Alexei Navalny’s interview with Kanobu in 2013

kanobu.ru presents

Hi, Kanobu is here with us today.

An unexpected interview about video games with

Alexei Navalny. Hi. Hi, Kanobu.

Greetings, Alexei. You have a busy,

active life, and today we're going to

talk about this unexpected side of you,

about video games.

The mission of our portal, Kanobu, is

to popularize video games in Russia as

a field, a way of life, and

ultimately an art form, and that's why we

have a lot in common with you, because

you seem to be the only public politician who

isn't shy about writing on Twitter that

he plays games. So right away, two

questions: how do you manage to combine

that with such a rich and eventful

life, and what do you get out of it? Is it

for you a way to unwind after a hard day,

relaxation, or maybe after all a hobby? Well,

First of all, to be honest, I don't even

understand—tens of millions of

video game users can't

be wrong. Video games are absolutely

wonderful, and I

regret only one thing: that I don't have

enough time in which I can

play. That's completely normal. I was born in '76,

and I've seen this whole

evolution

of games, when they came after the collapse

of the Soviet Union. At one point I used to go to

a computer club and play

Pokémon and all sorts of games like that. Then I

bought my first computer,

a 486 DX computer—I remember it very well.

Sound Blaster—wow, a dedicated sound

card. Yes, exactly.

If I remember correctly, I really love IT.

It's a big part of my life, just as it's a big

part of the life of any normal person.

Unfortunately, right now there aren't that many

opportunities to play any games. I

even sometimes feel a kind of

inadequacy, because you don't understand

certain parts of the subculture. For example,

it's probably shameful, especially for

your audience, to say this, but I've never

played GTA, and I've run into the fact that

I

see it referenced very often in films

and TV series, and then a huge part

of culture, a whole layer of culture,

you simply don't understand because you haven't

played GTA and don't know certain

special words, you don't get the jokes about

it, and so on. That's completely normal.

But now, during the election

campaign, honestly, I don't play, or

I play something like, well, Lucky...

just on my phone, so my brain can

switch off for a few minutes and you only see

some pictures. But as for what

major game I played recently,

what can I remember?

Readers of my Twitter know that

the last thing I played was Crysis 3, because

I kept asking for advice on how

to beat the main villain, and this disc, this game,

which I spent, well, two

weekends on—I sat there, to the outrage of my

wife, who said, "Go do something else,"

and to the outrage of the kids, who were also

unhappy that I had taken over

the console for the whole day. So I sat down and played

this Crysis 3, got to the main

villain, but I didn't kill the main villain. I

watched a walkthrough on YouTube, and after

that it stopped being interesting. That was my

mistake. You mentioned the word

"console"—so you play on consoles?

Yes, I do play on consoles. To be honest,

I like playing on

a computer more, but actually an important

point for our audience, for the

Russian audience, because as is well known here,

it's mostly hardcore PC gamers, and

they tend to look down on consoles.

So this is one of those things—well, you know, I also

may be a representative of that old school. I

prefer, or would prefer, to play on

a computer. After I bought myself a

Mac, I liked playing on it more.

It's more convenient to play on it, and

well, recently

I installed one of the latest

Call of Duty games, downloaded it, paid $30 for it,

and it wouldn't run for me. I

struggled with it, wrestled with it. In that sense,

usually a PC

seems more convenient to me. But I do play on a console

and it's a great thing. And on

the West, people mostly play on consoles.

Sometimes it just seems to me that I'm too

old and I no longer have the

speed

to do all of this in time,

to switch between everything. Plus I had this

funny moment when I was even playing that

same Crysis, Crysis 3, since I

have long breaks between gaming sessions,

there was a prompt saying, "Press

the L3 button," and I spent a very long time looking

for it on the controller. And of course Google

saved me. I realized I'm not the only one

who goes looking for where the L3 button is. I

found it. But a console is a perfectly normal thing. I

think that

The development of video games in Russia at this point...

The real boom, like the one in the West, is still

ahead of us, and it is primarily connected with

consoles, I think, although

there are different opinions on that. No one

thinks that tablets and the like—well, here

what about you, especially since during

work now many people prefer to play

specifically on their phones, or on a tablet. So

have you bought a lot of things in the App Store?

