hell was spec ops the line but that was more mindfuck game than military shooter game.
This is why tacti-cool guys or airsoftbros always rubbed me the wrong way. I remember I had this classmate in uni and he basically grew up playing airsoft and Call of Duty. He's almost always wearing some sort of military inspired outfits from camo pants and combat boots to carrying tactical knives. It basically became his whole persona and it was his dream to join the Marines. I know not everyone is like this, but it does happen.
It's the same way with milsim players. They claim to dislike Call of Duty in favor of genuinely "authentic" simulations of war, yet their games still glorify war and reward killing
@@ssrpg9339 its kinda like the 1920s romaticization of crime coming from a certain gangster in chicago.
We all want what we cannot have or cannot understand
I remember once when I was playing paintball in high school, a friend of my cousin's looked at the airsoft bros in their decked out tacticool gear and scoffed, derisively saying "if you want to dress up so bad, join the Marines." He did go on to join the Marines, but I'm fairly certain those airsoft bros never did.
There are warriors no matter where you go. People have an innate drive to fight, and the military gives them a look at modern warriors. You can debate the politics of war, but there will always be conflict at the end of the day, and we will always need people to defend our interests. “The war is bad” tagline is annoying. Wars are fought for a reason, and they are not always good, but we can't change our nature. As long as someone has a different enough idea, there will always be war.
@@stillvillian I have nothing against the military and I know conflict will ways exist so kudos to those who choose to serve. My criticism is towards those who romanticize war and have a skewed perspective on what it really means to serve the military. If you are driven by patriotism, no problem. If you are driven by a video game, better take a step back and reconsider your life choices
I worked in Intelligence for a few years. One of the things that still haunts me a to this day, almost twenty years later, was during our first drone strike. We literally popped popcorn and watched it go down in real time like it was some kind of movie. As we stared at the screen, drone circling miles above this truck stalled on this mountain road in Afghanistan, we sat there and just chatted about regular ass stuff. When the hell fire was finally loosed, and the target a smoldering reck, visible trails of blood where some had tried to crawl away from their vehicle, all my mind could muster was "wow, that looked just like call of duty...".
My next year I spent in a Operations Center (TOC) and drone stikes were a frequent occurrence. At this point, the year before I'd lost a bunch of friends and met loads of locals and heard their stories. The humanity and horrible nature of war had been firmly implanted in me. I took great effort to ensure targets we were hitting at our level (brigade, so not a lot of say, but enough) were at least, for sure, enemy combatants with no potential collateral damage. But it didn't save me from the ever compounding guilt that I was assisting in killing someones brother, father, son, and realizing that it was just multiplying the issue. For everyone we hit, we were taking those fence layers and pushing them to a side, and causing more people to take up arms against us. Same as it would have been if my brother had been killed by a ghostly force sitting ominously on bases throughout our country.
I have no regrets for my time in service, it's a time that helped shape the man in am today. But I have stockpiles of guilt, sadness and anger from it as well.
And yet, in the off hours between these ghastly, almost unreal events, we would all hunker down and play a few games of, wouldn't you know it, COD. It as such a weird escape, in the face of everything. And yet there we were. Let me tell you, nothing punctuates a virtual drone strike like an enemy rocket landing on your base in some weird ass timing. After picking ourselves up and brushing ourselves off, we just laughed about it and went back to the game, knowing we had another shift in the TOC a few hours later and desperately trying to just blow off some steam while we could. So strange.
Ah, the duality of modern war.
I don't think videogames are the cause for having a complete lack of respect for a human being you are about to kill. Probably a mix of peer pressure and cowardice.
"When the hell fire was finally loosed, and the target a smoldering reck, visible trails of blood where some had tried to crawl away from their vehicle, all my mind could muster was "wow, that looked just like call of duty..."." - Wow what a chilling quote
When I heard some report on the news like "9 insurgents killed in a drone strike", it made me question if it really was 9 insurgents or maybe just 1 or 2 insurgents and an unlucky family or whatever.
Thank you for at least trying to not cause collateral damage. War is hell - unfortunately _sometimes_ collateral damage is just completely unavoidable which is yet another reason why war is extremely horrible.
It is probably not a surprise to anyone that Ukraine is using former gamers that are too young and inexperienced to be on the frontline, to be drone operators instead which they are really good at and I've even heard one of them describe how they felt it was actually kind of fun.
Any nation on earth would do the same in an existential war. It's a smart move, there's lots of young men ready to defend their home country against a completely unjust invasion in an existential war who might not be fit for the most difficult and harsh roles in the military, yet they can still prove valuable in operating all kinds of unmanned vehicles.
Thank you for your service
Thank you for your service. Stay strong and talk honestly with others whom you trust. God Bless.
The military's "America's Army" game was made for this reason, part of it is a de-sensitization to violence, to treat the real life as if it were a video game (fantasy), and thirdly to hone in on the desired skills that recruiters were looking for. It fell by the wayside as the Call of Duty games really kicked off. There is an irony in that video games themselves become a form of therapy.
This brought back a couple of not-so-pleasant memories.
I remember my combat vet/Purple Heart recipient uncle watching me play Top Gun on NES in the late 80's. He had never seen video games before. I remember him mentioning to my family how games like that were basically just grooming future enlistees.
He was right. After serving through OEF & OIF, I remember being grossed out by the over-the-top corniness of stuff like Call Of Duty, particularly when the Modern Warfare stuff started. Once you've seen real people burned to death, decapitated, buried alive, etc. it's disgusting to watch large gaming complanies reproduce the same thing for mass entertainment and $$$.
Great video Pat, even if I'd prefer to never watch it again.
I gotta ask you though with all respect, maybe you know the answer to this. Why when soldiers have seen innocents killed like that why would a soldier still choose to fight in other wars? Hell even in this video its been talked about how drone shots usually kill more civilians than the intended target, dont you think soldiers should stand up for this kind of killing? And not choose to go to another war were killing civilians will happen again and again.
