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This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
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The conscious politics of this game consists in imagining the Cold War recreated in 2150. One side is the "Eurasian Dynasty," in which the players address each other as "comrade." The other side is the "United Civilized States." According to the video that introduces the game, Earth has become uninhabitable thanks to endless war.
The Eurasian Dynasty has the advantage of being led by a persynality cult. According to the game-makers, this cuts down on bureaucratic red tape, a point stressed by a bourgeois sociologist named Max Weber. The "Eurasian Dynasty" also does not know anything about "accounting."
The most interesting part of the whole game is the video at the beginning and the wording on the box: "The 21st century was supposed to herald the dawn of a new age. The wars, famines and suffering of the last 20 millennia were to become a distant, fading memory, as scientific advances brought global peace and prosperity.
"The anticipated global conflict broke out with a violence that shook the planet to its core."
"It is the 7th of December 2150--in a few hours our beloved planet Earth will no longer exist. Devastating wars between the Eurasian Dynasty and the United Civilized States have wreaked havoc and caused mortal wounds to our planet, glaciers melted, the sea rose to a threatening level . . ."
Despite the promise of politics on the box cover, there is no political model here. The only impact is in some of the language one reads on one's screen. Underneath a few space props and references to Mars lies a very old-fashioned tank, jeep and helicopter game. It's much too much like operations training for the military to be of any interest. It's also barely a strategy game at all like many other militarist games in which choosing robots or military units is about as much strategy as there is.
We see scenes of destruction in the videos, but after the war, tanks are still moving on the surface. It's as if to say, "look soldier: we don't care about the planet or life itself. Even after we ruin the planet, we will still carry on our missions."
Topware chose to make the main political events peripheral background assumed for the struggle of interest, which is keeping the military running. The effect is the worst sort of pornography where the intention is to make the political problem of war on the level of unavoidable natural disaster. That means the point of the game is to make Earth-destroying violence unremarkable, something to accept passively. The neutral skepticism about the two empires and even the implied criticism of the Lunar Corporation do not save the game but rather serve as ever so slight figleafs for imperialist militarism. After the atmosphere and land are no longer habitable, some people will still be playing in tanks. Sick.
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