Last week, Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg got a review article from wargamer.com. In the article, that can be found here, the author claims that “the story directly seeks to support Halder’s myth of the 'Clean Wehrmacht'”, and “As someone who watches the news and sees political upheaval in almost every Western democracy, it is troubling to see a game continue to feed reactionary rhetoric.”
The players’ community has brought this review to our community hub and asked for our opinion. Our COO and person in charge of narrative supervision - Alexandr - has already shared some thoughts with the community on our forums, which can be found here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1200330/discussions/0/2944746708984876965/ 👈
Usually, we would not react to an article, as we think every reviewer has the right to express their opinion of the game freely. However, in this case, we feel that our company’s reputation is at stake, so we have to make a statement on Starni Games behalf:
Recently, Starni Games were accused of “supporting Halder’s myth of the 'Clean Wehrmacht”, and “feeding reactionary rhetoric”, by the wargamer.com review written by Jack Trumbull. Basically, it stops short of calling us Nazis outright. For example, “The voice acting [...] in SM:B, but I could say that it is rather generous to fascism, through lines such as “The trains are running on time” and “We will save the world from chaos” coming from your Wehrmacht units as they seek to expand the German Reich.”
In that regard, we have the following comments:
“First, we firmly stand by Freedom of Speech, so we are okay with the article in any form, but we feel obliged to express our own view.
Second, even though accusations seem wild to us, we feel obliged to ascertain that our company does not support the Nazi or any other “reactionary” ideology. We usually avoid the discussion of our political views, but we can assure you they are far from the “right-wing”.
Third, we have already explained our take on the “supporting Halder’s myth of the 'Clean Wehrmacht” part on our forums, but here we will provide a quick summary. We do not argue with the existence of the 'Clean Wehrmacht’ myth, it exists. However, the article fails to provide enough evidence of our game supporting that myth. Moreover, we think that our game shows enough of the Germany WW2 war crimes, and as a Commander in Chief of Army, Halder certainly shares responsibility for the political leadership’s decisions. That much was obvious to us, so we thought that it would be apparent to everyone.
Fourth, as we said before on numerous occasions, including the ban of our game in Russia, we stand by the ideas of liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of creation. The wargamer is free to publish whatever they want, but they accuse us of supporting right/reactionary, etc views which would have been contrary to our company’s values and undermine our reputation.
Fifth, we think that:
- After the US campaign, we could be called “the agents of Uncle Sam”
- After the Japanese campaign, we could be called “faithful servants of the Emperor”
- After the German campaign, we could be called “nazi supporters”
- After the USSR campaign, we could be called “soviet revisionists”
- After the Fight for Freedom release, we could be called “ambassadors of NATO spreading the taint of liberal ideas”
For Gods’ sake, people, we are just creating historical wargames. Of course, everything can be portrayed as if we are in favor of some ideology, but we only try to show every side of the conflict’s sentiment, logic, and convictions, without supporting them, or claiming that “it is the only true path”. We leave all the conclusions to the players.
Sixth, we will keep doing our job of creating games we believe in, disregarding any and all attempts to bring censorship of any kind into our products unless it is a legal request”
Seventh, we have no ill feelings towards Wargamer, we just want to make sure the readers get to see both sides’ arguments, and that the information is not presented in a one-sided manner. We do not question the review of the game or its mechanics, as you can see we target only very specific accusations that affect our company’s name and reputation.
With best regards
Starni Games team