Why i don`t support the CA politics of the rus-cancellation

[BagaturKhan]

Hello all, Exilian!
I think, many of you know me a lot of years.
My real name is Alex.

I am half-russian, half-ukrainian, I have been a member of the Union of Russian Writers since 2021, a participant in speeches (at one time) at the Central House of Writers, an active member of many international online communities, the grandson of a well-known scientist in Europe. I have a large number of good friends in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, European countries, America, the CIS and even in Asia. And you know, I want to speak on a very hot topic.

I already spoke about it in several platforms and had support. Now i want to say about it to You all.



We know what happened very recently. And what happened is incomprehensible to the mind. As a friend of mine said, what happened is reminiscent of some kind of drug addicted crazy movie, which shows absolutely unrealistic events. But now it is our reality. Politics is not welcome here and in many other forums, so I will keep silence about the details.
But i still need to talk. And talk seriously.

Let's start with the Creative Assembly example. This is a very famous British company that gave us such wonderful games as Rome Total War or Medieval II or the latest masterpieces like Rome2, Attila, Warhammer TW. Personally, I have been playing games from this company for a long time and find them very interesting. It took enough of my time. But most importantly - instilled knowledge. This is especially true for historical projects of CA.

But why did the CA suddenly decide to take and abolish the Russian language? Why do other communities do the same? As if the Russian language is to blame. Certainly, the problem seems insignificant.... Only it seems. But in fact, it is very important. After all, life is built from the little things.
The Russian language is subjected to some strange discrimination. Like, if you are Russian and speak Russian, then you are a nazi, an extremist, a rapist, and so on and etc. But is the Russian people really a single organism with a common ideology? Is the Russian language a product of the same ideology, an artificially grown form of life that threatens all living things?

For a moment: Russian is spoken by a huge number of people around the globe. Not only in Russia itself! It is one of the important languages of such countries as Ukraine, Belarus, CIS countries, Moldova, and eventually Eastern Europe (Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, etc.). Plus, recently there has been a huge number of emigrants and oppositionists who came from Russia to Europe, the USA and the countries of America. Some have gone to Asia.
And it turns out that they are also somehow to blame? Shouldn't they also speak their native language, watch films in Russian and play in Russian? Why??


Well, what about the fact that the people and the government are two different things?
Is the whole nation to blame for what is happening? And if the people want changes, but they are not given deliberately? If the people are trying, but can not change anything. And what about the language? Is language a weapon? Is it a hostile element?
Russian is just a language. A language spoken by millions of people around the globe. Millions of good people.

But CA doesn't seem to understand this. I don't know what made them change their strategy. And why other igrodely also refuse the Russian language. For what? Do they really think that this will somehow lead to reconciliation? Do they really think that this is some kind of positive factor?
Yes, there is no positive factor here. This whole strategy leads to a split and to an even greater increase in the conflict, to its growth, and in the end to an occasion .... An occasion that a certain group of people will undoubtedly use to invent something once again.

CA policy is splitting the community. It leads to the fact that many people (with different ideologies, with different ways of thinking!), who want to play in Russian, are actually left with nothing. And what a mean thing to do with Total War Warhammer III! How wrong it was!

Thank God, there were figures of the international community Imperial (allied to TWC and Exilian), who quickly corrected the situation. Honor and praise to the brave guys-translators who united with each other for the sake of one goal. People, by the way, of different nationalities. Haktar, my friend, was the initiator of it.

I can show you their work
https://www.moddb.com/mods/total-war-warhammer-iii-russian-localisation
and the main thread in Moddb

People took a lot of time for doing that, and finished their work.



I confess that I tried to talk on this subject with representatives of the CA, but they did not listen, did not even deign to answer. Although they answered my other questions (I wrote to them more than once, asked questions, wished them success).

Why didn't they solve this issue? They could at least answer that they consider it necessary to continue their policy towards the Russian language. But they didn't answer at all. When a person does not respond to messages, it usually means one thing - he has nothing to answer .... There are no adequate words, thoughts for this. Inside, after all, he understands that he was deeply mistaken. But he cannot admit guilt.