Have you bought a lot over the years? As for me,

the whole family plays on tablets. My son is 5

years old, my daughter is one, and my wife and I—we all

play. Sometimes each of us buries ourselves in our own

tablet and plays something. It seems to me

that this is already

simply an inseparable part of modern

life. It won't be any other way now. Everyone

plays, whether they admit it or not.

Billions of people play on

tablets, play on smartphones. We can see

that the growth in smartphone sales exceeds

the sales growth of ordinary phones. This is

this is

simply a new attribute of humanity. People

play on tablets, on smartphones. I

play too, of course. I've played all

the popular games like those

zombie ones. The last game I really

played a lot was Plague Inc.—you

spread an epidemic, spreading

and wiping out humanity. I reached

perfection—I beat it on all the

hardest levels, and in general I can wipe out

humanity in two minutes on any

difficulty. So you have that

hardcore streak—not just to kill

time in a game, right, but to achieve some

kind of result, and also compare

those results with your friends' results?

If a game is genuinely interesting and

I get into it, I try to beat it on the highest

difficulty level.

Here's another question: is there, in principle,

some kind of gaming crowd in politics?

I mean, do you ever exchange

discs, or at least information about

what to play? Do you know, among

your colleagues, maybe even opponents,

and so on, who plays? Because as I

already said, you're the only politician—and

a young politician at that—who talks about it.

The others are as if they've clammed up

and are being cautious about it. So how

is it in general? I think that, first of all,

it's a generational thing, and people

who are older—

born before 1965, older than those born in 1972—

in principle play less.

Why? Because there is this stereotype that

indeed many people think, well, how can I

say that I play games and not look

serious? From my point of view, that's

nonsense. It's normal to play. People

play games, and that way they learn

English. In principle, that's a good and

proper thing. There's nothing

terrible about it, as long as you don't spend your whole life

wasting it on games. No, there's nothing

wrong with admitting it. In our

office, I'm the oldest by age, and

absolutely everyone plays. In that sense,

there may be all sorts of things, but team games—no,

of course we don't have that. After all, we

if there were team games here and

people got into them, I'd very quickly

put a stop to it, because after all

we should be investigating

corruption, not creating teams and

all that, you know. It's not serious. After

office work, sure, maybe: come on, let's

quickly go and beat somebody in a game—

but no, we don't have that, no need to make things up.

So you're against it, then? Or...

I just know it would suck the office in.

It would suck me in first of all. I

as soon as I got back into

multiplayer StarCraft II, about half a year

ago, when criminal cases had already been opened

against me, I thought,

let me go ahead and register on

Battle.net and see how it all works. I

sat down to play StarCraft, and for a week

I completely dropped out of everything and just played

StarCraft. I just understand that if I also

start encouraging things here in the office so that we

create teams and so on, then all those

crooks from Gazprom and Transneft (major Russian state-controlled energy companies), they

would simply get a huge break.

I don't know, they might even drag us into

some games themselves, because

we would be giving them a big respite. I

have no problem with it, because people

play, but I still won't encourage in the

office the creation of teams, because

it would eat up my time first of all. But

so, judging by what you're saying, you still

do play online from time to time? Yes, I

dip into it periodically, and with some

caution, because this is already a new

generation of gamers, and here I already

feel like a complete old-timer.

So I log in, and right away

some people come running over—people who have simply

already achieved perfection in online games.

Everything is timed down to the second — I saw that in

that same StarCraft, which back in the day I played

through on the hardest

difficulty. I came in and realized that basically everything

had moved on without me — I'm an outdated dinosaur. It's all calculated down to

the second: everyone rushes in and wipes you out

instantly. Here you have to — you can't be

an amateur, you have to be a professional.

And what about your opponent — yes, how do you

prefer to play with other players?

I, when it comes to that, I think I

lose

in online games first and foremost because

well, I'm exactly the kind of player

who first wants to develop, to

build everything up — look, make it all nice and tidy,

gather a ton of resources, and only then

start the war. In fact, as

practice shows, all those

wonderful tutorial videos

that teach strategy in one game or

another show that you need to attack

right away, and

the whole algorithm basically rules out

any long preliminary

development. But I like to sit there and

play in that kind of meditative

style — not an aggressive one. For me,

video games, like reading, are simply a way

to distract yourself, to get out of your own head.

