A few years ago i play so much military game and often play with NATO/US side because the technology of the weapon is more advanced than the “Opfor” side. Since i’m becoming aware with the NATO/US atrocity, i always play with the Enemy side.
There is one simulator game i played a lot back then called Falcon BMS which is a simulator game to fly an F-16 in the Korean War against the Mig and Sukhoi, after understanding about what the NATO/US does, i dont want to play as their side anymore.
Right now i play Arma but always on the Opfor side against the NATO. Fuck NATO and their Capitalism.
Aliens are just an indigenous population we haven’t found yet. They are a stand in for an “evil” civilization. It’s no different than European depictions of Africans, Asians, or Turtle Islanders. Yes, it avoids explicit racism by making up a new race and locating them beyond the human frontier, but it’s the exact same playbook and it’s just as euro-centric.
Evil doesn’t exist. The Other is The Self.
Nah they’re aliens that invaded Earth, it’s just a game where you fight off the Alien government after they take over Earth
I understand the narrative. I’m saying that the narrative is literally the exact same form as the narratives Europeans have been telling for a millennium to justify their wars of adventure and imperialism. An evil civilization with no chance of redemption must die by our hands for their transgressions against the natural order of things. Their language, culture, and image are strange and unsettling. They value only killing, mindless expansion, and resource extraction.
The only way for a “war against aliens” narrative to be palatable for me would be if the aliens were capitalist imperialists and the player was engaged in a struggle for decolonization, but that would require either the entirety of Turtle Island and Australia to be portrayed as decolonized already, or it would need to address the parallels between fighting back the alien colonizers and fighting back the European colonizers at the same time.
…have you ever played XCOM? I’m not disagreeing with you on a general basis, I just don’t think you understand how non-applicable this is to the specific subject. It’s literally an invading force taking over Earth and the international community coming together to resist it.
What I’m trying to say is that the narrative structure of XCOM is paralleling European imperialism. The aliens are the Europeans, this “international community” is in the place of the people’s subjugated by Europe. And the problematic piece is that while the Americans fight against the alien imperialists, they are doing it from the position of Turtle Island and doing so with the moral force of “we belong here, you don’t”.
It’s hypocrisy on display. It’s the European telling on itself. It’s cheering for the subjugated while simultaneously reinforcing the right to subjugate.
Alien imperialists don’t exist. It’s a trope for justifying the actions of Europeans who spent the last millennium justifying mass murder because “the other” is evil and dangerous. And the reason we have to use aliens is because there’s no longer any new fronteir for the European project that contains indigenous populations to villify. So we make up indigenous populations of space aliens and then tell stories about how evil they are. So long as we believe that such narratives map to some sort of real moral framework, we are doomed.
No, it does not sound like you have played the game.
You do not fight from Turtle Island exclusively. You can choose any continent to base out of, and mechanically speaking? I’d argue Africa’s bonus is the best and North America’s is the worst.
I understand your comparison of the narrative, but the problem is that, as stated prior, the entire international community is at play here. Your team is often composed of nationalities spanning the globe. The commander, who you play, is nameless, faceless, and this is intended to reflect upon who you are as a person, which could be anybody. It is not outside the imagination to have a queer black woman as a commander as a result, because it is whoever picks the controls up.
It may not cover past atrocities, but I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that as a fault rather than something that’s just completely out of bounds. Sort of like how making a major point about the unjustness of the French colonization of Algeria during a movie about rebelling in Vichy France just seems…tonally jarring at best. Outside of an ironic jab at the fact that what has been visited upon others is now being visited upon them, it still doesn’t justify Nazism’s grasp and the Holocaust as it occurred in France. Vichy France is what fueled French decolonization, but within the scope of the movie? It’s just not there unless you’re ready for four hours of context to do it justice, and I hate to say this, but not even in a society where we are all communists are you going to find people that are going to entertain that in something meant to pass the time. It’s just a more in-depth discussion for another time, and trust me, this sort of media does inspire it and that’s a good thing.
On that note, this is actually a common trope in scifi; that is, the inversion of the colonizer to the colonized. It started with the very first piece of media to cover alien invasion: “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells. What XCOM lacks in comparison is a critique of colonialism and imperialism (or even a reference, but see the last point), but it does a very good indirect job of showing why humanity must unite beyond borders in such a world-shaking case (unlike what is occurring facing COVID and climate change; aka it is liberal idealism at heart, but that doesn’t change the point). For instance, paying uneven attention or only attention to short term gains leads to countries leaving the council, thus lowering support for your efforts and an actual material loss of resources toward the liberation of Earth. This works out in a fairly streamlined fashion due to it being a strategy game; you require advantages and there are easy to understand numbers tied to the mechanics and decisions to simulate these advantages. It has caused at least one (but likely more) instances of self-reflection on the question of “Why the hell aren’t we cooperating on a global scale?”
I overall feel you are thinking too narrowly about the genre of alien invasion. You’re not wrong on any count in some discussions, but my point is that this is not one of those discussions. You are missing the nuance of a detailed take-down of the game’s shortcomings, because you’re painting broad stroke criticisms without tackling actual aspects of the game itself. This is why I asked if you had played the game and am coming to the conclusion that you have not.