South Korea Joins The Club That Uses Video Game Footage To Proclaim Themselves Awesome At War
from the fake-it-til-you-make-it dept
This seems to be something of a regular occurrence now. In the recent past, several foreign countries have celebrated how stunningly real video game graphics have become by using them to pretend they are really great at war. The Egyptians did it to pretend that Russia was fighting ISIS, the Iranians did it to pretend that their forces could shoot people from a really long way away, and the North Koreans did it to pretend that they could deliver a nuclear ICBM to our soil.
Well, perhaps there is some synergy to be found over Korea's DMZ, because the South Koreans recently released footage detailing how super-awesome their new fighter jet program is, and that footage included several clips from both Battlefield 3 and Ace Combat.
The South Korean military has a new program to co-develop fighter planes. To show off the project, a web video was created with tax payers’ money. Oh, and unauthorized video game footage.
The Korea Times (via tipster Sang) report that the country’s Ministry of National Defense released the ten minute clip, which features a few seconds of Battlefield 3 and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon to show off the aircraft’s performance.
Here is a sample of a frame from the video and from the game footage it had been taken from, clearly showing that the efforts to disguise the unauthorized usage pretty much amounted to mirror-flipping the image and overlaying a few graphical filters.
It's one thing when a country with a shamble pile of an economy and an overinflated sense of its own power like North Korea does this sort of thing. We've come to expect it, on some level. But there is something really silly when a country with a real economy that is the ally of the United States sinks to the depth of playing make-believe to thump its chest. It's the kind of thing that calls into question the might and capability of the rest of the fighting force of South Korea, which is a terrible signal to send to its northern neighbor.
To induce even more head-shaking, it seems that everyone is blaming each other for all of this.
The military acknowledged that the footage wasn’t authorized and said it will cease using the clip. It also blamed the company that produced the video, and that company is, in turn, blaming the Agency for Defense Development and Korea Aerospace Industries, alleging that they had a say over everything.
One would hope that the game publishers in question won't stoop to the level of trying for a copyright claim over all of this. Instead, they ought to beam proudly that their game footage was deemed realistic enough to attempt to pass off as real-life warring. South Korea, meanwhile, will need to wipe that egg off of its face.
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Filed Under: military, propaganda, south korea, video games
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It's only going to get worse with that liar Trump in charge. We Europeans are doing a lot of smiling, believe me.
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Don't forget Pong, used to show immigrants being turned back at the border.
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if only there had been some sort of document strengthening copyright protections.
Now we will never know :(
/s
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Re: if only there had been some sort of document strengthening copyright protections.
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Re: Re: if only there had been some sort of document strengthening copyright protections.
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Angle of descent
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Time To Nuke Kim-Jong Il
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One up them
How about Eve Valkyrie or maybe just go straight to Star Wars and threaten to destroy the whole solar system.
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Reading into the story..
The military REQUESTED it be made and supplied the script..
The Agency MADE the script..
The Military OK'd the advert..
Funny? as in the MILITARY didnt SUPPLY VIDEO?? just a SCRIPT??
Next time, HIRE DISNEY..
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Actually a good thing
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Army and military personnel in general do seem to have a thing for power trips and making other hapless people shoulder the responsibility for their fuck-ups.
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I'm waiting with eager anticipation .... will Kim share with Donny the Unicorn Lair? Will Kim loan out a unicorn for one of our zoos? Living in these times is so awesome, it's almost unbelievable.
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Can't have thought they would fool everyone
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/kr/205_220911.html
The game footage starts I think around 6:50. It's so obviously from a video game (maybe only if you've played video games though), and the aircraft carrier one is especially blatant. There's supposed to be a camera in the nose of a missile live streaming HD video of the target and the missile ahead? Then when the carrier explodes (how powerful were those little missiles anyway?) the view shifts to some other vantage point (but otherwise looks exactly the same, as though it's the same type of camera). The explosion doesn't look real at all, and are they really trying to claim the South Korean military blew up an aircraft carrier?
Given just how very dumb all that is, I don't think they were really trying to pass this off as actual combat footage. It's supposed to be a simulation, and they just didn't mention they lifted it from a video game.
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