Gaming
Russia Caught Using Video Game Screenshot in Anti-US Propaganda
Propaganda is something we all have to deal with. Someone always wants to politicize something, be it using a church shooting to push gun control laws or to support the lack thereof or using a terrorist attack to paint every member of a religion as a dangerous extremist. Even video games aren’t immune from propagandization, although usually they fall into two categories: someone either claims a video game is part of an evil government conspiracy (coughAlexJonescough) or makes a video game to push an agenda. However, once every blue moon, someone gets the bright idea to use a video game and pass it off as real life for the sake of creating propaganda. It tends to backfire in the most spectacular of ways.
Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) posted several pictures on its Twitter feed and Facebook page and claimed they provided “irrefutable evidence” that the United States is aiding ISIS. One of the images is of some blurry-yet oddly polygonal vehicles:
Some might chalk this up to bad image quality, but many Twitter users, including journalist and researcher Eliot Higgins, saw it for what it was: a screenshot from the in-development (and possibly in development hell) mobile game AC-130 Gunship Simulator.
Another Twitter account, The Conflict Intelligence Team, discovered that wasn’t the only intentionally misattributed picture, as another was apparently taken from a 2016 Iraqi Ministry of Defence video:
Another alleged @mod_russia drone image accusing US of cooperating with IS was taken from a June 2016 Iraqi MoD video showing Iraqi Air Force bombing IS near Fallujah https://t.co/ybRbuAxA6w
(via @uckuduk1) pic.twitter.com/MtzjqAAStW— CIT (en) (@CITeam_en) November 14, 2017
The Russian MoD has since removed all of its tweets and Facebook posts with the pictures, but you know what they say: nothing is ever truly deleted from the Internet. Other sites, including Kotaku and The Hill, have posted their own articles on this situation, and they all agree that the inclusion of these images destroys any credibility the Russian MoD had regarding its “the US is aiding ISIS” claims. But, the problems don’t stop there, as this isn’t the first time the Russian MoD has tried to pass off misattributed pictures and videos for the sake of propaganda. According to Gizmodo, in The Putin Interviews, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed Oliver Stone a recording of what he claimed was Russian forces fighting ISIS militants in Syria back in 2016. However, eagle-eyed viewers immediately identified the recording as a 2009 video (warning: it is graphic) of American forces attacking the Taliban in Afhanistan. While we do not know if Putin actually believes his own claim, the Russian MoD provided him with the video, which demonstrates the Russian MoD has a history of intentionally misleading the public in order to tell a narrative that simply isn’t true. This is indicative of the growing fake news problem and how the best solution to that problem is some good old research.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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