This is something I've been struggling with too. Granted I'm from the American south, and everyone here is a self-proclaimed "patriot" (personally I think patriotism and nationalism are two ways in which governments manage to manipulate their populace) . I've been trying to weigh the ethical dilemmas of playing a game like this that could, for some, merely reinforce their nationalist views. As much as I hate fascism, pretending the Nazis were somehow not human because of their horrible atrocities essentially means that we've given ourselves the right to do whatever we want to them. They're terrorists, or Communists, or fascists, so they "deserve" what they get. It's a dangerous way of thinking, but I'm not exactly convinced we're going to figure out anytime soon that it's actually destructive to all of us.

As a Muslim gamer, I can honestly say that playing games like you said online really makes no difference.  It just feels like we could literally be shooting at opponents in monkey skins and I still feel no attachment.  The SP is different because their is a narrative, a plot, the setup and the end game.  Call of Duty really feels like it tries to monsterize Western forces.  Ambitious to kill, lack of shame for loss of life, and really distance from the reality of war.  A big contrast to games like battlefield which feels like a much more complicated version of chess.  Games that depict the killings of Muslims do seem movie like and really lack understanding of ongoing situations and how developers failed to relate real world issues in their games.  I think this is true for all Westerners as well, that they really don't know how to engage and communicate with Muslims and the Middle East as a whole.  I think Assassin's Creed truly tried to capture the importance of religion in relation to war more than any other game to date.

" @emem:  there were plenty of germans that fought on the other side. Maybe im a little swayed since i am jewish and had distant family that died in the holocaust but theres always a way. Wouldnt you agree it might be better to be killed than to kill innocent people? "

Honestly, I wouldn't give a damn about a game where you kill swedes. You can do it in CS for example, but noone ever says shit about that. People just care more about the Call of Duty games because they're more cinematic, but the nationalities are still the same, and it's still a goddamn game. Those pixels don't have a nationality, they are all made in America.

I played through half of World at War playing as a scumbag Russian communist named Dimitri, the same people who would later butcher my people and illegally occupy our country for most of the 20th century. Was it weird? Nah, it's just a game.

Yeah i found it a bit odd for a second..then figured it's just a game. I do wonder how the american media would react to people gunning down american troops as russians though.

" @Vodun said:

" @TheSeductiveMoose: There was an awesome mod for Battlefield 2 which pitted Sweden against Norway. You could even call out slurs against the other team like "Nordbagge"...can't remember the Norwegian ones but probably something like "Svenskjävel". Good fun.

That sounds amazing, I really got an urge to fire up BF2 again. "

" I'm assuming OP didn't get the hegemonic nationalism from MW2. "

" @TheSeductiveMoose: There was an awesome mod for Battlefield 2 which pitted Sweden against Norway. You could even call out slurs against the other team like "Nordbagge"...can't remember the Norwegian ones but probably something like "Svenskjävel". Good fun.

" @emem: i would of not fought. or joined the other army. or just surrendered without killing the allies. "

The only thing that's important is that neither side is painted in black and white.

Thanks for the comments people. 
  To answer a few of the points on here, I understand that games are just pixels and moving light, however they clearly have cultural significance outside of themselves - especially games regarding the military.  
   Witness the recent outcry and forced change of the 'Medal of Honour' multiplayer team from Taliban to Opposing Force. Now while this was a change which seemed to be more important to the non-gaming world than those who actual pick up controllers now and then it shows how these things can affect people. - A sidebar to this is that shooters are extremely popular amongst the fighting folk of the US and GB and it would have been interesting to see how they took to this game if the multiplayer setup had not been changed.  - My guess is that most of them wouldn't have cared, I think fighting a real war and risking your real life probably gives you a healthy disregard for civilian arguments over what is offensive or not.  
  I understand that US gamers have been killing US cops and civilians in games such as GTA etc , but I think the military is a different category seeing how often we are told they are the best of the best in our nations and how grateful we should be for their deeds. 
      I would love to see a how well a game would do if it were as good or better quality than C.O.D but featured the player as a  Chinese soldier taking part in the invasion of America. Or a shooter from the point of view of a Viet Cong or Talib (I doubt the last one would even make the shelves in most shops).   
  I just think it is interesting to try and think outside our priveleged position as US or GB gamers where all the stories are told with our prejudices and expectations in mind. We should also bear in mind that this might not be because our stories are the best or our prejudices correct but because we currently have the fattest wallets. As I say towards the close of the piece it will be interesting to see what perspectives developers decide to show in their games when the rest of the world catches up to us in spending power. 