You throw out the existence of Putin,

Gazprom,

corruption, oligarchs, and everything else,

and you just sit there calmly, managing

your drones, droids, or whatever else

you've got there.

And as a team player, how would you

describe yourself?

Surely in StarCraft there were 2-on-2 games,

or in some other games, like

Call of Duty, which you mentioned, or something else.

So what are you like in that sense? I tried

playing StarCraft as part of a team, but simply

because I'm not that kind of

super-professional, I feel my own

inadequacy compared with people

who play constantly. So I'm more the kind of person who

doesn't lead the charge — in that sense I'm

a reliable team player, but I definitely can't

take on leadership functions,

because I understand that everything will

fall apart. So why let everyone down

with my ambitions? And could you

tell us your BattleTag on air?

Honestly, not for anything. BattleTag is

your nickname — so you've already won by

not giving it out.

Basic, basic sort of

basic online security.

Just think — our users could

help you there, in the sense that they could

help improve your game. I'd rather

keep that anonymity here

and quietly sit in my little Star

Craft world and not

interact with large numbers of

people. So that's how it is: people play

matches and don't even know with whom, and that's

not very often, but ideally these

people show up and beat me right away,

so, offended, I disconnect and

go back to playing against the computer.

But if our users hear this now

and start combing through Battle.net,

well, my traditional nickname

Navalny is already taken on Battle.net,

so if you find 'Navalny,' then

that's not me — it's a fake. Got it. Do you play alone at home,

or do you get the whole family involved?

Have there been times when there was that kind of

togetherness

around a video game?

We do play — I regularly play with my daughter,

especially various kinds of

controller games, just the kind where you

hit each other, fight with swords, or something like that.

You mean Doom? Yes, yes, that sort of thing.

Games like that, active games, yes. As for everything else,

I can play those with my

younger brother — he's the person with whom

I spent a lot of time together.

We played, and

probably, in terms of the total time

I've spent on video games, in a kind of

two-player setup, it was the famous Tanki (the classic tank game).

Back when it first came out, I don't even remember whether

it was on the Dendy console (a popular post-Soviet Nintendo clone) or

on a more advanced console, but those

tank games — I remember they even showed up in my dreams, and to this

day I remember how I'd close my eyes,

lie down, and there were those tanks, rolling along,

things flying out, and my younger brother and I

spent a lot of time on those little tanks.

And you've probably heard of the game World

of Tanks.

Since we're talking about tanks,

right now it's one of the most popular games

in Russia, the CIS (post-Soviet countries), and the Russian-speaking

world. So have you ever...?

No, actually I'm completely normal about it.

It's just very interesting to me. I've never

played it, never even registered. It interests me

simply as an economic phenomenon,

because it's a Belarusian game,

right? People in Belarus simply made a game

that now, through it, they

are earning millions of dollars, and that's

just an excellent example of how the new

economy can make money better.

than oil or gas, and

it also doesn’t pollute and doesn’t

cause any pollution. It’s actually a striking

example of how, when we

seem to be building a traditional

economy, pumping oil and gas out of the ground,

we received 3

trillion from oil and gas sales over the last fifteen years, which

somehow vanished. We see a huge

number of examples where the new

service-based economy

earns the same amount of money, or even more,

and does so without that kind of strain,

without environmental pollution, without robbing

future generations, and so on.

So this is simply a wonderful example

of the fact that gaming is not just entertainment;

it’s an excellent industry that brings in

money, creates jobs, and strengthens

the economy. It’s great.

This phrase, “the Russian gaming

industry” — does it sound familiar to you, does it mean anything?

Does it bring back any memories?

Nadezhda: I don’t really follow it closely. You know, when

people talk about the Russian gaming industry, naturally

the first thing that comes to mind for me, as for

most people, is probably Tetris,

which actually isn’t Russian

— it just had a Russian inventor.

I know there were several popular games

made there, Chernobyl and many, many others.

There are a lot of Russian games, but unfortunately

I haven’t played them, so I can’t really say anything

about them. But I think this is an excellent area

for investment of effort. We have a lot of

programmers, and it’s an international

business — something that can be done

in Russia and easily sold to the West.

So I’d be glad if all of this

continues to develop. Here’s another question: what do you

think — is censorship at the

state level needed in video games? Let me explain.

