The only big problem with this video is your coverage of the military entertainment complex. The example of the live action transformers movies doesn't do it justice- the list of movies funded by the pentagon is very long, and many of them would never come off as US military propaganda to the average person. Batman & Robin, Apollo 13, Indian Jones and the Last Crusade are all movies partially funded by the US military industrial complex. Behind Enemy Lines is another one, in spite of being about the battle of Stalingrad and having absolutely nothing to do with the US army. The MEC's propaganda is much more insidious than a movie like transformers which wears it's US military funding on its sleave.

Idiocy, cherry picking and pretention hidden under “intelligent analysis”. Get a new hobby man

You’re making me be pro military lol

It’s a video game, bro, not a history lesson.

Man, this whole military and video game thing is a crazy conspiracy theory that sounds like you're exaggerating

This dude works so hard and only has 8 thousand subs 🤣

Well fucking played. I didn't understand what you were doing until you started talking about the 14 steps. I am really impressed.

Yeah so I am a historian who has since left the field of enquiry, but I sat there watching the Men's Rights Movement grow and then get coopted by the alt-right over time. Videos like this basically make a single point that is important to make, which is that false accusations can not be a weapon to discredit victims. They exist to make a claim for better justice and less ideological thinking during the judicial process. And I mean the argument is not weak at all. Yes, there are many many false accusations and they are disastrous, but the stats quoted are clearly wrong. Based on my own research on the topic (early 00s) the number should probably be between 10 and 20 percent. Definitely something to protest, definitely something to talk about. What can not be done however is to use such arguments to make a case beyond the common cynical attitude that informs any sceptic outlook. The arguments that support 'rape culture' do the same thing though, they too use shoddy research to make a claim about systematic gross negligence when such a thing just isn't the case and can not be proven whatsoever. But, these patterns do not come out of thin air either. You show Trump, which is a bit on the nose, but it's a practical example. In certain cases, especially in the United States, where the justice system has been thoroughly compromised, the idea of false accusations can and will be used to discredit victims and it is somehow and regrettably effective. This was never the goal of those Men's Rights Activists back in the 90s and early 00s.

Couple of arguments feel like they miss the mark a bit and just in general there needs to be some slack for games to try to have their cake and eat it too, but in general the thesis stands that there is a serious amount of revisionism and like 'warwashing' and it's rather disgusting indeed. Good video man, well done.

Soldiers : low-wage contract killers in the service of the rich and the powerful of whatever country they belong to, brainwashed with "patriotism" to make them believe they fight for the people.

I want to point out that recanting an acusation is very possible (and likely common) amoung genuine rape victims. I am a victim myself but it took me a long time to come to the acceptance that I had been raped. In going to the police I would have had no other evidence than my word. Going through the lengthly legal procedure for a very small chance of conviction is draining and traumatic. I would be surprised if a lot of genuine victims decide to drop the charges rather than needing to keep dwelling on such a horrible and traumatic experience...

It wasn't fake history ASK ME HOW I KNOW

Video got recommended to me today, who knows why haven't watched much history or military stuff recently. However, I'm not going to even continue after the BF1 section it pissed me off so much. The cherry picking and bias to prove your point is insane, I've played the campaign of that game more times then I can count, they show plenty of Germans that are shell shocked, that talk about how bad the war is, that don't even care if they win anymore. There's even examples in the intro speeches of multiplayer maps that you just straight up ignore. Of course it would have been better if the central powers got some story missions. But to say that because they didn't means they are portrayed as evil is lunacy. It sours any chance of me giving you the benefit of the doubt for the rest of your video essay.

19:43 oh look, a Frankenstein copy. First book of science fiction ever published, written by a woman, whose mom wrote A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women.... *facepalm* conservatives are so uncultured it's funny.

Hey just finished the video and I want to say great job! I know this video is old so it’s possible your perspectives have changed. While I agree that yes there needs to be more awareness of how the military tries to get recruits, I feel like there is a bit of a fallacy with one of your arguments. You say that using the real video of an AC-130 attack is unethical and “fucked up.” While I agree that there is always room for discussion about the morally gray use of real events in media. This argument doesn’t hold up when you consider that so many other games use real life photos, videos, and memoirs of real events and real people as inspiration or straight up recreation of it. If you say that using this is objectively wrong (as you imply), then doesn’t that mean that any portrayal of a real battle inspired by real footage is always wrong? Does that mean that every form of entertainment can’t recreate something like this? To get my point across. Essentially what you are saying is that “you can’t have a player fighting in Stalingrad because that battle actually happened with real people fighting and dying there. You can’t play a total war game on the napoleonic wars using the descriptions of what it was like because real people fought and died there.” Maybe I’m wasting my time writing this, but I still wanted to voice my opinion. Other than that I agree with most of the points you made.