Someone has to be the bad guy.

meh it's all pixels, but I understand your point. Say for example a  developer released a FPS that set you in the position of a Nazi fighting against allied forces, all hell would break loose even though the argument against it's release is hypocritical.  My point being (If I have one) is that games like these are not meant to have true moral choices that reflect your actual feelings or politics, they are meant to put any enemy in your way in your cross hairs and pull the trigger. You follow the story the developer has planned out for you, so with certain titles like COD if you are in for a penny you are in for a pound.

" @Feanor said:

" I tend not to think about it, nor care about it. I am not shooting actual people, I'm shooting pixels. And if you are really pretending that you are gunning people down in a video game, then you have some problems. 
 
@MooseyMcMan: Don't forget that the Nazi's were those Germans grandparents. Also not even Nazi was some evil horrible person. The vast majority were just plain soldiers. Its not fair to judge all of them with  hindsight. "

Agreed. Too many people make the assumption that everyone who fought for(or under, rather) the Nazi regime were evil. Like you said, most of them were ordinary soldiers. "

The leaders of those countries did some bad shit.  If you're from there and don't understand that, you've probably never even heard of a video game.

I am German. My grandpa fought about 2 years in WW2 on the western front, after D-Day. As a french POW, he escaped to make it back home to his wife - pregnant with my mom.
 
So generally I really feel pretty detached from the story - or my personal relation to it. It is more like watching a movie. I just roll my eyes at massive displays of patriotism. I briefly lived in the US, and know a bunch of British people so, I maybe can set this into perspective - people are nice, despite their incredible patriotism. I can respect that, I agree on most of their basic ideals and I even became a bit more patriotic - given the country modern germany is. I did not play a lot of WW2 shooters though. Only "World at War" really. I honestly can not remember what type of german troops were depicted there. I doubt there was Gestapo, because these where more like a (evil) police. Not trained and equipped for combat. Maybe there was SS. These guys ran the concentration camps and the holocaust. Maybe Waffen-SS. The combat troops of the SS - considered elite and fanatic. You had to be a Nazi to be in the SS, and the majority of war crimes was committed by these people. The vast majority of the german forces though consisted of your average joe ordinary soldiers with no political agenda. (It is always refreshing when this is depicted in a game, like e.g. Company of Heros). Hey and guess what. If they did not fight, they would get shot. That being said. War usually brings out only the very worst in every man - on both sides!
 
I also happen to grow up on the east side of the iron curtain in the GDR. So there things are not as clear. Well, both the GDR, and the Soviet Union where terror dictatorships. Though the whole communism thing (as in the theory of Karl Marx - I guy living in the 19th century, who never lived to see the Russian Revolution) certainly did not start out as one, and I still think in theory it is the best possible society. I just does not work with mankind. So things are not so black and white, there. Certainly not the question who started everything, and who just defended themselves. Try to imagine you as a young man in russia. You just survived the bloody war, and then suddenly the US drops an atom bomb in the backyard or your nation. You would be scared shitless! Also keep in mind that history is usually written by the victor, and that we only see the tip of the ice berg of what our governments did. Also, it would not hurt a lot of people to read up even on that version of history.
 
Do not get me wrong. I am happy that it all worked out. Mainly because a guy named Michail Gorbatschow, sacrificed the way of life of his people, so we can all live to see another day and play video games.

They're just video games so I wouldn't care.

" @TomA:  dude, ordinary soldier or not they were willing to help massacre millions and millions of totally innocent and unarmed people and then kill the opposing army thats just trying to stop the slaughter. anyone that didnt realize how evil what was going on was is a horrible human being. All nazi's are scum and didnt deserve the quick death most got. "

I sort of had a weird and slightly racist moment when the British Commandos appear. I thought to myself 'Oh, here come the SAS they'll help us out' (assuming, because they were the same nationality as me that they would automatically be the good guys) and then they started shooting me and I shot back. I can play that sequence without any qualms but I did have a weird feeling when  it first happened.

