Saturday, July 14, 2012

Neutrality in a historical setting: The problem with marketing Assassin's Creed 3

Firstly, just to show you my background for context: I'm American, born and raised outside of Boston (inside the Greater Boston Area.) I have ancestors that date back to the Mayflower. As a Bostonian, the American Revolution was always an important historical event whose essence is strongly felt in my hometown. I grew up walking the Freedom Trail, my parents taking me to Paul Revere's house, the site of the Boston Massacre, and the graves of many a founding father.

One thing I've always enjoyed about the Assassin's Creed games is that they don't go for the obvious historical periods. We're inundated with World War Two games, for example (there's never been a clearer-cut villain in history than the Nazis, after all.) So when I heard that there would be one set during the American Revolution, I was thrilled. (While brainstorming with friends, we came up with the French Revolution and the Civil War as periods that would be interesting as well. Maybe if Connor gets as many games as Ezio, we'll see him over in France. Ubisoft is a French company, though, so I have to imagine someone over there will push for it.)

There is a problem, though. America is a very proud nation, and the Revolution is considered the birth of the American identity (actually, this is not entirely true - the American identity arose first, and thus inspired Americans to revolt against a country to which they did not believe they belonged.) Patriotism is serious business here. In fact, it gets a little ridiculous sometimes, and during the more tumultuous periods in our nation's history (The Red Scare and 9/11, for example,) a lack of overt patriotism was often considered to be a sign of anti-Americanism. Now, don't get me wrong - as the oldest functioning democracy (let's not get into a debate about how well it functions - this blog's about video games, not politics,) I am proud to be from here. It's the country that said "screw you" to the very idea of kings and aristocracy, freeing us from the petty disputes of the inbred royalty.

And yes, I think that my ancestors who rose up against British rule were fully justified in doing so, and I think that overall, the world is better for it. If it weren't for America, there would probably be far fewer democracies in the world (and here I'll step outside of the American stereotype and share the credit for this with France, both for their help in the Revolution and the fact that their subsequent Revolution paved the way for the democratization of Europe - even if it took a really, really long time.)

So it comes as no surprise that the marketing for Assassin's Creed 3 has really played up the patriotism factor, despite assurances that the game is really about the conflict between Assassins and Templars, who straddle both sides of the war. They want to sell a lot of games in America, so waving the Stars and Stripes is an understandable move.

Here's the problem: British people are not evil.

In fact, the UK has, for about a hundred years, if not more, been the USA's closest ally (Canada would be if we remembered that you guys weren't just Americans living up in the freezing wilderness. Sorry, Canadians!) Anyway, not only are we close allies, but the language bridge allows for a huge degree of cross-polination culture. (You gave us the Office and a bunch of game shows, we gave you 99.9% of the movies you watch - even the ones set in England about English people)

I like the UK a lot, and of course, being one of those Mayflower descendants, I of course have a lot of English in me (though a larger portion of me is Irish, and on the other side of my family I'm a first generation Hungarian-American.) And I've been there, studied there, made friends there, and I've enjoyed actual beer there in its pubs.

So when I look at the ads for AC3, I wonder if my English friends are feeling really turned off by them. And it's not like they've got a more balanced ad campaign over there - it's still Connor slaughtering redcoat after redcoat (the live-action ad I saw that I believe is England-only is, if anything, more gung ho American.) Yes, I think there was a good side (Patriots) and bad side (Redcoats) to the Revolution, but you have to remember that compared to the rest of Europe at the time, the Brits weren't so bad. The Revolution was less about destroying an evil empire than saying "we haven't been part of Great Britain for a while now - we're just making it official" while England "but you're our colonies! We put you there so we could have an empire!"

Imagine, for example, if they had chosen the Civil War instead. Would we have Connor (I tried to come up with a better name for an Irish-American conscript and failed) slaughtering a Confederate soldier on the box art? I mean, yeah, that would be awesome (For the Union!) but I can't imagine it would be good for sales in the South.

The Assassins vs Templars conflict allows us to have a more traditionally black and white conflict, which can then be set against the backdrop of history that is far more morally grey. By choosing to focus so much on the Patriot's side of things, Ubisoft threatens to both misrepresent the conflict of the game (hopefully) and to alienate a huge market of English gamers who might feel a little weird about slicing their ancestors to pieces.

Still, all of that said, I'll enjoy chilling with John Adams and Ben Franklin (think he'll make us inventions like Leonardo did? That would be cool. Say, doesn't the Freemason compass look kind of like the Assassin's symbol...?) Any country's going to have some time playing the bad guy if they last long enough. Some day, someone is going to make a Vietnam War game and we Americans are going to have to deal with being the big scary empire fighting against the local rebellion.

We just have to remember who the real bad guys are: Solar Flares... I mean Templars. (Hey, how come the modern-day Knights Templar haven't complained about these games?)

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