@@shinren_ Hi! I know you didn’t ask me specifically, but hopefully I might be able to shed some light on your question using my logic and reasoning. I believe that the accumulation of understandings of human culture (also know as “people”) have placed money above human life on a value hierarchy scale. I believe you might think that would be pretty easy, but money evolved from bartering, which evolved from fighting to the death over what we want. I believe all anyone wants to do is feel safe, but money is causing people to do whatever is in their power to get it because it is perceived as the only way to stay alive. I believe this is wrong of course, but people dont like thinking they are wrong, and you can only believe something if you decide to (convince yourself to) believe it. So to answer only your question in my own words: I believe money is the reason why others would kill. If contemplating this disturbs you, I remind you of the love people have for art, culture, and other people. I believe if somehow we can all wake up and decide to be honest with one another, we can refine our communication and possibly find out how to improve the world without such senseless loss of life. Thank you if you took the time to read this! Follow me on social media @jtraviscooper to keep up with my thoughts (CW: Admission of Fear and Guilt: I include this because I too need money and am thinking about becoming a philosopher and could use a large following to help build my case to get into a graduate philosophy program. Thank you if you read this and follow! I probably wont take the time to message everyone in the world, but I would love to talk to more people when I have the time to slow down and philosophize [I.E. feel financially safe enough to not die lol]. Colloquial language as well as forewarning about events that are certain to happen in the future make humans feel safe. The feeling of safety that arises from these tactics of communication is called vulnerability and when our vulnerability is met with perceived honesty, we establish a bond to someone. I simply hope to make a lot of bonds with people! No real alternate agenda besides the whole not dying thing.)
@@shinren_ Some soldiers fight for ideological reasons or they think war is unavoidable, and might develop an "uncaringness" about the dead, just like morticians do. Also, a percentage of vets is surely traumatized to the point they are unable to change career due to a crippling fear of inadequacy or ongoing mental illness.
@@JTCooper well i understand that for the politicians and weapon makers its about money because they make the most out of war, but soldiers dont earn nearly as much compared to them 🤔
@@ardenorcrush649 true, it takes a while for soldiers to get back to civilian life. ive seen soldiers talk about how they were really harsh and uncaring for their family when they came back. Takes a while for them to get used to not being in combat and risking your life.
absolutely glued to my screen the entire time. one of the best videos on this platform.
Oh hey it's the guy who talked about the characters in Now You See Me being wizards! Jk love your vids dude
I had sh** to do today. I also was glued to my screen the whole time.
isn't polygon a woke progressive rag?
Ketchup
Genuinely think so too! Phenomenal analysis, excellently written and excellently told.
This video is simply tremendous, put all of my uneasy thoughts about the franchise in clear order, absolutely amazing job pat!
I'll stick to Doom.
You should check the Jacob Geller vid on the topic too
Dude I just want to say, I’ve seen a ton of videos on RUclips on every subject imaginable. I’ve seen videos about cod before, but not one written and presented like yours. This was phenomenal and I hope you keep up the great work.
Activision Writers: Dammit, we've made dozens of games about shooting nazis, communists, terrorists, and space robots. We're running out of bad guys for our Marine Corps advertisers!
*turns on TV*
Activision: Looks like Russia's back on the menu boys!
They just did cold war!!
They can use the russian orcs as much as they like. Those dogs aren't just anti-american but they're anti-everyone including their own people.
Russians are always on the menu.
@@fatike6478 that was the prequel
@@fatike6478 and there was a ton of anti-Russian propaganda in MW 2019
This is some of Pat's best journalism thus far in his work. While most of his videos are insightful and clever in their critiques and observations, I feel like this is an altogether different effect given the subject matter and depth he goes into. The kind of self-aware, morally cognizant dissection of a massive franchise is indicative of exactly why I respect Pat's quality of work. Juxtaposing the horror of the subject matter with the candy-coated visual spectacle it has become serves to highlight the insanity it ultimately is. Thanks for this video. I know it took time out of your Elden Ring grind and I'm grateful you put in this much work for our sake.
Call of Duty has been a franchise that has gotten so big that it feels past the point of critique. Like, its a multi-billion dollar enterprise with celebrity cameos and multiple entries and trying to take an analytical lens to it garners a response like you're trying to work out what sort of message an episode of Practical Jokers is sending. It's swept aside as "its call of duty, it ain't that deep" which is insane considering the biggest video game franchise in the world has essentially been about doing war crimes in an eternal cold war for the past decade. Like, the most profitable, mainstream video game on the planet (ik, fortnite exists, stick with me for a sec) has entries that include taking part in an airport mass shooting, torturing a captive in front of his family with the option of shooting him dead in front of them, a US general explicitly saying "I've caused numerous war crimes and atrocities so americans will join the military" and so so so so so many war crimes. How is that NOT worth talking about?
I remember seeing this EXACT critique of the game back in 20-goddamn-14 when Advanced Warfare was on its way. I think the video was by Innuendo Studios, I remember him saying something like, we'd already reached a point where the only critique you could offer of call of duty was within the context of the series, and trying to work outside that was treated as nonsense at best, and hostile at worst. The problem has only gotten worse and it somehow now applies to basically every media franchise.
@@DnallohLeoj and THAT fuckin game is about a PMC led by Kevin fuckin Spacey trying to kill everyone with gas bombs that target your DNA.
COD is fuckin absurd
Cause it's call of duty bro.... It ain't that deep
People who say "It's not that deep" or "It's not political" only say that because they agree with the politics of the series. They don't realize that the games have a message, because they simply believe the message reflects reality and common sense.
That, and they don't understand how media shapes people's worldviews. They don't have that awareness.
Honestly I don't think you can say "it's not that deep" about any media. No matter what it is or how intentional it is with its message, it carries certain cultural assumptions or biases. Literally any media has potential for analysis.
I don’t want to criticize every cod player, but i still remember the one time my old classmates found out my chemics teacher had to join the military for a while (it was mandatory at that time of his life). My classmates loved and played a lot of cod and excitedly asked the teacher if he held this and that gun and if he shot with it and if he threw grenades or drove a tank. He answered some questions but he was so uncomfortable. He said it was not fun, several times, and still they insisted they envy him and made jokes. I felt bad for him. I told him i’m sorry he had to go through that and he said “i am sorry as well. It was not a good time at all” and he looked so depressed.
Thank you for the video, it’s well made and structured. I hope more people become concious of the effects cod has and start being more aware of the actual realities cod is potraying
Dont blame your friends too much , their only source to knowing war is from videogames , unless they spend some time watching liveleak videos then they would perceive war differently
@@alahsiaboi8909 i appreciate your reply, but in all honesty they weren’t my friends and actually some of the meaner classmates i had. I also live in germany and considering our history i’d expect more respect and consideration, even from young students. But maybe i’m being too harsh, i don’t know. It just annoyed me a lot back then and still bothers me today. Thank you for replying though! I hope i didn’t come over as mean with this
Which country?
