In July, United States president Barack Obama visited Russia for the first time, meeting  Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in an effort to improve relations. In the world of video games, however, it appears Russians will continue to be the bad guys.

Despite efforts by the US and Russia to move forward in their relationship, old stereotypes are hard to kill.

Two long-awaited video games were released last week in Europe, "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" and "Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction" and they depict Russians as the enemy.

US gamemaker Electronic Arts’ Swedish-based DICE design team produced  "Battlefield: Bad Company 2"  and "Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction" was developed by French video game producer Ubisoft’s Canadian studio. 

Russian student Alexander Panarin says he loves to play video games and has done since he was a kid.  He says he is bothered, however, by the fact Russians are always the bad guys, even in modern video games and movies. Panarin says it is only a video game, but he thinks it is offensive for his fellow Russians. He thinks it would actually be great to win against the Americans.

Sweden-based game developer Gordon Van Dyke produces the video game, "Bad Company".  Van Dyke says the games are frequently inspired by the news. Events such as Russia’s invasion of Georgia, in August 2008, put Moscow back in the spotlight.

"I think it is just what is going on in the world. We pay a lot of attention to the news and follow world events and things like that. I think that the fact that the Russians went into Georgia really scared everybody again," he says.

A recent EU-backed independent report says Georgia’s attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia marked the beginning of the five-day war between Russia and Georgia, but that Russia retaliated with excessive force, and Moscow’s retaliation against Georgia went far beyond the limits of reasonable defence.

Since the 2008 brief war with Georgia, the Kremlin has recognised the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

The European Union and the US consider the areas part of Georgia and have repeatedly asked Russia to respect Georgia’s territorial integrity. Nicaragua and Venezuela are the only other countries to acknowledge the Russian-supported breakaway regions. 

Political analyst Masha Lipman, from the Moscow-based Carnegie Centre research organisation, says Russia’s actions against Georgia have revived old stereotypes associated with the former Soviet Union. Lipman says Russia’s actions encouraged a resurgence in  feelings that Russia is not only an incomprehensible, dim and definitely unfriendly country, but that Russia is a source of danger for US allies, if not for the US.

Irina Semyonova is business development director for Akella, one of the leading producers of personal computer games and multimedia products on the Russian market. She says it is not fair that Russians are often typecast as the bad guys.

Semyonova says she finds it annoying because attacks from the American side happen much more often. She says the Russian gaming industry has some similar games, but there are few examples and they are more of an exception.

Political analyst Lipman says it is no surprise Russians continue to be cast as the "baddies" and she says it will most likely take some time for the decades-old stereotypes to change. Lipman says relations between Russia and the US have not been developing too smoothly. And, for the past decade, they have gotten worse. So old stereotypes have popped up again. Lipman says that circumstances following the collapse of the Soviet Union – an increase in crime, wild capitalism and murders – were all food to the Hollywood factory. 


This article originally appeared on VOANews.com