Cuban Video Game Recreates Revolutionary History 199
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Guardian reports that Cuban programmers have unveiled a new 3D video game that puts a revolutionary twist on gaming, letting players recreate decisive clashes from the 1959 uprising in which many of their grandparents fought. 'The player identifies with the history of Cuba,' says Haylin Corujo, head of video game studies for Cuba's Youth Computing Club and leader of the team of developers who created Gesta Final – roughly translated as 'Final Heroic Deed'. 'You can be a participant in the battles that were fought in the war from '56 to '59.' The game begins with the user joining the 82 rebels who in 1956 sailed to Cuba from Mexico aboard the Granma. Players then fight their way through swamps shoulder-to-shoulder with bearded guerrillas clad in the olive green of Fidel Castro and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara to topple 1950s Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The game lets you pick from three player profiles, one in an olive hat similar to the one Fidel Castro was known for, another wearing a Guevara-style beret and the last with the kind of helmet worn by the ill-fated Camilo Cienfuegos in many revolution-era photographs. Rene Vargas, a 29-year-old gamer who tried his hand at 'Gesta Final' when it was presented at a technology fair in Havana last week, says the graphics were surprisingly sophisticated. 'Bearing in mind the level of technical support there is in Cuba, it looks pretty good,' says Vargas. There are about 783,000 computers in this country of some 11 million inhabitants, according to government statistics from 2011. Private ownership of computers is low, but many Cubans access them at work, school or cyber cafes. 'We developed (it) keeping in mind the purchasing power and reality of Cubans,' says Corujo. 'It doesn't require incredible technological features.'"
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Celebrating Mass Murderers (Score:1, Informative)
Nope, with open US hostility towards the Cuban revolution he didn't have a choice on the matter: it was fall to the soviet sphere of influence or cease to exist, as simple as that. And technically Cuba has a democratic system where every single official is elected by the general population in free elections. The problem is that after the local level, the representatives are the one postulating the candidates to the next level and the people can only confirm or reject the candidates, what in practice means that all the candidates get elected.
Also Fidel didn't "passed power" to family members, Raul was vice-president when Fidel got ill and temporarily assumed the presidency of the country, then got elected twice with more than 90% of the votes. And face it, he was the right man for the position. I seriously doubt any of the other candidates would have the guts an political prowess to reform the worst of the Fidel era rules and he promised more radical changes in his second and last term. As for the opposition, better not even start on it. Is pathetically small and powerless and is mostly made of entertainers whose target audience is not their fellow Cuban citizens but the outside world (aka Yoani Sanchez) or discredited old farts for whom dissidence is a lucrative job, but either way they lack any cohesion or realistic plan to take Cuba anywhere. For them is always
1. Democracy
2. ???
3. Profit!
Re:BS on Cuba (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Killers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they are not as developed as the US, but that's true for most countries. Cuba has a relatively high HDI [wikipedia.org], according to the UN, not the Cuban government.
Che Guevara was a virulent racist. (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sure his fanboys will make excuses, but here are the words of Che Guevara:
"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese."
"The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Informative)
As the son of exiles and someone who knows many families who lost loved ones to the lack of due process, please stop your ignorant rants and stop reading 'Internet Facts' written by the same people that did the atrocities which are all too well known to those that actually lived through it. You are insulting the memory of many people who actually wanted a truly free and democratic Cuba, and were not afraid to speak out against what they knew even back then was just an exchange from one bad dictatorship to another. The medicine is not better; nor is the education and overall quality of life, but you wouldn't know that unless you actually knew people from there or gone to visit Cuba yourself, and I'm not talking about the tourist areas.
I hope this is an early April Fools joke, even if it is a bad one.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
Cuba definitely does have better healthcare than the US, where 50 million people have none.
For instance, Cuba has two and a half more doctors per capita than the US [worldbank.org]
Oh, and here's another datapoint: the table shows literacy levels in Cuba being higher than the USA. [wikipedia.org]
Just what we need, more historical revisionism (Score:4, Informative)
Oh boy, I sure hope this game lets you blind fold and shoot people that didnt go along with the glorious Cuban revolution!
http://www.therealcuba.com/page5.htm [therealcuba.com]
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
It always amazes me that so many people are willing to credulousness accept "statistics" like that from total propaganda.
All available evidence suggests that your average Cuban is literate, doesn't lose children in infancy, and has access to medical care that international organizations routinely rate as highly effective and remarkably low-cost.
For what it's worth, my mother took several trips to the more rural areas of Cuba in the early 1990's, during the worst of the post-Soviet depression they went through, and the people she met were universally literate, fairly healthy, and had enough to eat. They felt safe enough from the government that they could crack subtle jokes at Fidel Castro's expense in private homes (and yes, they had decently confortable private homes). The core of their health care system was the village doctor who lived just down the block and not only cared for everyone who lived there but also promoted public health and sanitation. The Americans on the trip were not followed around by government minders or anything like that. As part of the same program, several Cubans came to the US, and several other Americans made different trips to Cuba over a decade.
The general impression I get: Florida is a paradise compared to Cuba. Cuba is a paradise compared to Haiti, Hondurus, and many other Latin American countries. GDP per capita tells a pretty clear story: US - $48,000 Cuba - $9,900 Haiti - $1,200 Hondurus - $4,400 (all numbers from CIA estimates)
The other part of the story: The US government and the Cuban exiles in Miami have been demonizing Castro's government for over 50 years, so it's hardly surprising that most Americans have a very warped idea of what Cuba is actually like.