Russia to pay for 'patriotic' games, may ban 'falsely negative' ones

[MengJiao]

If the Russian Govt. is involved in the project I'm sure it will be a half assed piece of crap and not sell very well either in Russia or anywhere else.
Except maybe China,but then they would probably pirate it and the Russian developer won't make a dime there either.

  I'm sure in the world of sterotypes something sterotypical will happen.

[DicedT]

My point was that if you're trying to evoke the glorious Russian military past, World War I is a strange choice.

  I thought the aim was to reduce the negative vibes.  Why reduce the negative vibes at a point where you already have ill-informed postive
vibes with no effort?  If WWI was such an inglorious moment, it would seem to be just the point to inject some positive glory.

That's an interesting thought. But I thought Soviet doctrine was to reinforce success, not failure. It probably comes down to resources. Is it better to spend rubles designing games on a more popular conflict like the Napoleonic or Great Patriotic War? Or do you spend them on WWI games? Maybe there is a political reason to rehabilitate the image of WWI.

Or maybe some bureaucrat like WWI dogfights and just picked that theme. Who knows?

Michael

[Nefaro]

Russia wasn't all failure in WWI.  For some reason us westerners are only reminded of Tannenberg when it comes to Russia's fighting in WWI. 

Hell.. they were kicking the Austrians in the groin at some points, enough to draw German reinforcements from the western front meat grinder.  And Brusilov turned out to be a good commander; his big offensive did well and put the scare into the CP.   Things were tough for everyone in that war, and more so in some ways for the Russkies, but it wasn't all bad news for them.

[Airborne Rifles]

Russia wasn't all failure in WWI.  For some reason us westerners are only reminded of Tannenberg when it comes to Russia's fighting in WWI. 

Hell.. they were kicking the Austrians in the groin at some points, enough to draw German reinforcements from the western front meat grinder.  And Brusilov turned out to be a good commander; his big offensive did well and put the scare into the CP.   Things were tough for everyone in that war, and more so in some ways for the Russkies, but it wasn't all bad news for them.

And they did a decent job kicking the Turks around in the Caucasus as well.

[Dolan50]

I'm pretty sure the last thing the people of the Ukraine,the Baltic States and Eastern Europe want to see is a new Russian Army that feels good about itself,or one with a nationalistic bent on reliving its past glories of  empire building,especially after living  under its iron fist for more than 50 years.

It's no surprise to me,that at the first oppurtunity these countries threw off the chains of their oppressors and no surprise again that they don't harbor the same feelings about the Russian soldier as an honorable liberator as the Russians themselves would like to be remembered as but only remember them as nothing more than a tool of a very ruthless and brutal regime that was meant to inslave them.

The Russian people may be able to swallow that shallow propaganda,but I doubt the rest of Eastern Europe will be so forgiving.

[Father Ted]

Why WW1 air combat?  RoF - it's made by Russians.  A bit of tweaking and you've got a decent game featuring Russians.  The same people are also making Battle of Stalingrad (WW2 air combat), and I'm sure I read somewhere that part of the reason for choosing this theatre was the promise of financial backing from the Russian Govt.

[Mad Russian]

I guess I should have sent Putin his copy of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm earlier. How was I supposed to know he'd not like the topic?

Sheesh...you can't even please a communist dictator these days.

Good Hunting.

MR

[agathosdaimon]

is this all Company of Heroes 2's fault? When it comes to WW2 i thought the russians usually portrayed on the side of the good guys and we all know that they beat back Germany

and IIRC they were the only country in WW1 to actually step foot on german soil.
What kind of image is needed here?

But i guess this isnt necessarily a new idea and even in Russia they made a game a few years ago abut the war in Georgia -what was it called 'Confrontation: Peace Enforcement' ? it actually looked like a fun game - like a modern Sudden Strike. but i dont think there is anyway to get it outside of Russia

[SgtRock]

Too many Russian games suffer from released before finished, poor support, and a very odd trend where players faces too many battles out numbered 30 to 1. I don't think getting the government involved is going to help, only the free market can decide if a game is a success or not. If the government thinks Russians always win as patriotic or a Russian slant in games,  then Russian game developers are in for a tough time.

[BanzaiCat]

I'd like to know what constitutes "falsely negative" to the Russian government these days.

[Nefaro]

If the government thinks Russians always win as patriotic or a Russian slant in games,  then Russian game developers are in for a tough time.

