{"id":44164,"date":"2018-02-09T01:14:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T08:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/ghost-recon-wildlands-gameifies-building-the-united-states-empire\/"},"modified":"2018-02-09T01:14:19","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T08:14:19","slug":"ghost-recon-wildlands-gameifies-building-the-united-states-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/ghost-recon-wildlands-gameifies-building-the-united-states-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghost Recon: Wildlands gameifies building the United States\u2019 empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s an incredible conversation in Ghost Recon Wildlands between your player character and Karen Bowman, the CIA agent posing as a charity worker in Wildlands\u2019 coke-fueled, coke-obsessed vision of rural\u00a0Bolivia:<\/p>\n

Bowman: \u201cAre you afraid the Socialists are going to get too big for their britches? You\u2019re such a Cold War antique\u201d
Player character: \u201cSays the CIA spook in Latin\u00a0America\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, this seems in character for Ghost Recon and the Tom Clancy brand in general. Clancy himself traded on quasi-realism for decades, using the uncertainty and paranoia of the late Cold War to animate his airport thrillers to lucrative effect. His work rarely criticised the actions of the US abroad, partly because they were consistent with his vocal Republicanism and partly because references to those events lent his work the verisimilitude that made it\u00a0sell.<\/p>\n

But Ubisoft, the owners of the Clancy brand, are not above a nod and a wink. This conversation, and many others throughout Wildlands, shows that Ubi is in on the whole thing. They can\u2019t be glorifying the very real and very illegal process by which the US destabilises countries to serve its own interests if they acknowledge what they\u2019re doing right? Self-awareness it appears, is still putting in work making excuses for everyone\u2019s bad\u00a0ideas.<\/p>\n

Ghost Recon: Wildlands provides us a gorgeous Bolivian landscape to roll around in with up to three buddies as they tear down this \u201cNarco State.\u201d We\u2019ve been here before. And that doesn\u2019t just apply to Wildlands\u2019 shared DNA with every Ubisoft game since Assassin\u2019s Creed Brotherhood. The US has been here before, in Bolivia, in Colombia, in Venezuela. It was recently revealed that the US has deployed small teams much like the one you play as in Wildlands to 50 of the 54 countries of Africa. And like those operatives, in Wildlands you\u2019re tasked with systematically undermining the cartel\/terrorists\/incumbent government by whatever means necessary. It systemises through play what America is doing in multiple countries as we\u00a0speak.<\/p>\n

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Except, a Ubisoft executive might argue, you\u2019re actually taking over Bolivia. Bolivia in Wildlands is merely playing host to everyone\u2019s favourite right-wing dogwhistle: Mexican Cartels. Sure, you may get into a few scuffles with the government but you\u2019re there to dismantle a budding Narco State whose operatives tortured and killed a CIA agent. It\u2019s revenge. It\u2019s personal. And your team of \u201cghosts\u201d fresh from starting a populist coup in Russia is there to get the job done. With the help of those aforementioned socialists, you\u2019ll tear down the \u201cNarcos\u201d and \u201cSicarios\u201d to get to the big man himself: El Sueno. It doesn\u2019t more apolitical than\u00a0that.<\/p>\n

Writing a game about fighting the War on Drugs does not however mean your game isn\u2019t about empire. Mass market products that aren\u2019t openly in favour of US imperialism labour under the delusion that the war on drugs doesn\u2019t see colour or money. The main drug El Sueno is shifting is cocaine, which unless you\u2019re particularly prudish, isn\u2019t something parents have nightmares about. It\u2019s less addictive than sugar and so prohibitively expensive that it\u2019s synonymous with the excesses of the upper class. Black-tar heroine it is\u00a0not.<\/p>\n

However, it makes a lot of money and any country with access to coca plants and the means with which to produce cocaine has the potential to be an economic force to be reckoned with, or fund a sub-state actor\u2019s capacity to pose a direct military threat to the US\u2019 ever-expanding sphere of influence. One whose wealth cannot feasibly be controlled by economic or diplomatic action on the part of the US or its allies. The drugs trade, like the oil trade and the gas trade offers countries a source of income that has the potential to threaten the United States\u2019 global hegemony, which is why there is a The War on Drugs at all. It\u2019s a policy of protectionism, attempting to regulate demand for the extremely expensive products of its rivals and in so doing, smoothing over another roadblock to US\u00a0power.<\/p>\n

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Back in the 70s and 80s, the US was conducting these operations in Latin America to prevent the spread of communism, which directly threatened its power and as your character acknowledges, little has changed. The US is back in Latin America. It probably never left. The last time it was in Bolivia, it was attempting to assassinate Che Guevara. There\u2019s a new war, but the tactics remain the same. In a decade, the next generation of Ghosts may be sent back into Bolivia to unseat your rebel allies for being too damn socialist. This much, the game understands.<\/p>\n

Wildlands knows enough to comment on the history of covert US operations, to acknowledge that they happened and that their justifications were morally dubious at best, but doesn\u2019t take the vital next step to connect these decisions to a pattern of behaviour. That was the Cold War. This is the War on Drugs. Wildlands recognises the difference in the same way Clancy did. Same shit, different day. There\u2019s always going to be another bad guy, and rest assured, they are always Very Bad. What matters in that they are the new bad guys doing new and different bad things and the fact that the US responds the same way every time is further proof of its moral\u00a0quality.<\/p>\n