@TheFrozenBiscuit i can give some basic stuff but don’t take my word for the entirety of the german population! There’s a lot of different complicated feelings about war and its themes. Generally though the younger a person is the further they feel from the past conflicts and will be more lax about it. We’re taught about ww2 in school a lot, so many also feel like never interacting with anything war related ever. The military is seen in a more negative light here and we generally don’t celebrate any victory besides the one of the nazis. There’s no parades and such from what i know. Old people tend to be very sensitive to war-related things which is understandable. Some want to forget the war because of trauma and some don’t want to face the consequences of having participated in it.
I don’t want to make a super long comment though, i’m sure there’s better videos on german perspectives on war. And again i don’t want to put myself as the spokesperson of germany, the subject is a bit too sensitive for that. Hope this helped a little though!
@@theprince5573 Ah, so you share the blood of Nazis. You and your kind have no right to talk about war after what Germany has done to the rest of the world since the birth of your wretched nation.
This is a problem I been feeling for years but had a hard time putting into words. Vanguard is definitely the breaking point. I never seen a game so tastelessly depict WW2 before. It is embarrassing.
Agreed. Call of duty world at war was one of the last call of duty games to depict World War II In an authentic, Gritty Manner. I don’t think we’re gonna get a Call of Duty like that anytime soon
Wasn’t battlefield V really bad as well? I remember some battlefield causing a lot of commotion for being inaccurate
@@ZombieaidZ Yes. The developers also made a lot of boneheaded decisions and handled PR very poorly. In one such instance, They flat out told the people if they don’t like the game, don’t buy it.
@@coleman4840 I think that was the ceo of EA who told people not to buy it too lol
@@TheBlueGoldenHawk Oh yeah it was. And the CEO literally told people that at a huge convention
This is an extremely good piece of game journalism. There's just so much to unpack, and its not just war, but even games in general.
Games journalism should be about games and their quality, not videos fueled by obvious political leanings and biases.
@@drstrangelove307 Yeah, absolutely nothing political about modern warfare. It's funny to see that the "Videogames shouldn't anything to do with politics" types are still clinging to that sentiment so blindly.
"Keep politics out of my videogam- Fallout: New Vegas? Love that one! Oh, Hotline Miami, that one's great too, I also enjoy Grand Theft Auto!"
@@SomeRandoQuacko mhm, and what are your feelings on final fantasy 7?
@@nirav.raveesh The video's title is misleading. This is most likely intentional so as to garner enough clicks to get money. Many people in the gaming community have been scratching their heads as to why Call of Duty's quality has dropped so quickly over the past few years. The title of the video suggests that it might give a reason but doesn't do that. Instead it basically says that Call of Duty is a "circus" because it collaborates with the U.S. military to push narratives and influence the public. But here's the thing: Call of Duty can do all of what this journalist claims it does while also producing a good product in the end. Therefor the video doesn't answer the question on the community's mind.
The journalist in question is a huge liberal and from his political philosophical viewpoint criticizes Call of Duty from a moral perspective throughout the video. Most people in the Call of Duty community aren't looking for that type of insight. Therefor it's natural why people don't like the video for it's "political leanings and biases". If the person who made the video actually wanted to answer the question on the community's mind, then it would take a deeper dive into the how the games mechanics and quality have changed over time from good to bad. "The Story narrative" is not the sole reason for the Call of Duty drop in quality. It doesn't even get into loot boxes, trend chasing, and only barely talks (60 seconds of a 27 minute video) about COD's active lying through claiming historical authenticity when that's not the case.
I often feel extremely uncomfortable watching the Marines or Army show up to CoD and Halo events. This video hit every single correct tone explaining why. Thank you.
Those games are making the troops better they use xbox controllers to control drones
Yea it just looks and feels off and wrong
All i here from you is 😭😭😭. People are mean. Dude wars nasty countries need troops and the worlds not nice or fair grow a pair
Or youtube videos showing SF soldiers playing or reacting to CoD
@@crazychase98 have u no soul at all
marines at the end of the day are the armed hand of the state, trained to kill, and sometimes, all their actions amount to at the end of the day is not a safer country and a safer world but a big fat check in the pocket of some DC fat cat
that's abominably grim. how do u not recognize how gross it is to blend that horror in with f'in mountain dew dancing video hoes
Heads up, I'm still working on subtitles! They'll be done soon. - Simone
Also bonus points to whoever can guess how far I am in the subtitles at this exact moment.
@@polygon like a solid 59%
hi Simone, thanks for your commitment to subtitles!! v appreesh
46%
@@polygon I would guess you're somewhere between 0% and 100% done.
For anyone who wants more of this kind of essay, I recommend Jacob Geller's "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?"
ruclips.net/video/FtCV421T52s/видео.html
Link here. Love that one.
Great recommendation, that's an excellent video.
It’s honestly kind of a smooth-brain take. A couple soldiers went nuts and did some bad stuff so now the idea that combatants should think for themselves and make their own decisions is far right propaganda or something
He has so many amazing videos. My favourite of his is Judaism, Whiteness, and Wolfenstein.
Money.
I remember someone saying that you can't actually make an anti-war film by portraying war, it's too romanticized, too idealized. I think something like a Schindler's List or This War of Mine works better. Not showing the soldiers and confusing the audience into hero worship, but instead showing civilians, people like us trying to live -not strictly fighting- through the inhumanity.
P.s, no war, but class war.
Also films like Come and See, The Breadwinner, and Grave of the Fireflies.
Generally the main issue for a lot of anti-war media is that combat generally always looks exciting on the big screen no matter what, but the thing about that is that combat is not what soldiers spend most of their time on and I think anti-war media would be a lot more effective if it replicated that. Most of the time of a soldier is down time and doing boring interrupted by brief moments of combat and I think anti-war media that spent most of it's time on that would actually work, you just have to make war boring and then the combat are brutal and senseless interruptions of that.