Many people speak Russian. And the language and culture are absolutely irrelevant here.
Finally, let's take a neat example of Cambodia. When Pol Pot staged a hellish massacre in his native country and attacked Vietnam, did someone cancel the Cambodian lang? But what about those 3 million killed, and those who opposed Pol Pot? But everyone knew about them.

This or that country has always experienced different eras. There were light and beautiful, but there were - gloomy and heavy. That's life! This is the history of human civilization!
But you can't rake everyone in one haystack. It is impossible to equate everyone to one person or to a group of persons.
And you can't blame languages, because languages are not to blame for anything.
Whoever needs it will understand. Whoever does not understand does not need to understand, therefore, he has not matured.
But I would like people of the Western community to understand this.
One can recall the interview of the British Foreign Secretary, who clearly said that his country has no strife with Russian culture. The same goes for language. But didn't the CA really think about it?

And what would King Charles himself say to this, God bless his reign for many years?! What would the greatest Queen Elizabeth, who respected the cultures and languages of other countries, say to this? And what would Sir Winston Churchill himself say?

My grandfather was the big scientist and respected person in Europe. He respected the european leaders and the Royal Family of Windsors. He had medals and rewards for his work with international community, he made a lot in geophysical science. And he would never support the cancellation of culture because of regime.

Regimes, languages and nations are absolutely different concepts.
We can`t cancel the culture and language because of some dictator groups. We can`t cancel the nation because of government politics.

I hope that the СA and other Western industries will come to their senses and stop "cancelling" the Russian language and culture.
After all, these two factors are not to blame for anything. They are not responsible for what happens. They are not responsible for all this!

And to remove the Russian language from everywhere is wrong, if only because it will lead to an even greater split. Does our planet need a split now, an even more terrible split in the world community? I guess everyone knows the answer.
We must do good for our planet. For humanity. Especially now.
Any split only hurts our world.

Peace and Love, friends. Only these 2 words.

[dubsartur]

Hi BagaturKhan, I do not know what to say.  In February 2022 when it seemed that Russian forces might overrun Ukraine, I think that people were reaching for anything possible to hurt the Russian economy and war machine.  Since then I think most people outside RU and UA are confused because they are so detached from the things which produce military and industrial power and the ways sanctions are evaded or written to be evaded.  Most people don't know how to figure out which German firms are quietly providing software support for Russian arms factories or which Chinese companies are selling drone parts to someone who sells them to Russia but they know how to yell at a video games company on social media.  Its not like 1940 when everyone knew people who had worked on a factory or a farm and people who had been in the army or the navy.

[Jubal]

I guess my personal view is that the situation is complex and I have sympathies in multiple directions. I agree in so far as I think there needs to be made a space for a better Russia to emerge, and ultimately yes that will be Russian speaking. It doesn't make sense to lay the blame for Russia at the feet of a Navalny or Vladimir Kara-Murza or Nadya Tolokonnikova, etc.

That said, I think some Russians need to realise that it's not as simple as a case of an evil government and a totally blameless culture: of course Putin is the immediate problem, but jow Russians see their culture compared to others is not totally irrelevant here. I was in the Caucasus recently and the impact there is very real: some Russians rightly needed to flee Putin, but many even "liberal" Russians moved to Tbilisi and Yerevan during the war and still have a very colonial, superiority driven attitude. There's great resentment there now because wealthy Russians come, inflation shoots up for locals, and even many of the "anti Putin" ones still have this mindset where they treat Armenian and Georgian locals as stupid or inferior, mock them, and get angry if they're not given deference in language. I literally had a middle aged Russian woman start talking really angrily to me because she thought I ought to know how to speak Russian. And this was in Georgia! And it wasn't at all the only interaction I had or saw with that tone with Russians there. In these cases language can become a contest: it shapes who can converse, who can see the world in particular ways. So I think there are some deeply built problems with many Russians' expectations about how Russian culture and language relate to their neighbours, and those need to change and many ordinary Russians (not everyone of course, but it's a genuinely widespread problem not just in the Kremlin) need to get better at seeing surrounding places as equal free peoples.