Very well done video - America never fails to sicken me. But i still want a historically accurate WW2 game

Anyone who thinks that a story about the horrors of war cant be put in a game without glorifying it need to play Spec Ops the Line Fuck. That. Game Gameplay is bog standard 3rd person shooter, not bad, just fine. But the story elevates that game into something else. If you do play it, i also recommend watching Apocalypse Now and reading Hearts of Darkness

I quite agree with the WW2 part but the BF1 part I think you miss a bit the point of what can become a video game more than just entertainment and what the marketing team works on separately from the vision of the development team especially with EA

My people did NOT endure what they did for the BRITISH EMPIRE to be depicted as the good guys

I understood and agreed with the first section about bf1, but when you got to cod ww2, specifically the campaign, you just completely reached for whatever negatives you had to find, which were in complete contradiction to what you were saying in the bf1 section. You complain that the campaign only serves the overall story of ww2, as a backstory for the main story about the main cast, and how in the end the main objective is to save your friend instead of just being given a lesson about how bad the holocaust was, which the game actual did anyway, just not the main focus which is what you didnt like. But you literally said in the first section that bf1 shouldnt be made as a fps game that tries to lecture people about how bad war is while also using the war as entertainment, but when cod ww2 doesnt do that in its campaign, (which it actually DOES, you just think it shouldnt have been the set up for the main character's stories), you complain that they werent paying the respect that the war and the holocaust should have, when their main goal was just to sell a compelling story for the most part. It isnt a documentary, its a video game, and a campaign following the story of a few characters. You would have to say the same thing about the famous movie "saving private ryan" because it does the same thing, literally, almost to a T. So this is clearly showing me your goal is mostly just to find whatever negative things you think you can, regardless of logic or consistency, about these games. Some of the most blatant hypocrisy ive ever seen, especially when its so juxtaposed next to each other, so much so that I have a hard time giving you the benefit of the doubt that this was all said and done in good faith and not just to appeal to an audience of blind, AAA game, pitchfork and torch holders

This entire video reminded me of the french philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who claimed that the "'war' in Iraq never toke place", but was rather a simulation. The point you made about the alienation of players/soldiers and how games/modern equipment blur the line of real combat situations and training simulators really converge with his essays. Baudrillard died in 2007, the same year CoD 4 was released.

7:19

On a tangent, though it's fantasy violence hack and slash, I thought of God of War And now that I think of it, there is quite a bit to be said here about how the pro-war American right, as noted in this video, ADORES the Spartans and, to sum it up my way, holds up their brutality and eagerness to wage war as something admirable. Kratos (my GOAT) in Ragnarok: "I did not think you should have had to." (in response to Atreus asking about Spartan training) "I had hoped my days of ceaseless battles were over. I had hoped to never see my son go to war." "War does not measure the strength of a man.” and therefore I observe that that's why a lot of the people that called the Norse saga "soft" are the radicalized fans/targets of the mentioned Military Entertainment Complex (Though GOW in general, with how epic the action/combat is, has always had some degree of ludonarrative dissonance in this regard, the point of Kratos' characterization/struggles still stands)

1:10 To claim that the "whole point of a video game is to be entertaining" rather severely misrepresents the art form. Sure, the 'whole point' of *some* games is to be entertaining; or rather, the actual 'point' of many games is to serve as storefronts in which large corporations bombard the player with obfuscated microtransactions in order to make the line go up for the next quarter -- but to imply that this is *all* games are and can be is to fundamentally misunderstand the medium's capability to create experiences that simply aren't possible in other, less interactive media (say, a movie, book, illustration, etc). That's not to say that Battlefield 1 specifically was created as a work of art first, and product second; but rather that writing games off as just "things that are supposed to be entertaining" reveals a rather closed-minded perception of the medium. Play more indie games and thank me later.

I know I’m late to the party but it’s not the same. Agent orange was not a weapon. It’s a damn weed killer that is horribly toxic. Not a weapon.

Ive watched this video and the one where you try and destroy Isaac Butterfield and honestly ive come away totally confused about what you think masculinity is or how you've defined what toxic masculinity is... it seems maybe you've bought into this woke culture and it's you that's confused. That's exactly what people like Joe Rogan and Isaac Butterfield are trying to undo.