Though that being said I do also think that a lot of anti-war media is generally successful, while some people undoubtedly will always fail to understand it clearly the majority of people do. The majority of Gundam fans definitely understand that it's at it's heart an anti-war franchise and clearly among the fandom that is the widespread consensus. Gundam does also spend a lot more time on all the boring aspects of war and that might be what helps but I think it also just does a good enough job of always making combat brutal and gut wrenching enough that people get the message across. It always puts a focus on showing us the collateral damage that'll always happen in a battle and makes it very clear that the battle itself is the problem.
this War of Mine is the game I always recommend to people who like war games
@@hedgehog3180 Man, Hathatway made an excellent job at portraying the colateral of when Gundams fight.
@@FSmith-kv4fj Lets not forget also "All is Quiet on The Western Front".
This was really well done. I'm someone who walks that weird knife edge of loving the experience of first person shooters, while simultaneously absolutely despising and abhorring actual war, and the forces that drive and profit from it. I suppose I am part of the problem. But no matter how much propaganda entertainment I buy, I will never go fight old men's wars for them, and I will never support war in any case outside the imminent threat to myself, my loved ones, and my neighbor; i.e. invasion. Not quite sure how I feel about me right now. Thanks for this thoughtful presentation.
Outstanding work. Please continue to include clips of Geoff Keighley looking uncomfortable in future videos - even if you must orchestrate them yourselves.
this is exactly why we bought a four foot tall cardboard cutout of him - Simone
@@polygon thank you for getting an actual-size model
@@jackokeeffe5590 lmfao
I would absolutely recommend this video to anyone curious about COD as a cultural artifact or someone trying to build media literacy and critical thinking. Good roundup Pat and Polygon!
Pat pointing out that Modern Warfare was his first introduction into a predator drone really resonated with me and made me think how passively I had let the video game me and my buddies in middle school let those games shape my perceptions of war. So thanks! Good vid
I'm surprised there isn't a single mention of World at War because it offers one of the most realistic serious and accurate portrayals of the grey morality and trauma of war out of every CoD game.
It doesn't treat itself like some fictitious propoganda piece and does a great job at portraying actual war tactics and the multiple angles of WW2.
There's some genuine artistry to it I find to be very tasteful with an amazing soundtrack to boot.
Black Ops is also.... very dour. That being said it's still full of goof. Not surprised he didn't mention it, Treyarch made a somewhat traditional "War is hell" game after MW2, right before the whole franchise went off the fucking deep end.
World at War was the last good and serious CoD before the franchise became self parody.
“The flag may be different but the methods are the same”
The devs may have attempted to inject the same authenticity that people laud Saving Private Ryan for into WaW, but the gameplay and systems are still designed with pleasure and addiction in mind. The game is more even-handed with how it depicts senseless acts, but it cannot overcome that barrier. No Call of Duty game can.
@@failedrevolutionary9497 I mean at the end of the day it IS a video game and those are meant to be fun.
I don't really think inherently so that making an enjoyable video game combined with serious subject matter is inherently some evil manipulative thing, I think that's a fairly overzealous perspective that comes with what I feel is a lack of understanding by what the developers intended.
I feel like past a certain point yes the advertisement became egregious and blatantly painted the military in a good light.
But to say they *all* did that just because the gameplay was addicting is ridiculous to me.
“I learned what a predator drone was through Call of Duty, where it was a fun weapon that you get at 5 kills in a row” is giving very “My roommate thought that a punji pit was just a fun name for a spike trap in Tony Hawk, not a UN-banned guerrilla warfare weapon” energy.
I don’t think two times makes it a trend, but I am a little surprised that Polygon has had two separate incidents of people discovering that a fun video game mechanic from their childhood was a war crime.
I remember how shocking it was to 14 year old me that yemen was not just a call of duty map but an actual country destroyed by war
Among the many great things people have already said about this excellent (and difficult) video, I’d like to add one: It’s especially refreshing to see it from someone who has played 100s/1000s of hours of CoD. It’s easy to take potshots at the military-entertainment complex. It’s much harder and more meaningful to do so as a consequence of introspecting about one’s own involvement in it. Thanks for the great vid, Pat.
For folks who want to know more about the topic of the Military Entertainment Complex Pat brings up, check out “Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11” by Matthew Thomas Payne
ruclips.net/video/FtCV421T52s/видео.html
This also struck me.
i can't find the video :(
yeah i would love to see pat/polygon's reading list for this vid
@@strangefeeling8901 Ooh! I wanted to do that for launch, but just getting the video out on time was the priority. Will try to do that in the next few days! - Pat
@@oxymoron500 it is a book
As someone from the middle-east, this video really addressed my discomforts with Call of Duty's blatant war propaganda. It has always made me more uncomfortable than most when seeing how they depicted Arabs in remarkably racist ways.
One thing I ought to mention here is that around the time Black Ops 2 came out Activision started attempting to expand its market in the middle-east so I started getting accustomed to seeing Call of Duty in Arabic which really hit different when they released Modern Warfare remastered. The way that they sold us racist depictions of us to justify wars against us *in our own language* was frankly disgusting.
I think we, people from the modern day West, think we're above propaganda, that we're the ones that know the real and only truth. We don't and propaganda is still a very real thing.
You don't get to have a culture that oppressed half of your population and still complain when westerners make video games that seem a little insensitive or racist, especially considering if a white guy went down to Iraq he would get some pretty dirty looks and prob asked if he was Christian (at which point he would prob have to run if he didn't want to die by stoning or burning). I don't think that we have ever depicted the Saudis or turks in the same way as Iaqis or Syrians bc the first two don't regularly torture and execute mass amounts of people in horrible ways for religious reasons. If you don't want Iraqis and freinds to be depicted as bloodthirsty zealots then maybe cut down on the amount of bloodthirsty zealots in those areas.
"Not only will america go to your country and kill all your people. But they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad." - Frankie Boyle
@@levitatingpotato109 are you seriously taking a minority of disgusting people as a whole this stuff works at year 5 maybe.. anyways those who kill for so called religious reasons are obviously not religious to begin with.
@@augustokonrad3572 "kill all your people" seems like a serious exaggeration to me.
I wish more games would portray war like Spec Ops: The Line does. I felt physically and emotionally drained at the end and questioned all my actions. I’ve never had a piece of media effect me as much as spec ops: the line did. Absolutely give it a try if you haven’t
The flight simulators are pretty accurate to the point that a Korean gamer took on an AI that at least one Air Force pilot couldn't take down in a dog fight.
Spec Ops the Line is too on the nose; no nuance
If they were all like Spec Ops: The Line it'd become wrote and boring.
@@DakotaofRaptors Why is that a bad thing?