I don't think this problem is unique to Russia, other countries including my birth country and my country of residence have some issues with not realising how their culture has been damaged by the colonial past, but I think Russia and China have tended to do less cultural introspection on this issue. So I guess I'd say I think it's more complex and might depend exactly how some strategies are pursued, but I think the place we need to aim for is not just Russia being free of Putin but also Russian language and culture being free of the colonial mindset. That's a really complex and in a sense bigger problem even than Putin, but it's an important one.

What does all that mean for things like game translations? I don't know. I agree I don't think not releasing a Russian language game version is necessarily useful, though in fairness if you can't or won't sell the game in Russia anyway (and I tend to support western businesses not selling things inside Russia during the war) then it may just make economic sense to de-prioritise Russian, not as a cancellation so much as an opportunity cost. I'd like to see far more games made available in other regional languages too, like Georgian, Ukrainian, Armenian, etc - and I think this would be a better strategy to show support, to increase work on translation and provide more work for Ukrainians and Caucasus countries who much more need the economic support now. But of course that's a more expensive option so less likely to be pursued by corporations.

[BagaturKhan]

I really must to say a big Thanks to Jubal and Exilian for support in this topic, and for permission for me to post this thread.
Because this thread is really must live. Unfortunately, the situation with lang and culture is still bad, i noticed that even in TW fans communities. And i want to say people, that to be russian is not means - to be a killer.
I hope, in future, the situation will change, and russian people again will live in peace with Europe and USA. Its my dream. To see the mankind united and peaceful without cruel wars and enmity.
And yes, again i must say - regimes are not the parts of culture, language and country. Regime is different organism, as i think.

I literally had a middle aged Russian woman start talking really angrily to me because she thought I ought to know how to speak Russian. And this was in Georgia

Yeah, some people are really agressive. Agree. But not all. There are a lot of european russians in the world.
And about language of games - agree with you 100%. Its really not good thing.

[Pentagathus]

I'm not sure how denying an official Russian translation of a PC game affects the war in any way. And if a government being armadilloty is the reason for not supporting their language then I'm not sure why CA is so happy to cater to the Chinese market.

[Jubal]

Unfortunately, the situation with lang and culture is still bad, i noticed that even in TW fans communities. And i want to say people, that to be russian is not means - to be a killer.

I think the sad truth is that for countries where their language has become a major feature of imperial rule there's going to be a long time where people traumatised by that rule have fair reason to have those issues. And I think the only way you get around that is slowly, and with a lot of acceptance that people won't always trust you and it will take time to prove that you can be and do something better. Britain still struggles badly with this post-Imperial hangover and people mistrusting English as a colonial language, and that's with decades of it being a relatively modern country with reasonably free speech, international aid programmes, etc. So I think part of it is you sometimes have to accept that while it's not always your fault personally, some people are just scarred from these problems and I can see why some Ukrainians might not be interested right now in differentiating between better and worse Russians. Though I think western companies jumping on that is much less clear cut and understandable than people in formerly Russian-colonised countries.

The Russian Federation meanwhile is still literally kidnapping Ukrainian kids and forcing them to learn Russian. Regimes and governments are not the same as culture and language, but people like Putin do try to use language and culture as tools, and this makes it all the more important to liberate those symbols from them and contest their ownership of them at every opportunity. This is one reason why I think it's so particularly important to have vocal supporters of the Russian opposition such as yourself, and I wish there were more Russians taking your position.

And if a government being armadilloty is the reason for not supporting their language then I'm not sure why CA is so happy to cater to the Chinese market.

This is a pretty fair point re corporate opportunism/inconsistency with some of these things.