Ukraine Calls For Video Game Blockade Against Russia To Motivate Its Citizenry (original) (raw)

from the games-are-culture dept

I’ve banged on for quite a while about how video games have long not gotten the recognition they deserve as a major and growing part of the cultural landscape throughout the world. While there is no doubt that there has been a shift in this as time has gone on, it’s still the case that a hefty percentage of the world, particularly older populations, simply don’t put video games on the same cultural footing as literature, movies, television, and music. Which is ultimately quite silly. Video games represent creative and cultural output and the number of people playing them, and the amount of time those people devote to them, has grown consistently throughout the past several decades.

And so we look for barometers to use to point this out to people. Well, I think we got a big one recently. Ukraine, suffering from a war of aggression by a thuggish Vladimir Putin, has called on the gaming and esports organizations of the world to initiate something of a gaming embargo against Russia.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, has publicly called on “all game development companies” to “temporarily block all Russian and Belorussian accounts” in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

In a tweet from his verified account, Fedorov also called on esports platforms to “temporarily stop the participation of Russian and Belorussian teams and gamers in all international esports events and cancel all international events holding [sic] on the territory of Russia and Belarus.”

Now, if such actions were implemented, they would be a mirror to many other corporate and cultural actions already taken on the internet and among IRL sports leagues and organizations throughout the world. The point isn’t that such an action would be novel. Rather, the point is that Ukraine at least sees gaming in the same cultural categories as these other cultural outputs. Whether Ukraine is right about that is something we may get to see answered in real time, as Federov has said this call comes as a way to motivate Russian citizens by denying them cultural output that is definitely in high demand.

These moves, Fedorov suggests, “will motivate the citizens of Russia to proactively stop the disgraceful military aggression” by the Russian government. “In 2022, modern technology is perhaps the best answer to the tanks, multiple rocket launchers… and missiles.”

Whether this works as intended is yet to be seen. First the gaming embargo would have to be initiated and then we’d have to watch how the Russian citizenry reacts. Still, gaming culture in Russia and Ukraine is strong. There are hundreds of game companies with offices in Ukraine, for instance. This, combined with actions that Apple and other tech companies have taken, would certainly be felt on the ground in Russia. Admittedly perhaps not as much as the global community coming together, amazingly, with the seeming goal of obliterating the Russian economy as much as possible, but still it would be felt.

And, while this is far less important, even the call for this places video games in the cultural stratosphere it deserves.

Filed Under: protest, russia, ukraine, video games