@@shadowmaydawn because it leaves no room for conversation
I’m a high school history teacher and sometimes it’s really rough to contend with how constantly I have to reckon with kids’ dependency on Call of Duty as their frame of reference for war as a concept.
Having spent my youth firmly in the “video games don’t cause violence” camp, I’m realizing we were right, but only because we confined our definition of violence to American soil.
Video games don't cause violence, propaganda does, sadly. No person will play gta and turn into a murderous maniac, but a kid that was brainwashed by the propaganda that the US military is actually pretty rad and that you can get an air strike with a 5 kill streak, will probably consider joining the army.
@@lovelyyolk9066 video games can be propaganda too
@@lovelyyolk9066 COD is literally propaganda, did you not watch the video you're commenting on?
@@0BucketMask0 yeah, that's my point. Video games don't cause violence, US propaganda does. CoD doesn't cause violence because it's a videogame but because it is propaganda, y'all just didn't get what i was going for
@@shenai2187 yeah, that's my point. Didn't you get that ny the obvious callout of CoD being propaganda in my comment?
In Germany where I'm from, there's a big gaming convention called the Gamescom every summer. Now while this is a good event to meet all kinds of gamers (and for companies to sell stuff I guess), it's also a space where the Bundeswehr - the German military - advertises to recruit young gamers. Notably CoD fans. One of their most tasteless lines has been "It doesn't get more open-world than this". Now personally, most of my friends who've gone to the Gamescom are big lefties, and have never felt very intrigued by this kind of marketing. But I don't actually know how the average German gamer feels about this stuff or how successful it is.
Just thought this would be interesting. Great video, Pat.
That's wild given how, to the rest of the world, Germany is 'the place with the crazy amount of censorship in games', which I always thought was from some place of guilt/shame/whatever the actual cocktail of emotions it is German people feel about WWII, that having graphic military violence depicted on screen was just not okay for them in that light. But they still recruit kids at video games conventions? wild
If you've heard of PAX, it's a big gaming convention with events across the USA (and one in Australia). For PAX South, in Texas, one year I went the biggest booth in the whole convention was the US Air Force.
There's ALWAYS military advertising at the shows, especially for the Army and Navy eSports teams. It makes me sick.
@@Cooldrew100 Really now? Oh god
that's kind of horrifying...
@@Cooldrew100 Why does it make you sick? We have an all volunteer military force which means recruiters need people to willingly sign up. Why is it so bad for military recruiters to utilize new media to their advantage to get more people to join the military? If they don't, then we will see a massive drop in recruitment numbers which leads to a whole host of other problems. I fail to see why it is so disgusting for the military to simply set up a booth at gaming conventions to see if people want to join. No one is forcing you to go to the both. No one is forcing you to sign the paper. The military needs volunteers in order to operate so again they need to find the new popular spaces that are popping up to help ensure they have the numbers needed in order to make our military and effective fighting force. Video games and video game conventions are ideal locations for just that.
I will never forget watching the game awards and seeing a trailer for call of duty cold war..... with war pigs by black sabbath playing.
let me repeat that.
*war pigs.* a song that is very distinctly and very explicitly about how terrible war is. in the trailer for a game where ronald reagan tells you to commit war crimes.
[screaming]
but cold war literally doesnt say america is good. It shows how shit they are along with soviets. There is literally an ending where the US nukes europe. Not to mention noone literally noone gives a shit about it. Noone plays cod for glorifiying war, people play cod to shoot stuff and rage, very rarely do people care about the campainq story.
You seriously can't figure out the reason they'd use that song? Really?
and?
@@snoowwe i know WHY they used it. the problem is how tone deaf it feels with the actual content and meaning of the lyrics.
Back when Medal of Honor Allied Assault came out, my dad sometimes watched me play for a brief minute or two. He always got this uneasy look about him as I mowed down scores of 3D rendered soldiers. "This hits too close to home", he would say. I couldn't fully appreciate what he meant by that when I was 12.
My grandfather was in the navy during WW2 and the possibility that he may not come home was very real. Seeing that made into a videogame, and what is essentially a toy in my dad's eyes, must have been upsetting. I'm not completely against COD or other war shooters personally, his reaction has just always stayed with me.
"This is real"
I said to myself as I skydived down from a plane next to King Kong.
Pat, this was so well done. The structure so visibly contextualizes how we got here, accompanied with your always endearing Pat-humor twists. Bravo - sending to friends!
Thanks for sharing it!
@@polygon Adore you crazy kooks.
THIS is video-game journalism. Incredible stuff
1000%
This is the type of serious, more in-depth analysis and critique of the industry I'd love Polygon to do more of!
This just makes me think of the fact I had been aimed at to try to be recruited into the military as soon as I was old enough to enter the age range of Call of Duty players. In the same time as Call of Duty sold millions of copies there were uniformed recruiters almost every day at my high school. Every week a different branch of the military would show up to try and get teens to sign up, there was a JR ROTC program at my school that I knew several people entered, and even as the recruiters would say "This isn't anything like Call of Duty, this is real life" they would still take advantage of people's expectation of what the military was from those video games to try and get kids to sign away the next years of their lives, possibly more. I personally would get calls from recruiters and even when I revealed I was overweight they would say "do you think you can lose that weight in [X] months," as though a 14 year old could plan that far ahead in his life. At my school there were really only two options presented as meaningful for our futures: If we were intellectual we would be pushed towards college, and if we weren't we'd be pushed towards the military.
Really great video. You always hear people talk about how they got tired of CoD for repeating the same game over and over. But love how this video directly comments on its influence in the gaming marketplace and how its used by the military industrial complex. Awesome work polygon!
Learning that the military gets final say on story scripts makes so much sense thinking back on CoD: Black Ops. The game tried to say something critical of war in that the protagonist suffers psychologically from his experiences in war, and specifically as a POW. It's clear that this story is supposed to end as a tragedy, where the traumatized protagonist would ignite nuclear war in his quest for wanton revenge. But at the last minute, the story takes a 180, and the game closes with a jet flyover, rock guitars, and the American flag flying over a decisive win for America.
It's obvious that the writers got pushback on the final draft, and rather than rewrite it, they just cut out the last scene and replaced it with some patriotic nonsense that disagrees with everything that the story had been leading towards.