I still stand on the fact that the Central Powers were the "good guys" in the first world war. You cannot simply "discount" the idiotically short-sighted Serbian terrorists who offed the highly progressive (and likely ally) ArchDuke and future Emperor of Austria, nor can we ignore the fact that it was Russia who was the first to mobilize troops, which then caused Austria to mobilize its own troops and obligate Germany to mobilze its troops in a show (and later, action) of defense. The Central Powers didn't start the fight and didn't want the fight. It was self-defense from the very start. To be frank, Austria had every sensible right to take action against Serbia for the terrorists actions, especially by the standards of the day and age. I mean, before and after that event, other world powers have done mich more from much less justification and found little or no international resistance. The insistence by the Allied Powers to turn what really should have been a domestic/regional affair and transform it into the First World War, sticking their noses into issues that didn't actually involve them at all just to look for an excuse to expand their spheres of influence in the continuing "Dance of Europe" of the 19th century just paints them more and more as the bad guys... especially with the later generational gaslighting propaganda campaign to put the chief burden for the war on the German Empire rather than acknowledge Serbia, Russia, or even at least the Austrian Empire as the cause. "Good guys" shouldn't do that. The Allies were hands down the "good guys" of WW2 (with exceptions, as always in reality. Concentration Camps for visitors, residents, and even citizens who are assumed to be of Japanese ancestry isnt exactly storybook "good guy" stuff), but I do also follow the theory that you dont get the Second World War (as it occured, and with its underlying events) without the First World War. You dont get Adolf if there is no forced Abdication of the Kaiser and the forced partioning of the Austrian Empire.

This video was pretty bad lol. Hey KZbin, can you stop recommending me these pretentious channels from random asshats who think they're so deep and thought provoking? It's getting hard to ignore them all.

Bro really said "I.D. Software" lol It's Id. As in the set of uncoordinated instinctual needs according to Freud's psychological framework (Ego psychology).

Not Including Serbia and Bulgaria in a WWI game is just ridiculous. As ridiculous as the Russians being a DLC XD

15:55 I appreciate the argument being made here but this has been a common storytelling technique for a long time. There's the quote commonly attributed to Stalin: "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" - In other words, after a certain point, the human brain finds it difficult to comprehend the volume of an atrocity. However, you can make the audience understand the weight of the atrocity by focalising, by using a single person's experience as a surrogate. Don't get me wrong, CoD WWII has many flaws but I wouldn't say it's fair to equate a personal story amid a wider tragedy as effectively saying "fuck everyone else, we saved our friend".

Just mad ramblings from a conspiracy theorist, nothing to see here people move along.

Impressive video. I had not really connected games to manufactured consent. I should have. Since it is a powerful medium to brainwash. Thank you for the obvious hard work creating this video.

Games don't need to portray history correctly, videogames are not documentaries. The point is fun. Warcrimes don't make the for fun gameplay.

The historical revisionism in every Call of Duty game is astounding. Given the cold war that followed WWII, American developers are incapable of portraying the Soviet war effort in a good light. "Yes, they fight nazis but they very very bad too! See? Shooting themselves and fighting w/o gunz and everyone complains about Soviet tyranny... nazis = commies" (said the side that employed actual nazis in the cold war arms race). They just cannot avoid the caricaturization of a complete people and their struggles during a brutal war. And also accussing the Sovs of the shit the US actually did (operation paperclip) to portray America as a cartoonish "totally 100% good side where everyone is for democracy and heroism and are morally superior". Black&white, deformed "history" with the single aim of enlisting youngster wanna be heros.

I think the overriding problem with all of this is that video games are way too new of a medium that no one really knows how to depict war properly and respectfully yet (save for a very few instances). Throughout this video I’ve constantly been agreeing with your points, but as someone who’s done a fair bit of game development and writing analysis, I’ve looked at it from the perspective of the devs. Making war games is a huge challenge because games have to be fun but in making them fun you run the risk of glorifying war. That’s a trap a lot of war games have fallen into. And it’s a tough problem to solve. Do you portray the history accurately? Because that would be a very boring and unenjoyable game taken to ultra realism, but on the other side, disregarding history for gameplay purposes is also something to avoid for something as important as war. Most game try to solve this by striking a middle ground, and that’s how you end up with something like battlefield 1. But also from a narrative point of view, I think that there are things that are impossible to ask from games. I think making fictionalised stories of real history isn’t a bad thing, but using it to retroactively justify the messed up actions of the US and other governments is a bad thing. But in terms of specific examples, how do you depict something that involved so many people in a single experience without inevitably having to leave someone’s experiences out? Who decides who’s experience is told and who’s is forgotten? Personally I think that until these questions are answered in the video game space we will keep running into these problems. When the art form matures I think there will be respectful and true stories told in a way that serves to remind us of our history without using that history to retroactively justify it. I think video games due to how costly they are to make, and how many people work on them, haven’t had that auteur brechtian figure to hit the mainstream yet.

