Occupy Creeping Into Video Games? Ubisoft Takes A Swipe At The 99 Percent0

By 99Percent

It was a casual Sunday and I found myself walking through the local video game store. I’m always on the lookout for games that are influenced by real-world events, geopolitics or other revolutionary ideas as presented in digital form. While I’m still waiting for the ultimate game that portrays presidential elections, an upcoming release by a major global gaming studio has caught my eye and for possibly the wrong reasons.

Ubisoft is updating Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series with a new sequel in 2013. Only this time, the baddies aren’t mysterious investment bank-type Arabs pointing Kalashnikovs. After seemingly an entire generation of blowing up Muslims, we’re finally getting a reprieve from the barrage of first-person-shooters that portray all of the Middle East as though it were one big underground weapons market.

So who (or what) has become the latest enemy of the state to be deemed a necessary kill for Clancy disciples in the video game world?

It just might be the 99 Percent.

You knew this would happen sooner or later. According to early press reports and box art, the enemy of America now comes from within. Rainbow Six: Patriots is a squad-based game that paints those who fight for economic inequality as a terrorist threat.

Early simulated clips that may or may not make the final release are indeed astounding. The opening scene of the first working imagery officially released portrays a home invasion – complete with the physical assault of the mother of a newborn baby – as undertaken by a band of anti-corporate zealots. Here’s a snippet of dialogue from a YouTube preview as released by Ubisoft…

“You really did cash in on everyone else getting foreclosed didn’t you? Today, you’re going to make up for that…”

Wow. I guess we’ve all been waiting for a blockbuster shooter that paints the 1 percent as victims. Thanks Tom Clancy. If violence again rears it’s ugly head at future protests, I guess we’ll know who is throwing fuel on the fire.

For those that don’t feel like watching the preview footage, what unfolds then is an exercise in violence gone amok as an apparently American-born, kevlar-vest wearing terrorist known within the game as a “True Patriot” proceeds to strap an explosive device on a docile target. It all ends in more violence as the well-armed hero Rainbow Six team can’t seem to solve the bomb problem, so they throw the target off a bridge in New York City which may or may not be the George Washington.

Given that some consider video games like these to be military trainers, many of the people whose voices gave birth to the Occupy movement are likely to be revolted and disgusted that some of their protest messages may now be fodder for what could turn out to be a very violent and very scary simulation.

Worse, does this game further encourage the militarization of domestic policing with respect to the portrayal of anti-establishment protesters?

The “True Patriot” moniker given the American terrorists in this game seems like a mix of Tea Party and Occupy movements. Granted, the game is in very early in development, but this ripped-from-the-headlines approach should upset some of the 99 Percent who hold nonviolent civil disobedience to be one of the founding principles that helped shine a spotlight on a progressive voice of unity.

If the new terror threat is indeed an underclass emboldened by cries of “this is what democracy looks like,” we’re all going to be in a lot more trouble than we think. By the end of many of the Occupy encampments, some of the public opinion voiced against those protesting was clearly being molded by a media that sought to vilify the Occupy movement as a stinking underbelly that needed to be held under the boot of a police state.

If the next step is really to turn weapons – even the digital kind – upon this group, a new front has been opened up in an entertainment propaganda / information war that civic, cloud-based journalism may find impossible to counter.

Seems the 1 percent has quite a few tricks up their golden-cufflinked sleeves.