Yahoo News: Video game raises Venezuela lawmakers’ ire
A U.S. company’s video game simulating an invasion of Venezuela is supposed to hit the shelves next year, but it’s already raising the ire of lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez.
Chavez supporters in Venezuela’s National Assembly suspect the makers of “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames” are doing Washington’s bidding by drumming up support among Americans for an eventual move to overthrow Chavez.
Pandemic describes “Mercenaries 2” as “an explosive open-world action game” in which “a power-hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela’s oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone.” The company says players take on the role of well-armed mercenaries.
Chris Norris, a publicist for Pandemic in Los Angeles, said the game wasn’t intended to make a political statement about Chavez, though designers “always want to have a rip from the headlines.”
It’s about time someone did something about that evil dictator Chavez and I’m glad to see that some enterprising company have taken it upon themselves to brainwash the next generation into taking action.
Actually I suspect that the genesis of the game is not the studio directly doing the bidding of the US Government but merely that they have fallen prey to the propoganda machine of the Bush administration. They’ve ‘ripped from the headlines’ as Chris Norris puts it the constructed image of Chavez as a power-hungry tyrant rather than the democratically elected leader he is who is returning the illegally sold off oil contracts to the people of Venezuela.
