neo-stalinist
Latest
Russians and Neo-Stalinists chew apart The Sun at Night's Soviet past
On November 3, 1957, under leader Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR launched Sputnik 2 into Earth's orbit with Laika the dog on board. Laika was not expected to survive the mission and she died of overheating hours after takeoff. This is where Minicore Studios begins The Sun at Night – by imagining a scenario where Laika doesn't die. Instead, she returns to Earth with robotic enhancements – including speech – and joins the fight against Soviet forces, which have conquered the world using a mysterious energy source. Some people don't like this premise. They're not upset about seeing an animal harmed in a digital world, they don't mind that the true story behind the game is kind of upsetting, and they're fine with the suspension of disbelief required to play as a talking robotic animal who crash-lands on Earth. They don't like how Soviets are portrayed in The Sun at Night – and they want Minicore to know. Of all the comments that Minicore receives on The Sun at Night's websites and email, 5 - 8 percent are from upset Russian nationals, non-Russian Communists or Neo-Stalinists who believe the game paints Soviets in an unjust light, studio founder John Warren tells me. "[They've] decided, after being given very little information about the game's premise, that it's a very pro-USA, anti-communism kind of narrative – which it really isn't," Warren says. "I mean, the Western countries like Britain and the US don't even really factor into the narrative at all. The game itself isn't really an indictment of any one political ideology or anything like that. At the end of the day, it's still a sci-fi platformer about a robot space dog."