Don't really care about it.
It's a game, I gots to shoot someone.

I'm assuming OP didn't get the hegemonic nationalism from MW2.

A game entirely built around shooting at retreating (Evil) French Soldiers, would fuel my AntiFrankish urges. On second thought, maybe its best if I just put those feelings behind me and learn to respect them. Than again they do hate everyone.....
 
@mrfizzy said:

" Im Australian and i always get annoyed that we arnt featured in games more often. This is especially true with Vietnam games seeing as how big a part we played in that conflict. Having said that i think that killing Aussies in a game would make me feel really wierd, tho tbh i cant imagine a story where we would be the bad guys.  "

" Im Australian and i always get annoyed that we arnt featured in games more often. This is especially true with Vietnam games seeing as how big a part we played in that conflict. Having said that i think that killing Aussies in a game would make me feel really wierd, tho tbh i cant imagine a story where we would be the bad guys.  "

Im Australian and i always get annoyed that we arnt featured in games more often. This is especially true with Vietnam games seeing as how big a part we played in that conflict. Having said that i think that killing Aussies in a game would make me feel really wierd, tho tbh i cant imagine a story where we would be the bad guys. 

" I tend not to think about it, nor care about it. I am not shooting actual people, I'm shooting pixels. And if you are really pretending that you are gunning people down in a video game, then you have some problems. 
 
@MooseyMcMan: Don't forget that the Nazi's were those Germans grandparents. Also not even Nazi was some evil horrible person. The vast majority were just plain soldiers. Its not fair to judge all of them with  hindsight. "

Most game devs don't care if a game could be taken badly in another country, because 75% of the people who are going to play their game are blissfully unaware North Americans. 
But it's a good topic of discussion.Game dev's should be more careful about the stuff they put in their game when it comes to different ethnicity's. Are they going to? No.

" I would really like a game that would let me fight Swedes. "

I tend not to think about it, nor care about it. I am not shooting actual people, I'm shooting pixels. And if you are really pretending that you are gunning people down in a video game, then you have some problems. 
 
@MooseyMcMan: Don't forget that the Nazi's were those Germans grandparents. Also not even Nazi was some evil horrible person. The vast majority were just plain soldiers. Its not fair to judge all of them with  hindsight.

You know, Americans have been gunning down American cops for years in games like Grand Theft Auto, so I don't think most people stop and think about these things like you did.  
 
Also, while I can't say for sure, but I'd suspect that most Germans probably wouldn't mind gunning down Nazis, because the Nazis were pretty terrible, and I know if I were German, I'd find gunning down virtual Nazis fun.  
 
Oh, and at that part of the game, my PS3 started glitching out, and the thing stopped loading the dialog, so I didn't actually hear that they were British, under I replayed that level on a friend's PS3. Didn't faze me (I'm American). 

I'm Canadian so I'm a bit removed from the whole situation, but here's what I saw:
 
When I got to the section fighting the British, I got weirded out some. I'm not British, so I think the line was more between general cultures than specific countries. In this case, I think it was much more important that it was proper-english-speaking dudes versus not, than the colour of the flags on their shoulders. After a minute, though, the weirdness faded back to the normal level for shooting people in an FPS. At the end of the day, countries are largely meaningless and becoming moreso as time passes, so to me killing one person is the same as any other. While I don't expect the majority of people to hold this opinion, I suspect that most people who fight their own country in a video game would not be particularly bothered, for a reaon that follows the same logic.

I would really like a game that would let me fight Swedes.

What is it like, I wonder, to be a German, Russian, or Middle Eastern gamer? To know that purchasing a game in the huge selling Military Shooter genre, will at some point call on you to wield your weapon against advancing hordes of your own people?

  As an American or British gamer, of which I am the later, this issue never really arises. You might have to take out some American troops if playing as Op-For in a Deathmatch, but the character in your sights in multiplayer never really feels as identified with its supposed nationality as do the enemy in single player. Divorced from any storyline, your opponents online always seem more representative of the real person in control, whether friend or faceless Internet foe, than the uniform they happen to be wearing.

