'Call of Duty' vs 'Call of Geo-politics': controversy hits gaming franchise

Kuwait has banned the release of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” which features Saddam Hussein and is set in part in the 1990s Gulf War.

Kuwait has not publicly acknowledged banning the game, a tentpole product for the Microsoft-owned developer Activision, which is set to be released worldwide on Friday.

But Activision acknowledged in a statement that the game “has not been approved for release in Kuwait." it did not elaborate.

The video game, a first-person shooter, follows CIA operatives fighting at times in the United States and also in the Middle East. Game-play trailers for the game show burning oilfields, a painful reminder for Kuwaitis.

There also are images of Saddam and Iraq's old three-star flag in the footage released by developers ahead of the game's launch.

The game's multiplayer section, a popular feature of the series, includes what appears to be a desert shootout in Kuwait called Scud, probably named after the missiles Saddam's forces fired during the war. Another is called Babylon, after the ancient city in Iraq.

This is not the first time the popular gaming franchise has landed in a controversy for the depiction of places and people in the game, which has faced criticism for the portrayal of Asian and Middle Eastern people as villains.

Massacre at a Russian airport

“Call of Duty," which hit the market in 2003 as a first-person shooter game set in World War II, has expanded into an empire worth billions of dollars now owned by Microsoft.

But it also has been controversial as its gameplay entered the realm of geopolitics. China and Russia both banned chapters in the franchise.

"No Russian" is a mission in the 2009 video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The mission in the game became controversial as it allowed players to take part in a terrorist attack at a Russian airport, killing civilians.

Critiques called the storyline "nonsensical" and mocked the option to skip the level. Due to the level's graphic violence, the level was censored in international versions of the game, including its complete removal from the Russian edition.

Castro had the last laugh

Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, and the target of an assassination attempt by the US, was part of 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The mission, titled “Operation 40”, shows American operatives Mason, Woods, and Bowman attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro. Mason successfully kills him but later reveals that they killed a body double instead.

Cuba called the version of the game a “perverse” piece of American propaganda and jabbed at Washington for its numerous failures to assassinate Castro.

The China protest

In 2020, the Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War trailer featured real-life historical documentary footage, including that of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The official two-minute teaser trailer for the highly-anticipated worldwide release of Activision was banned in China as Beijing has maintained a tight vigil on the historicity and memorialisation of the 1989 protests.

Muslim anger

In 2021, the gaming franchise faced a strong backlash in Muslim countries after it's latest editon was accused of disrespecting the Islamic faith.

Call of Duty: Vanguard's Zombies had a few scenes in which pages from what appears to be the Quran, the holiest book of Islam, were seen scattered on the floor.

This led to an uproar on social media and calls for a boycott of the game. The gaming franchise later apologised.