That's the strange thing about the black ops section of the franchise. Black ops has always felt different because it's always felt as if the writers at least in comparison to Infinity Ward, Treyarch understood a little more of what subject matter they were dealing with, but you can SEE when the DOD intercepts their scripts. I think the latest game cold war is far more transparent with what the original script could've been. As it takes a more neutral stance. Neutral is better than nothing but it's still not enough.
Right, even as a kid that scene felt gross to me.
@@wyattborden1377 pretty much every one agreeing and commenting under this video either hasn't played CoD campaigns or played them like once 7 years ago. They really do not know anything on the subject matter.
What are you on about? You just made up an ending and claimed it would've been in the final product if it wasn't for the evil and mysterious 'They'
@@archibaldmoore4514 it's pretty clear the ending of black ops was specifically made to give off this feeling of " yee yee brother we just killed thousands for a good cause and nothing bad will ever happen again because America". Which is juxtaposed to literally every scene within the game. I think it isnt too far fetched, especially since I distinctly remember the government talking to heads of Activision multiple times over the last 8 years or more. It's pretty obvious that since MW the games have had outside influence guiding a certain perspective on why war "must" be fought
This is one of the best videos you’ve ever put out. Thank you.
Thank you so much. It's been in the works for quite a while.
This should be an educational video to be shared on schools. When I was a kid I used to shrug to my mother's bewilderment seeing me play COD or Medal of Honor, but now I understand that for her, war could never be this entertaining theme that it has become.
Here's the weird thing. I enjoy these games and I'm big time into firearms as a competitive sport, hunting, and as a hobby. That being said I can't help but agree on this one. While this doesn't apply universally to everyone, I have noticed that these games do desensitize some people and erase the concept of the true horrors of actual warfare. It trivializes it to the point where I met people who literally wanted to join the army so they could live call of duty, not love of country, not to create a career or get college paid for, not a deep ideological drive, nope just for shits and giggles. These same people will then virtue signal about how tragic one out the over 40 current wars is "so tragic" while simultaneously calling for the deaths and destruction of the side they don't like even though they know nothing of what , how or why the war started in the first. These people even join the war effort as untrained civilians lacking any military discipline, get a crash course on how to operate their rifle, assuming they're lucky and even get issued one, then sent off to the front where their 1000 hours of COD warzone does jack against an actual enemy airstrike. Its sad but also hilarious to watch just how stupid people can be .
I can’t agree with this video imo. It’s full of bullshit lies and people being offended over others.
You guys are losing the war in Ukraine lol
@@ulqinaku8471 your mother lost at life when she had you
@@ulqinaku8471 no. It's war. No one wins
@@drstrangelove307 the hypocrisy and idiocy of your statement is astounding
If you want a more accurate portrayal of war, play something like Squad. It’s a lot more down to earth with 50v50 battles, and it focuses less on a Rambo main character and more teamwork and coordination. Driving a tank requires multiple people doing different jobs, and it’s claustrophobic and stressful. It’s great and I feel it does what COD was first planned to do but better
Dew.
Dew never changes.
Patrick! That "Oh No." delivery was perfection. I'm laughing so hard I can barely type.
The issue with these games is not that you're encouraged to commit war crimes, is that you're doing it from the standpoint of a player character who is supposed to be on the "good guys' side". There are plenty of games where you can roleplay as the bad guy, where you can be as awful a human being as possible. But you _know_ you're doing that, you clearly know on which side you're standing.
This, however, is just absurd. It is ever so lightly pretending to take a moral stance on something, but it really isn't, and it all just ends up as being meaningless. CoD games are ugly, boring for being repetitive and joyless, and ultimately, they're a shallow, empty and void experience.
Since they're tackling such a delicate subject as war, death and destruction of human lives and communities you'd think they would be more criticized and less venerated. But they're not, and it shows one of the worst sides of the gaming industry and its fans.
And the fact that the US Army is using violent entertainment designed for addiction, in order to profit and lure people in to their ranks just makes it even worse.
Mw2019 and Vanguard are the perfect example of shallow, it's always either russia or china that are the big badies meanwhile the US and UK are the mighty heroes (not a perfect timing for say because of Ukraine but whatever)
Then there's Vanguard with their "aLtErNaTiVe HiStOrY"
At the very least cold war in the end showed the good guys literally brainwashed/MKultra'd you and there's even the option to betray them and join the bad guys instead, which i loved it
But that is okay, because as America have portrait in Holiwood, only American lives matter. War crimes are only war crimes when they are committed against Otan members. I think that it is kind of funny how American can be so blind in criticizing Russia for invading Ukraine when they did worst invading Iran, Iraque, etc. It's mind blowing how blind to the actions of their own country Americans can be.
wdym? there is no good side
@@miles4939 I'm guessing the older games, maybe.
@@CL-vw5bb I mean in mw1, as outlined in the video, you wander through a boat killing sailors sleeping in their cots in one of the opening sequences
So I must contend that the "No Russian" scene actually had value to society, just not in the way the developers intended.
C.O.D. makes war look fun and accessible when in actuality it tests the morals, minds, hearts, and muscles of those who fight in it until they break even if they are what we would deem to be a hero.
The "No Russian" mission actually breaks that for a moment.
I remember when I first played that scene the day the game became available for sale. Flat out that scene shocked me. I had spent thousands of hours killing random NPC's, and player characters but never before had a game put so much time and effort into showing me an actual depiction of evil.
The callus disregard for life. . . the screaming. . . the blood. . . the death. . . it was a hell of a lot more than what I thought I was going to see when playing a game.
Everyone I have talked to has said the same, they were shocked. Many of these people when asked if they shot any of the innocent NPC's in that scene responded with a "NO!, Of course not!" They found the idea of doing so morally repugnant.
The "No Russian" mission I would say has value because, for just a moment, it forced people to be uncomfortable with war, death, and killing. It forced millions of youth here in the U.S. to ask themselves "Jesus. . . is this what war is like?"
Yeah no, that mission was borderline clownish. It was like they wanted a heavy hitting Spec Ops moment but with none of the buildup or payoff.
@@CerpinTxt87 Spec Ops is overrated
@@CerpinTxt87 I'll give it to you that it wasn't perfect but I stand by my words.
@@CerpinTxt87 Spec Ops is overrated and doesn't even understand what it's criticizing.
@@LordVader1094 How come?
I’m genuinely speechless. Finally, someone has put into words what I have long thought about CoD. Well fucking done.