 In single player, or story mode, things are different. If the story is good you feel invested in the character you represent and take some of his motivation into your actions in the game. Your computer-controlled opponents become the “baddies” and you feel righteous in your culling of their number.

 Or so I thought.

Playing through the recent Call of Duty, Black Ops, I came to a scene where I was required to sink and then escape from an ice-bound warship filled with a chemical weapon sought by various warring parties. I had no problem filling countless nameless Germans with bullet holes on the way onto the boat and spilling Russian blood all over the decks on my way out. However, then something strange happened.

  Suddenly British commandoes arrived on deck, also seeking to capture this terrible technology for their masters, and suddenly faced with foes of my own nationality I was strangely reticent to fight back.

  This series has tried before, generally in an incredibly cack-handed way, to try and make us “think” about our actions. Witness the infamous “No Russian” mission in ‘Modern Warfare 2.’ Maybe this was one of those moments, but it seemed too short a section, and also unlikely, in that it would be strange to just target British gamer’s perceptions.

 Whatever the intentions of the designers I was weirdly jarred by this section. I wouldn’t claim to be strongly nationalistic in anyway, and think patriotism is more of a curse than a virtue but I really had trouble turning my gun on virtual representations of my own countrymen. I fired as few shots as could get away with and still progress but mostly ended up using sprint to barrel through the short section.

  Now, if I had trouble with this five-minute slice of game what must it be like to play this game as a Russian, German, or Vietnamese? What must it be like to play this whole genre of games if you are from one of the countries or religions regularly portrayed as the bad guy? Don’t misunderstand me, I realise that there must be enemies in shooters and it is enjoyable to recreate History for fun but it must be strange having to swallow down on that nationalistic instinct most of us have to play the world’s most popular game.

 I suppose as a German shooting SS or Gestapo in ‘World at War’ one could look on them as Nazis before Germans, but for a Vietnamese playing Black Ops? The Vietnamese War is far less black and white than WWII, and recent enough that there might just be some combatants from the Viet Cong side who have sat down, controller in hand, to find themselves slitting the throats of their former comrades.

  This isn’t a plea for change, for MW3 to be told entirely from the view of a jihadist in Afghanistan, or a Communist special operative cutting swathes through Cold War N.A.T.O forces. It is obvious who makes these games and what markets they make them for and I can’t imagine the next edition topping the charts if Treyarch, Infinity Ward or whoever takes any of my examples as their starting point.

  At its heart this is just another example of the hegemony of the western entertainment industry. What makes it so interesting is the way it forces foreign gamers to take side against their own people and literally wipe them out to take part and succeed.  

  Maybe that is stretching things too far, however it is true that these games don’t just sell by the bucket load in the US and the West. Gaming is a worldwide phenomenon now and there is no doubt that Russians, Germans, and Vietnamese have spent the last few weeks gunning their own people down in pursuit of achievements and the secret of “the numbers.”

  I would love to hear how gamers whose nationalities or religions are normally represented as the enemy in videogames deal with having to take arms against their own. Maybe my fierce reaction was due to the scarcity of situations such as this for a British gamer and those used to these scenarios have become inured to the nationality of those they fight against, although if this is the case it must be quite hard to care about the narrative and feel motivated by a game’s storyline.   

  This is not an issue that needs to, or will be tackled any time soon. Our modern military shooters are still going to feature the US as the good guys and their historical foes as the baddies. I suppose if gamers find this arrangement distasteful there are plenty of aliens and other strange beings to kill when they feel the virtual bloodlust rising. However there are many new potential lucrative markets coming on line around the world. The vast number of non-gaming fingers in China must be interesting companies like Activision and if the worlds most populous country liberalises and wants new ways to spend its burgeoning wealth they will no doubt be looking for ways to repeat the success they have had in the west. Would this mean a new approach with games such as C.O.D? Will developers have to find new protagonists to tell their stories, sell different games to different markets or will Chinese gamers follow the rest of the world and surrender to the American cultural juggernaut?