There is already plenty of slant in Russian dev'd games.  Check out some of the match-based MMO's made by Russian devs.  :P

I love playing War Thunder to no end but Good God Man!!  My Soviet dive bombers can turn fight better than Spitfires!  And they're like flying tanks!  ::)  Just one small example.  ;)   Then you fly an American P-47D and it handles like a four-engine bomber.   ???

[DicedT]

Is this true, guys? Is there a consensus out there Russian games give unrealistic advantages to Russian equipment?

Michael

[Nefaro]

Is this true, guys? Is there a consensus out there Russian games give unrealistic advantages to Russian equipment?

Michael

There has been for me, generally due to a few specific titles.  As with everything, it isn't universal.  I mentioned War Thunder because it's pretty obvious by the sheer ratio of Soviet a/c modelled compared to any one other nation, and some of those have crazy flight modelling (such as the SU-2 divebomber that dogfights on par with an A6M 'Zero').  That case may be just a 'placeholder' flight model but they generally have some extremely generous ones, along with repair prices, cannon damage, etc, etc.

My stints with World Of Tanks and World Of Warplanes wasn't as clear-cut, especially since WoT has matured and received some balancing over time (movement of the KV series up the tiers, for example) but that tag has still hung over it since the beginning.  I think it was mainly due to the Soviet guns doing the most damage per shot.  I've not played either in awhile, but it wasn't quite so pronounced as my first example.

Most of my other experiences with Russian-created games have been of the non-historical type.  Usually fantasy strategy/rpg stuff or proper flight simulators.  DCS seems to model stuff okay, as far as I can tell.  The fantasy games don't really qualify for this discussion other than post-release support.  So I think the perception of imbalance is mainly in regard to the match-based "MMO" action games, and that due to each vehicle having some purely game related numbers (ex. - Hit Points) and varying sources of contending info regarding characteristics which likely used different methodology (flight models of WW2 aircraft, armor penetration tests?).

The biggest issue with single-player games is the spotty post-release support.  Some do fine, others seem to be abandoned in rough shape.  I suppose that's a problem everywhere, but us 'niche' players who prefer more depth in our games tend to be drawn to some of the Eastern European indies since they regularly have interesting and unusual titles.  However, there is often terrible post-release support for the English versions of these and bug reports on such a forum seem to go unaddressed and unpatched, perhaps due to the language barrier.  Many of the 1C titles are a good example, here, and they're probably the primary reason of the support complaints since they publish a lot of the single-player stuff made in Russia.

They are two separate issues, but for different types of games (multi- vs single-player).  It's probably only due to a limited few, but "a few bad apples" and all that..  :-\  There has also been the old DRM stigma, and specifically many of the Russian companies continuing to use StarForce even after the debacle.

[ChrisK]

My stints with World Of Tanks and World Of Warplanes wasn't as clear-cut, especially since WoT has matured and received some balancing over time (movement of the KV series up the tiers, for example) but that tag has still hung over it since the beginning.  I think it was mainly due to the Soviet guns doing the most damage per shot.  I've not played either in awhile, but it wasn't quite so pronounced as my first example.

Thanks for giving us the benefit of the doubt, Nefaro! ;D

I think the main reasons for the (mis)perception that Soviet tanks were favored in WoT were/are:

• The common belief that German tanks are always better than their opponents' tanks (they were, for the time they were introduced, which is balanced in WoT by matching tanks against historically equivalent tanks, not historically contemporaneous tanks, but the real German advantage was crew training and experience, not modeled by nation in the game)
• The size of the maps is small for better gameplay, which reduces the effectiveness of the German guns (while more accurate and generally longer ranged, this matters less in close-range combat)
• Some factors which are not taken into account by the game engine, such as shell quality, armor homogeneity, planned vs actual thickness (German tanks were typically 10%+ over actual armor thickness), etc. would probably have a more deleterious effect on Soviet tanks than on German tanks.
• It's much easier for a CIS-based company to research Soviet tanks than German, and especially American, tanks. One of the purposes for the research team I am currently staffing up is to get more accurate information on US tank development.

In fact, many of our developers (including our CEO, and me!) prefer to play German tanks, so we try to keep them as balanced as possible. :o

I'll decline to comment about War Thunder, even though I've been in the beta for over a year, because they are our direct competition. but I tend to agree with your assessment.  :-X