Games are part of culture, after all,

essentially a subculture already,

so naturally they sometimes contain

various messages, and

lately our country has run into,

let’s say, a lack of understanding from

Western

developers, perhaps of our

mentality in particular. For example, several

games about the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet-German front of World War II)

caused public outrage and so on,

because they interpret it one way, while we

see it differently, and so

these kinds of cultural clashes happen specifically

in the video game space. So how, in your view,

should the state respond?

Maybe gamers themselves, maybe

distributors — that whole system?

For now, not at all.

It seems to me the problem here isn’t even

some kind of cultural misunderstanding, but rather the fact

that people who have never played

video games — and in fact barely

use the internet at all —

are trying to regulate this sphere.

Right now we have scandals over attempts

to ban profanity, attempts to ban violence,

and so on. But I’m someone who

plays video games, and I have children

who are affected by

video games, of course, and I would like

to shield my daughter from

pornography, and I would like to limit

her exposure to violent games and so on.

But I simply understand that there are sensible

ways to do that; there is a mechanism of

parental controls. Games simply

need to be labeled. When my daughter

buys or downloads a game, I should

understand what’s in that game. I can

install parental controls on the computer.

This is not the state’s job, but

the parents’ — simply to monitor it and

set those limits. If they simply

ban swearing tomorrow

or violence, we’ll be striking a blow against the industry.

I’m not going to play Fallout or something

like it if there are no blood splatters and

it’s silly to play a shooter if it

contains no violence. And this is violence that in no

way can lead to

real violence. There have actually been tons

of studies on this, and plenty

of research confirming that it

works more like this: people vent

some of their aggression

and become even better-behaved

in real life. So I believe

the state should not interfere here at all.

This should be industry self-regulation. Games

should be labeled, games should

offer options, games should provide

information to me as a parent. I look at it

. My child comes and says, “I want to buy this game,” and I

look at the rating and say, “No, you can’t have that.”

If you want, get this one with cute little horses.

If you want another one, you can’t have it yet.

When you’re 14, you can play it. If it’s something

downloaded online, it should work the same way. I want

to have the ability on her computer

to install parental controls, and

that’s enough. I understand that no

100 percent control is possible,

and it isn’t needed anyway if there’s too much of it.

If you ban things, then people will deliberately start

going to unblocked sites to download

banned stuff, and that will make things even worse, otherwise

I wouldn't install GTA 5 for my daughter,

but for now, fortunately, she's still at an age where I

look at the game she plays, and there

it's not some kind of pony princesses, but it all

looks very cute. I don't know, you can

log in and play other games too, and when I

leave the house... well, so far everything is very cute.

It seems to me that then again it

in terms of violence, even in terms of

some kind of slang and so on, but it doesn't

go beyond the average Hollywood movie, well,

there's nothing there that she wouldn't see

in ordinary TV shows, and there's certainly nothing

there that she wouldn't see on the news.

Then again, in Gato Negro, and maybe in

GTA 5 it's probably a completely different story.

September

Actually, as I said, I haven't

played it even once, but maybe I will.

Well, and also around

September-October, maybe even November,

I'm mixing things up in my head right now,

several new-generation consoles are coming out at once,

namely the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox

One. Have you looked in that direction at all?

I mean, what would you like

to buy there, or maybe

build yourself a high-end PC and

just forget about consoles altogether? Haha, I think

a high-end PC isn't really

relevant for me either. I don't have time for it, nowhere to put it,

so consoles are the optimal solution.

Since I'm not that well versed in

all of this, I will definitely buy

myself a new console. I'll just rely

on the opinions of people who

have already tried all this out. I'll do a very

simple thing that most

consumers do: I'll look at the ratings,

I'll read reviews, I'll see which games

run where, what's popular and what isn't,

and based on that I'll buy a console. And where

do you get information about games?

How, how, how do you decide for yourself

what you want to play today?

I mean, for advice, I ask

my younger brother, who plays more

than I do, what he's playing. It seems to me

most people get

information in the store where the game is sold.