Same. Remember feeling the same thing growing up
Extraordinary video. I can see why it was taking so much out of you to make - it's huge, and it gets to the heart of the thing in such an insightful, crucial way. Thank you so much, Pat & the gang, I hope this video comes to those who need it
Also, wanted to specifically shout out the very end of "part 7." It was really, really striking, I had to pause and regroup (which I mean as a good thing). Just really stellar
@@pliable-head part 7's end truly hit HARD
As someone who played MW1 in Baghdad in 2008, this is an exceptional video. Really well done everyone involved
That AC130 mission from MW1 is fascinating to me. I feel like it does a better job than the white phosphorous mission from Spec Ops at showing the cold, detached, inhuman, mass slaughter of modern war, where one side is overwhelmingly, impossibly armed against a force that have been reduced to a little bright blob on a screen; but at the same time it's genuinely hard to tell if that's what it's trying to say or if it's intended to be cool and satisfying.
@@HelghastStalker it doesn’t work for everyone. But if that white phosphorus scene hits like it’s designed to, it really hits hard
@@HelghastStalker ok I’m telling you it worked for me, and I know I’m not alone in saying that.
This video sums up exactly how I feel about COD lately
I played the mw and mw2 campaigns for the first time this year. As a socialist and a gamer I had heard all the controversies. It was only when I played the games for the first time that I truly understood just how powerful these games were. It was a lot of fun, and that kind of scared me.
This feels like the spiritual successor to Jacob Geller's "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?" and I mean that as the Highest, HIGHEST compliment
So, I'd love to add something to this as someone who has ended up working in the Defense Industrial Base (a polite name for the private half of the military-industrial complex). I can't say whether it's because people who played these games are now a big chunk of the military and its providers, but if you read any industry media it's clear that the common view of military hardware is that they're toys to be played with, and a lot of the advertising really leans into this "YOU ARE A TRAINED KILLER, GO GET EM TIGER" vibe that's deeply upsetting.
There's a really wild issue of Defense Industry Magazine where they talk about Augmented Reality's future in military, and while they blithely talk about using it to feed intel to troops and "help them identify targets", you have military brass quoted as saying they've always wanted technology like this since they saw "Iron Man" and "Starship Troopers". Knowing that studios have consultants from inside the defense department, I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude is actually bleeding through from the original source. For what it's worth, I think this attitude is more representative of administrators and the industrial sector than boots-on-the-ground soldiers. But seeing people at a high level talk about conflict like it's a game is really concerning.
Well you know what they say.
The game was rigged from the start.
Pat is such a great presenter. He really puts his personality forward and knows how to write in his voice so comfortably, which isn't easy to do. It's succint and well-worded enough to show it's scripted and thought out, but natural and flowing enough that it comes off as improvisational and conversational. All that and the editing coming together makes a magic thing. Thing is, too, all the Polygon folks have this talent and pair it with their own interests and styles. Really something for everyone made by someone cool. 7/10 with rice.
ETA: Also, what hat is he wearing? Looks cool.
Thank you so much for the kind comment! -Simone
thrash metal band power trip
@@bobospice761 RIP Riley Gale
@@korganmelly fr
Its incredibly difficult to make an anti war film actually be anti war. There's a quote out there that describes the issue as "because war is intrinsically exciting".
I recommend the film Come and See as probably the only ww2 film that actually makes me 100% uncomfortable. Not a single moment can be mistakenly taken as "exciting" in its portrayal of ww2.
The main character is naive and helpless. They think they have agency in the conflict but quickly realize how utter screwed everything is.
saw this movie recently and i agree 100%, the way it portrays the Nazis getting wasted and killing the people in that village for fun basically just shows how fucked up war actually is
@@demonomancer same. That part messed me up. My gf told me about how a lot of the German military was high on speed and other drugs to stay "alert", especially on the eastern front. I never knew that before...so f'ed up
@@Wheelz567 Pervitin
This, I feel like TWOM was lacking for that reason was it lacked the sense of helplessness that Come and See had, it's ironic an Assymetical slasher game would have better mechanics for an anti war game than what TWOM had and I do applaud 10bit for taking popular media genres and giving a sombre introspection
Imagine a game where you play as a bunch of pacifist refugees fleeing a ruthless and invincible invading force and you have to sell out your mates or make sacrifices so they can flee the warzone.
I'd add "Dunkirk" to the list, if you haven't already seen it. It feels less like a war movie than a horror movie that happens to be set during a war.
I always come back to this video every once in a while because it's so well made.
Thanks for covering this and with such nuance. We need more discussions like this in games media! < 3
This is fantastic. Kind of reminds me of Folding Ideas in its depth and scope but there's so much of Pat's own humour and style in here.
Damn, Pat, this was excellent. This is what journalism is about, and this is the kind of discussion and criticism I'd like to see more of in games. Thanks for the work you put into this!
I feel like putting an ad right after “order now” was so deliberate. I dig
I was a Marine from 03-07. Butler is my favorite Marine hero/legend, mostly because of his post-Corps life. I love that you had a Veterans For Peace member read his writing, I think that's a very fitting way to do it.
I'm glad you don't suck the boot polish. Especially in today's climate, it's nigh unconceivable to have a national war hero essentially come out of a pro peace Socialist who confesses his services in the name of Democracy were actually rendered in the name of greed.
Patrick, my boy, this is remarkable and excellent. I'd love for more long-form deep dives like this on serious/semi-serious topics related to games media
This is excellent. Crystallizes so many of the things I felt but didn’t have words for about being a kid during the War on Terror.
This might be your absolute best video yet Patrick. Wow
Hats off to all the people in the comments typing “it’s just a video game get over it” and completely missing the point of the video.
Conservatives(let’s be honest) and reactionaries are physically incapable of ever looking at media at anything other than a completely surface level. It makes their brains hurt.
“Too silly to live, too big to die.” Thanks for writing my new Tinder bio, Pat.
Quick note at around the 19:30 mark: an IUD is an intrauterine device, an IED is an improvised explosive device. I think Pat meant to say the latter.
i did hear IED but had to go back when i read your comment
he definitely said IED not IUD
Highly recommend anyone that enjoyed this to go watch Jacob Geller’s “does call of duty believe in anything” video. Feels like the natural follow up to this.
I would also recommend "lies of heroism, redefining the anti-war movie" by Like Stories of Old
@@JMD501 will be checking it out, thanks for the recommendation.