When, in Wildlands, I found my character \u201cNomad\u201d stepping on the fingers of a cartel playboy, the victim offered me half million dollars to go away. Nomad responds:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need your money. I work for the US government. We spend billions of dollars on hand sanitizer alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is delivered as if it\u2019s a badass point of pride and not the funniest thing anyone has said ever. And it\u2019s also wrong, based on everything you\u2019ve done in the game up until that point. In Wildlands, you upgrade Nomad\u2019s abilities and equipment by stealing resources from the cartel and finding equipment in the field. The \u201ctier one operator\u201d explanation for this is obviously these are deniable operatives who can be disavowed at any time. They\u2019re self-sufficient. They\u2019re expendable. They\u2019re elite. But in practice, you\u2019re roughing up cartel lieutenants to get the locations of a 30-round clip for your AK-12. Elite survivialism is boiled down to a mildly tedious fetch-quest. The first thing you do when you enter a new region is gather information on where all the weapon parts are. It\u2019s a better carrot than killing or kidnapping whichever drug lord with a memorable gimmick that happens to be working that patch of\u00a0land.<\/p>\n

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Though not intentional, this is the one cogent point the game makes about the current state of the US empire. Even though the US military is funded to the tune of $780 billion, it will always be overstretched and under-resourced. It has military bases in 70 of the world\u2019s countries, the only functioning aircraft carriers in active service, several thousand nuclear weapons and is fighting both sides of the Syrian civil war by proxy as we speak. During the Iraq invasion, US troops scavenged weapons and bought their own gear online to supplement the shortfall in supplies provided by the most powerful and well-funded military in the world. The US has the most of everything, and it will always need\u00a0more.<\/p>\n

What makes the Ghosts team in Wildlands so elite, so valuable, is that they\u2019re cheap. In the opening scene each member describes how they each made their own way to Bolivia, and bar a helicopter ride, the operational support of a lone CIA agent and a handful of guns, the bill the US will be footing for Wildlands\u2019 hijinks will probably be lower than the State Department\u2019s stationary budget. Nomad can\u2019t \u201clevel up\u201d without delivering supplies to the rebels, the proxies who secure the territory that the Ghosts destablise. New guns are found in enemy encampments. In a war on the production of goods that challenge America\u2019s ability to control the global market for everything, its troops still need to steal basic armaments from the enemy in order to do their jobs. This is why the Ghosts are characterised as the best of the best. You\u2019ve done what they do in Wildlands in several of Ubi\u2019s other games, but they\u2019re doing it on a national scale on the US government\u2019s payroll. Every red-dot sight scavenged is a dollar saved and a resource denied to the enemy. It lends a comic subtext to \u201cblack ops.\u201d Wetwork without a trace, and under\u00a0budget.<\/p>\n

Careening around in a hatchback you stole from a poor person may at first blush seem antithetical to the US of Wildlands that spend billions on soap. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s consistent<\/em> with how the US military trains its personnel to be resourceful and adaptable, with situational disregard for the lives and property of the world\u2019s most vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

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Ubisoft Paris\u2019 decision to take late-era Clancy\u2019s politics at face value has resulted in a game that cannot simply be dismissed as weird propaganda. The developers at Ubisoft Paris are certainly capable of the same imperialist impulses as an American studio. But the recent Clancy games seem to me to be less of an expression of the developer or the corporation\u2019s own politics and more of a direct adaptation of the hyper-masculine, realpolitik principles held by the American military and intelligence communities. As such, it can\u2019t be completely condemned. We may never know the extent to which the military industrial complex has funded and invested in military-themed games, although the degree to which they directly benefit from their popularity is something they\u2019ll happily tell you themselves.<\/p>\n

Ghost Recon: Wildlands undeniably functions as another offshoot of US imperialism, selling the violence done to the world\u2019s poorest people back to us as disposable entertainment. But it\u2019s also so pure, so honest about depicting the pernicious assumptions about violence as a solution to the issues created in part by the US itself, about how the US\u2019 many wars against abstract concepts are ultimately justifiable and how it thinks all this and more is marketable.<\/p>\n

Wildlands was a smash hit for Ubisoft, and it would be disingenuous to put this success down to the ugliest shades of its character. The core demographic for Wildlands is not the \u201cBuild the Wall\u201d contingent of the market. It is a product marketed globally and it saw success on that scale because the vast majority of its audience accepts America\u2019s state of permanent war as vector for content. The assumptions and principles it embodies are easily and readily ignored. Wildlands is about having military-themed fun in an open world. Who cares where it takes place or who the enemy is? All that matters is that it\u2019s believable, that it\u2019s consistent with the vaguely realistic qualities of the Tom Clancy\u00a0brand.<\/p>\n

The fact that it satisfies all of these criteria says more about the US empire than it does about the game\u00a0itself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s an incredible conversation in Ghost Recon Wildlands between your player character and Karen Bowman, the CIA agent posing as a charity worker in Wildlands\u2019 coke-fueled, coke-obsessed vision of rural\u00a0Bolivia: Bowman: \u201cAre you afraid the Socialists are going to get too big for their britches? You\u2019re such a Cold War antique\u201dPlayer character: \u201cSays the CIA… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":44165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t