paladin181: If you honestly think all those Middle Eastern hunting simulators weren't blatant propaganda, I really don't know what to say.
I don't think they were. At the time they were made, it hadn't been THAT long ago that video games were being demonized as violent murder simulators teaching kids to shoot up schools. Publishers liked to court controversy for attention, but there was a huge market for "safe" murder sims in which it was socially acceptable to shoot at a particular enemy. And, well... 9/11 kind of painted a huge target on the back of the middle east. Democrat, Republican... pretty much everyone except Ron Paul was chomping at the bit to get in on the neocon bandwagon and start bombing brown people for the black gold they were sitting on, or to secure one of those sweet military contracts for their constituents. They didn't really start to change their tune and call bullshit until the next election cycle was gearing up.
Before that, you had an absolute glut of military shooters in which you were fighting either fictional space aliens or Nazis. Because aliens don't exist and Nazis were a socially acceptable target to shoot at. It was getting worn out, and people were cracking jokes about the trend lasting longer than the actual war. The market was primed for a change of target, and middle eastern based terrorism was topical. Besides, most of those games didnt' exactly paint the US or military service in the best of light. If you just look at the surface, they seem pretty right-wing, but most of the plots revolved around the US military and all of their bravado being stupidly goaded into conflicts and getting played by Russian splinter cells, or S. American dictators, or greedy PMCs, or the Military Industrial Complex/The Patriots. They were quite often portrayed as puppets siging up to serve their country, and instead being betrayed by rich elites into doing their dirty work. Again, topical. It could well be argued that many popular titles were subversive propaganda to undermine faith in the military by pulling a bait & switch. Not all of them were as on the nose as Spec Ops: The Line. How many of them actually portrayed the US presence in the middle east as being a postitive influence in the region? As the US being the unambiguous good guys spreading peace and democracy through repeated carpet bombing?