There's also "Killing Private Kraut" about the pro-war propaganda of Saving Private Ryan.
Nice thinkpiece on something we don’t think much about. And thanks for making the captions awesome.
If Call of Duty ever had anything to say it definitely lost the plot once MW2 came out. It always seemed like the series was just chasing "the nuke" moment, but it never understood that what made that moment so powerful was because of all the quote-unqoute ass you were kicking through the campaign up until that point, and suddenly you were just reduced to a statistic in the blink of an eye. BO4 was probably the most honest CoD since it didn't even bother with a campaign - it knew what the series had become at that point and ran with it.
Fantastic video from Pat as always, but what I thought was especially effective was his use of his own experiences enjoying Call of Duty. Rather than condemn a faceless group of fans, he engages with his own memories of playing the game and criticizes the problems with the franchise from there.
This is a fantastic video about how media is neither produced nor consumed in a vacuum. And how it's a lot more complicated than "video game good" or "video game bad"
its what happens when someone who can actually write well writes abt videogames, those two dont rly overlap much
I hate how it felt like he started to pull his punches at the end tried to give a somewhat happy ending, this thing is bad and should be treated as such, it’s not as Pat said “ok” it’s really really fucking bad actually. That being said the rest of the video was actually really good especially considering I think making something like this was an actual risk for polygon.
I agree, the end of the video felt like an attempt at a clean wrap-up, when I'm not really sure this topic deserves that. I understand why the ending is there, it's good writing to wrap everything up at the end, but surely in this case, the message is that we don't _want_ the Dew Bunker? That there's something _wrong_ with all of this? That seems to be the tone of the rest of the video, but it's dropped at the end, and I wonder if that sense of "good writing" undermines the video's larger point.
I don't really think he pulled punches tbh. Like, cause at some level, the whole "we have sumo matches sponsered by moutain dew" thing IS funny.
Feels as if he's Not Allowed, in any way whatsoever, to acknowledge that there is a bad thing happening that he can't do much about. Instead, he just says "Ah its ok" but its not, and yeah I was also disappointed with the end of the vid.
America is the kinda country that will invade your land, kill your people, and back home, the citizens will have fun by virtually invading your land and killing your people while drinking the new flavor of Mtn Dew.
@@BattlefireTV I don’t really think you’re acknowledging the ways in which art effects how people perceive things, especially because COD is literally used as a recruiting tool by the U.S. military. I also think it’s a little bold to say there’s nothing wrong with COD specifically due to all the racism present in the series. It’s ok to like things that have problems with them, just don’t ignore the issues present.
@@RoseBianothername this is might be a hot take but maybe Americans should just become more intelligent
Pat, I love your work. You're so thoughtful, and seem to never really look down upon anyone. You have my utmost respect.
"And thankfully, we listened to him!....Oh no." God damn you, subbed.
This is the kind of hard hitting game journalism I LOVE to see. Breaking down the whys and the meanings behind a type of media that all too often goes overlooked, despite being as influential as film, if not more.
Keep it up!
Man I remember watching pat’s dew bunker stream and that was a riot but I wasn’t thinking that intensely about what went into that event at the time. Great video pat! Honestly terrifying
This was a very insightful and well thought out video and I really appreciate the care with which Pat and the team tackled an incredibly difficult topic.
This is just truly some of the best games analysis I've ever seen. Unflinching, beautiful, and articulate. Incredible work Pat. As always.
no russian made me physically sick when i played it, i was 13 and bought mw2 at a garage sale. i didn't know that would be in the game and my parents didn't know. i just had friends that told me the game was good and to get it. i remember continuing to play even though it made me nauseous because that's what my friends played and i thought i was somehow weak for how i was feeling, not to mention the toxic online culture of that game. looking back now i've often thought of that game as the one that desensitized me to violence, and not just in games but also in film. the shock value is gone because i told myself it wasn't real so many times in the past so i wouldn't feel sick.
at some point something flipped in my brain and i started chasing that feeling, seeking out games that made me feel anything at all. i got really into horror games and films but the adrenaline/shock feeling quickly faded and i feel nothing again from that media. i feel like i've ruined my brain and i know a lot of other people enjoy violence like this too and i wonder whether they also had a piece of media they were exposed to that acted as a catalyst in a similar progressive loss of empathy.
i'm 26 now and i miss when things used to affect me more. i stopped playing violent games for a while and started getting into romance and other lighter topics that also make me feel good and i hope i can somehow repair the emotional scarring, for lack of a better term, from a period of my life when i had become extremely calloused.
i know this isn't everyone's experience, just thought i would share in hopes someone else might have experienced something like this too.
Fun (or unfun) fact about No Russian: The orders never tell you explicitly to shoot any of the civilians. It simply says, "Follow Makarov". The entire game series is built on you following the instructions or actions of a NPC, and in this moment its a subtle slap across the face far better than MW2019's "gloves off" moment:
"Follow your job. You're a soldier, you have your orders" vs. "This isn't war, this is terrorism on an unprecedented scale of evil"
I forgot spielberg was involved with medal of honor but when you said he worked on a game i realized immediately...it felt so real and like you were a part of a movie with characters and consequences and terrifying moments. Masterpieces the early games especially allied assault
I don't put those games on any kind of pedestal, but I view their original rendition of Omaha Beach as inadvertently symbolic in its execution. Due to how limited graphics technology was at the time, the MG bunkers really were just concrete shapes that shot at you, there wasn't a person or anything besides the facade. Distancing yourself from the horrors of war literally made the human side of it disappear.
This definitely seems like a video only Pat could pull off well. Not just within polygon, I don't think any other youtuber I watch could have made this video better than this.
That was an insane watch. Thank you for putting in the time, Pat. I'm going to do the obvious thing and wonder why we gave up on asking questions with Spec Ops: the Line - seems like that's the only game that tried to start a dialogue around all this.
A top notch academic essay my friend.
Bonus points for the power trip hat
I remember the hype for the 7th gen being huge. I read in EGM that Call of Duty 2 had people sweating from how supposedly intense it was and that was a huge selling point to me. So yeah, this video is relevant as hell and really well done.
This is great, I was just thinking the other day how much I wished polygon would do more long, deep videos like this. I really appreciate some of the shorter stuff but they really showed off to me how much I value the minds of everyone there and want to hear them dig deeper into things they are passionate about. This is exactly that.