Only YOU Can Rescue The 1% in "Rainbow Six: Patriots"

I have my well-documented "issues" with the mega-popularity of the First-Person Shooter genre, but for the most part it's centered around their part in the blanding-up of the medium and the devaluation of the single-player experience. But there's a darker side to the whole phenomenon - namely, that it's helped to make the gaming medium a favorite new roost for the more despicable elements of America's political "right-wing."



While the film and television industry (with some noteworthy exception) doggedly avoided serving up the kind of NRA-empowerment/vengeance-porn some audiences were clammoring for in the wake of 9/11; the games industry pretty-much jumped in and said "let's do this!" - Neither Obama or even Bush could ever blast enough craters in the Middle East to slake the voyeuristic bloodlust of Team Nugent; so "Modern Warfare" and the like have been filling the void... and reaping enthusiastic "attaboys!" from wingnut nation for doing so.

It's an unpleasant development from any angle, but thus far it's at least been one-sided: Sarah Palin's America may love Military-FPS's; but thus far Military-FPS's haven't been (openly) loving them back - even "Modern Warfare" hedges it's ideological bets by dropping a "renegade American general" bad guy into it's assinine Neo-Soviet/Muslim/Illuminati/S.P.E.C.T.R.E. overarching conspiracy storyline. But that may be changing in the newest Tom Clancy-branded shooter, "Rainbow Six: Patriots," which just ran a new trailer on the excerable VGAs and in doing so revealed that the NEW villains you'll be blasting away at this time are...

...Occupy Wall-Street.

Well, okay, not exactly - the baddies are supposedly a homegrown terrorist militia called "The Patriots" who're as miffed at the government as they are at corporate America (so... the Sons of Liberty without all the cool robots and ninjas), but it's telling that this is the flavor they wanted for the big debut. It's an effective spot, to be sure, but it also carries an unmistakable implication that they've looked at the current zeitgeist and determined that their audience is more inclined to see the activists as potential terrorists and Wall Street as a threatened victim in need of protection. Is their calculation correct? Does the "Rainbox Six" audience look at OWS and see the American Al-Qaeda?

I'll admit, it'd be less "creepy" without Clancy's name attached. If you only know his "brand" from the movies you may not be aware of it, but Tom Clancy's stuff took a turn for right-wing fringe wackjobbery awhile ago; so it's not exactly a "reach" that his name would be on a "let's blast the hippies!" game - though I don't think he actual contributes to the content of the series anymore...