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The latest version of the videogame Call of Duty is selling like hotcakes – in Russia. But its realistic battles put some there on edge and in this game, the Russians are the bad guys. Laura Lynch reports.

• BBC review of latest video games

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MARCO WERMAN: A video game is making news in Russia.  It’s called Call Of Duty – Modern Warfare 2.  The game is filled with grisly scenes of shootings and battles, but it’s not the violence that’s making waves in Russia.  It’s who’s perpetrating it in the video game.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports from Moscow.

LAURA LYNCH: At the Gorbushka shopping complex outside downtown Moscow there are countless stalls selling electronic CDs and DVDs and of course video games.  The big hit is Call Of Duty – Modern Warfare 2.

ALEXANDER: My first 250 rubles is one of the most latest games.

LAURA: Alexander is selling at least ten copies a day from his tiny shop, a best seller by his standards.  Worldwide the game took in more than 300 million dollars in its first 24 hours on sale last month.  Alexander knows about the trouble the game has caused in Russia.  But he doesn’t want to talk about it.  It’s a game, he says.  This is the controversial scene.  Men armed with high-powered rifles are about to enter an airport filled with Russian civilians.  The killing spree goes on and on.  But it’s the plot that’s at issue here.  The men behind the shootings are Russian nationalists pretending to be Americans.  They’re killing innocent Russians in an effort to foment war between Russia and the United States.  Mikhail Ivanov has seen the game and he doesn’t like the way it portrays Russians as evil murderers.

MIKHAIL IVANOV: [RUSSIAN]

TRANSLATOR: It’s not just stupid, it’s harsh.  Psychological war.  You probably know about the Russian project and it’s related to that.

LAURA: The Russian Project?  I don’t know about it.  But Ivanov tells me its part of a US conspiracy to undermine and destabilize Russia.  Ivanov’s views may be unusual, but online chat rooms are full of comments by Russian gamers who are offended by the scene.  It seems for some it’s more than just a game.

FEMALE: Are you killing many people here?

YURI LEVANDOFSKY: Yes.

LAURA: Yuri Levandofsky is staring at the computer screen using his mouse to fire away with what he says is a Kalashnikov.

YURI: One, two, three.

LAURA: Levandofsky is playing another scene from the game, one where Russian forces invade an American town.  He’s pretty good at this.  No surprise since he spends hours every day playing video games.  It’s his job.  He works here in the newsroom of Gameland magazine testing new products.  But Levandofsky can’t try out the gruesome airport scene.  That’s because the American game publisher Activision decided to delete it from the version available inside Russia.  Levandofsky’s boss is editor Konstantin Govorun.  Govorun says the game is top quality, one of the best he’s ever seen.  He’s been looking at the online response inside Russia too.  He says while some are offended, many more are upset by Activision’s self-censorship.

KONSTANTIN GOVORUN: Russian gamers they are anger because something was cut out.  It’s just like, I paid for my game and there is one level less.  It’s very bad.

LAURA: But there is something else about the game that Govorun thinks Americans should find troubling.  The player in that notorious airport scene is actually assuming the role of a CIA agent who has infiltrated the Russian terrorist cell.  The player has to decide whether to join the attack.  Govorun says that suggests there’s something wrong with American ethics.

GOVORUN: But the question is, why didn’t American agency contact the Russian government to tell them about the attack?  So actually Americans are you know somehow responsible for this terrorist attack.  And this makes Americans look very bad.   So it doesn’t only offend Russian citizens because they are killed here.  This is bad for you know everyone.  So it’s just like a bad joke.

LAURA: But the punch line here is that the game is still selling strong in the United States, in Russia, all over the world.  And that suggests few gamers seem to care about the issues Govorun raises.  Back at the electronics complex Mikhail Ivanov thinks he knows why this game is so popular.  He says it’s got something to do with the lasting effects of the Cold War.

MIKHAIL: [RUSSIAN]

TRANSLATOR: I think America and Russia are the two main countries and people always divide them, Russia or America.  And in all these games and so on they’re always competing.

LAURA: There might be one way for Russians to exact revenge.  Create their own blockbuster game featuring the Americans as the bad guys.  But the journalists at Gameland magazine say that’s not going to happen any time soon.  Russia they tell me, lost the battle for video game supremacy a long time ago.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch, Moscow.

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