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MOSCOW – Russian authorities said they will produce “patriotic” video games, while import of foreign video games that “distort history” could be banned.
“The main thing we expect from the producers of video games is the realistic and historically truthful representation of events,” Arseny Mironov, an aide to Russia’s culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, was quoted as saying by the Russian daily Izvestiya. He added that the creation of a “negative image of the Russian warrior” is inadmissible.
“A video game has to have not only an entertainment value, but it also has to teach and be conducive to patriotic education,” he went on to say.
The Russian Military History Society, which is headed by Medinsky, is to be in charge of the government’s video game project. The first video game being developed will focus on the inception of Russian military aviation during the First World War. The video game is to be inaugurated in 2014, and the government is currently in negotiations with several local video game developers, but no names have been revealed.
Later, government grants for development of “patriotic” video games are to be introduced.
The culture ministry also expressed concerns about foreign video games, which “discredit the Russian soldier” and “distort historic facts” and said that import of those games to Russia could be banned.
Among the examples, the video game “Company of Heroes,” developed by Relic Entertainment, was mentioned. Russian officials have complained that the game, which isn’t translated into Russian, is popular among Russian teenagers, although it depicts a Russian WWII soldier as a criminal who burns down civilians’ houses.
Incidentally, You Don’t Mess With Putin, a mobile video game in which Russian President Vladimir Putin fights a horde of zombies, is being developed by Belgium’s Michele Rocco Smeets.
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