Inside WORLD : Mélenchon and the Left Party have they right to be lashing out at Assassin's Creed Un

This is the new workhorse of Mélenchon. Guest on France Info, the former candidate of the Left Front in the presidential attacked, Friday, Nov. 14, at video game Assassin's Creed Unity. Published by Ubisoft, it immerses the player in the Paris of the French Revolution. "It is propaganda against the people. The people is barbaric, bloodthirsty savages, plague Mélenchon. It denigrates to denigrate what unites us, the French. It is a replay history for losers and to discredit the Republic one and indivisible. "

The co-founder of the Left Party actually gets to his account a controversy launched by Alexis Corbiere, national secretary of the party and co-author of Robespierre, come back! (Ed. Bruno Leprince, 2012). In a blog post posted Thursday, November 13, the day of the game's release, it point by point critique a trailer of Assassin's Creed, which the people of Paris "a brutal and bloody cohort" and qualifies Maximilien Robespierre of "far more dangerous than any king."

Mélenchon and the Left Party have they right to be lashing out at Assassin's Creed Unity? Elements of response.

Yes, the video game is a cultural product as the other

Before tackling Assassin's Creed, the two politicians are careful to say they have nothing against video games as such, instead. "I take seriously video games. (...) This is as was the comic, once despised, now become an art form of art," says Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Freeze on images, Alexis Corbiere also says he criticizes because Assassin's Creed video game is "a cultural object of great importance, which affects many people." "Why did not we would question it too?" he says. A position noted by the specialized site Jeuxvideo.com that welcomes "a welcome speech." "It is rather new, and very significant, since the game is treated like any other cultural product," notes the site.

Contacted by FranceTV information, the sociologist Laurent Trémel, Tony Fortin author of the book Mythology video games (ed. Blue Rider, 2009), welcomes the controversy. "I waited for several years that political parties are involved in a critical way in the debate on the content of video games. They are perfect in their roles, there is an educational issue here," he says, lamenting that discussions on these games revolve solely around violence.

No, he did not play the game

Critics of Mélenchon and Alexis Corbiere however weakened by the fact that they have not touched a controller before criticizing the play. "I practice a lot of things, but not that one," assumes the first. The object at the origin of their anger is a trailer Ubisoft commissioned by Tony Moore and Rob Zombie. It contains no image of the game. It's actually a cartoon that revisits the game through the eyes of two authors who specialize in horror movies or comics zombies.

No, this is not a history lesson

The French Revolution was not actually at the heart of the game, even if the hero crosses historical figures like Robespierre or Napoleon Bonaparte. "We do not want to put the story forward as much as in other episodes. The Revolution is just a backdrop," said one of the producers of the game Monde.fr. "If we briefly attend to the States General or even the taking of the Bastille, a rather distant spectator of these events is still," says the specialist website Gamekult in his criticism of the game. Like the other episodes of the series, Assassin's Creed is primarily a fight between fictional brotherhood of Assassins and Templars.

"This is a casual game, not a history lesson," sums up the producer Monde.fr. And it is not its role. "What Mélenchon as Alexis Corbiere, think or pretend to think is part of a kind of magical thinking. It would be a complete fiction educational mission of transmission of memory," laments our blogger Jean-Christophe Piot its historical blog already seen.

Yes, all players do not know the difference between fiction and historical reality

In his blog post, Alexis Corbiere say why, he said, the game is a problem. "A video game can also be a vector for the transmission of ideas and cultural values, he wrote on his blog. In youth, he can probably even be more effective than all history courses offered by the National Education ".

Contacted by FranceTV info, Ubisoft scans criticism. "We accept the comments of fans wherever they come from, ironically the French company. Assassin's Creed Unity is a large public entertainment, the players know how to share things to enjoy this historical fiction." The editor slips in passing that the game's release is accompanied by a special edition of Historia magazine devoted to the French Revolution.

For the sociologist Laurent Trémel, "we can not be satisfied with this answer." "This is not true for all players, he said. The fact that the players do or do not share things when they are confronted with historical content depends on their age, their education or their social level. " Of teachers and children will not have the same reaction as a modest family.

Yes, the video game is not neutral

The sociologist, who says he had not played in this episode of Assassin's Creed, agrees that the game can convey values or ideology. In this series, "the fact is justified by a group of individuals, nice assassins, kill bad guys. (...) It assumes the right to eliminate. (...) The valuation of forms assassinations justified does not seem consistent with Republican values of justice, "Judge said.

This question does not arise only in Assassin's Creed. Laurent Trémel worked on games like Civilization or Age of Empires. He says, "the distorted valuation of Civilization North European descent" in the three parts of the first game, and the need "to eliminate any civilian unit of the opposing civilization to win" in the second. "It presents a vision of the war issue," he says.

Another example cited by Laurent Trémel, Age of Empires III. In the first version of the game, which takes place at the time of the colonization of North America, Indian tribes were only supplementary European armies that the player could control. Microsoft had finally corrected this by offering expansion, The WarChiefs, where you could also embody the Indians. "The video game producers have the right to make uchronies [fictional reconstruction of history], but it is that historians criticize the content," he says.