Your videos are great. never stop

i guess most of this can be explained with ludonarrative dissonance. telling a story that ist not fun with a media that needs to be fun in order to work. and the scarf thing from Saddam, cmon. every 2 out of 3 iraqi wears it. i don't say its not Saddam but the scarf? and these are all american games. you think america would make themself seem bad in their own media? why would they? why should they? its their products. also if you think people will be influenced to join the army to kill arabs by doing 360 no scope claymore switches in the Xbox ... well you can end this sentence yourself. or maybe you're right cause we're talking about americans. stupid games from stupid americans for stupid americans.

The "modified pattern" used on scarfs of pro Palestine protesters is actually the pattern on the keffiyeh worn by Yasser Arafat. I suspect Arafat is the inspiration for it rather than Hussein, though it wouldn't surprise me if some of the non Palestinians wearing it are unaware of the connection.

The relationship between the Military industrial complex and military shooters is a good thing. There is no such thing as an anti-war game, it sucks but it’s a fact of life. It’s impossible to due through that medium end of discussion, just accept that military shooters are pro-war inherently

Cod 4 was definitely based on the Iraq war, I fail to see the problem with this, I do have a problem with the fact that they couldn’t be as up front due to controversy. Other than that, yeah I get it, obviously you were against the Iraq war, what does that have to do with the game? All this is is you yapping about how bad you think the Iraq war was and it almost seems like you’re offended on Saddam Husseins behalf Other than that, yeah everyone knows that the military benefits from games like Call of Duty. Every time a game like that is released, recruitment goes up. The problem with your video is you are assuming this is a bad thing inherently, when it’s either a neutral thing or even a positive thing when recruitment is up. Playing a what if scenario about Saddam using nuclear weapons during the Iraq war is fun, end of discussion. You just hate fun

Like with movies, there is no way to make a truly anti war video game, you can try, and you can see it when developers try, but it won’t be truly anti-war

How the hell did I get sentenced to 55 minutes of breadtube video essay

Regarding the AC130 footage. It makes me feel outright happy and warm inside because the types of individuals that took over aghanistan have machinegun committed crimes against humanity to the citizens of afghanistan and any POWs they get their hands on. That group of people has not only terrorized their own citizens but has collabed with its neighbours to spread mayhem and terror to nations around them through funding and gave safe refuge to international criminals. And above all else, they are individuals that believe that people like myself need to be executed just because i was born the wrong way. Seeing overwhelming force against individuals that seek your demise is not so horrible that people need to feel "mandated shame" because they are not a formal military force. They are a literal death cult that are abusive to everyone in the nation that they eventually wrestled control over and were highly abusive to even their own members. Yes they had stories but much like the footage you can watch from ukraine, they chose to be villains and not surrender and seek a better life. Life isnt fair and its not always easy to make the right choice and the united states military is ABSOLUTELY warping presentation of media in its favour. But trying to make people, especially those like me who would be marked for death by such organizations feel bad for them is laughable

Everything in battlefield games is shiny, and every texture has a soft/rounded feeling to it. It’s horrible

Excellent video. When I clicked I was afraid it would be another right wing culture warrior screeching about woke bullshit.

your argument at 3:00 about the central powers not getting the same treatment because they are the "bad guys" i disagree with, I think it shows that, while you play on the side of the allies and understand the allies perspective, as in you know the names of the men that you play as and the date of birth and death giving them more humanity, a solider serving on the frontlines wouldn't give their enemy any personality or humanity, to them the enemy was nameless. I think the opening sequence of Battlefield 1 does a fantastic job of showing that everyone in war is human but also showing that in a war zone, you dont get to know the people you kill, you only know yourself and those on your side. if we guess that us knowing the names of our characters is because we played as them then it makes full sense that we never learn the names of a german soldier. While maybe they could handle it better, with us playing as a german soldier occasionally. i think there is a certain point of "well im just flip flopping between sides theres no story telling" which could cause confusion or frustration, also germany in ww1 is presented as the only cause of the war in media (which is factually untrue) so making a group of potentially uninformed or misinformed players start the game playing as german soldiers could present its own issues.

Holy s*** its a game man. Calm down and touch grass or maybe be mad about something serious like books being inaccurate not a call of duty game. The whole point of these games is to run around and shoot each other its not some deep philosophical bs. Its just meant to be fun. Does every racing game have you put on your seatbelt and learn drivers ed? I think theres a time and a place for this deep inteospection and expectations and it certainly isnt for a cod game.

You forgot calories burned from neat.

Re: Halo, that is TOTALLY a War on Terror metaphor as propaganda piece-- if facing off against a group of religious fundamentalist aliens wouldn't be enough to convince you, the Arbiter was originally going to be called "Dervish"