This information is hard to get, this whole thing

about advice is kind of nonsense. People

who have played with you and understand your

gaming preferences will give you

something more suitable. You go into a store,

they ask, 'What do you want?' I say, 'I want something

like Fallout or Jagged Alliance,' and

what you get is something not at all like

Fallout, and

you've just wasted 1,700 rubles (about $18-20), so

it's basically advice from people you know or Google, that's all. But

what about specialized websites? We are, after all,

a site that talks about

games. So what do you think—do sites like that

have a right to exist?

Because you just said that

word of mouth rules that world, and

so in that kind of world order,

what place do sites like ours occupy?

It's still word of mouth, just

in a more technological form. I have three people

I can ask about games. If

I want a sample not from three people but from three hundred

thousand people, I'll go to your site. If I

need advice on a console, I will absolutely

go look at ratings and reviews

about consoles on your site. And if I need some kind of

walkthrough or game guide or some hints,

of course I'll look on a

specialized site. So yes,

they are needed. If they weren't needed,

they wouldn't exist. Hundreds of thousands of people

create these sites because they share

some kind of information. For example, I couldn't get past

a villain in Crysis, and people immediately sent me

links to special, specialized

sites that helped me. And yes, it helped.

In the end, I beat that mid-level villain,

I got through it—yes, it absolutely helped.

But when I got to the final boss, I

just watched it on YouTube; they sent me a

walkthrough. I realized I'd get through it just the same, but it was a bit

uninteresting, so I dropped it.

By the way, that's one of the

difficult things,

one of the ambiguous things for me in

information about computers, about the computer

world: walkthroughs are everywhere. I

remember that once I ended up with a

huge disappointment because in

one computer magazine, stupidly,

I read a walkthrough for Fallout 2 and

then immediately played through it, but what

pleasure did I get? None. So

you have to be careful here not to accidentally

deprive yourself of the fun of getting through

difficult moments. But Fallout 2 is actually

one of those rare games where there is no

single correct way to play through it, that is,

it's a role-playing game where you actually play a role.

By the third one—even back in Fallout 2, well, there...

some kind of scrap-related thing, and then it just went off track.

A cartload of stuff like that—you read it and already...

you don’t even spend half a minute on that junk,

even though really you should have spent 15

minutes figuring it out. In role-playing games,

playing characters like that in general...

well, in Interplay games, basically...

you can be a complete bastard. I was

a drug dealer,

a slave trader, and

I dug graves and pulled out gold teeth, but I

play that way... though basically I’m a compassionate junkie.

I always play male characters, I always play as

the good guy, that is,

with that same slow-paced style of play: I’ll go around,

talk to everyone, find everything out, and then kill all

the villains. Well, not in some weightless role-play sense—it’s just that

I try, but because the evil path periodically

gets less attention, people just play as the good guy more often.

Usually the big storylines are more interesting there.

As I understand it, there are simply

studies that say

most players choose good characters,

so game developers make the good-guy route

richer and more developed,

because those choices need more content.

That’s a very accurate observation.

Really—it’s a fact. And as someone who has been

a politician, and a person who kind of

strives to become a leader,

I’ve played games that talk about power,

about the nature of power—there are quite a lot of them.

There’s SimCity, about how a city is organized,

there’s Civilization.

In my opinion, it’s one of those great series

that ought to be on everyone’s shelf.

Civilization is exactly the kind of thing

that periodically causes conflict

in our family. It was Civilization. When

after one of the searches, they confiscated

all my iPads and computers, we had nothing left.

We bought one iPad, it was the only one, and I

kept taking it away all the time to play

Civilization. So for us personally,

it really was a... well, yes. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time

gaming. I didn’t play SimCity because I

know it’s some huge game, and

millions of people played it too—it’s a whole

cultural layer. But I played Civilization in

all its forms: the very first one, the second one,

on a tablet, on a computer, all of them. It’s one

of my favorite games. Who do you play as?

Everyone, one after another. In Civilization on the tablet,

I mastered it too—I completed it with

everyone, on every difficulty level, and it’s also

a great way to spend time, when

your brain just switches off: you sit down, turn it on,

that music starts playing, and you forget about

everything. Yeah, you can stay there until morning.

I mean, it’s not like I only play as

Russia exclusively or anything.

For example, when I was a kid, on some

Java version of the game, I’d start by playing as

Russia—I think everyone does that.

It’s even funny: you create, say,

Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk—it’s amusing when

you see it, especially in the early

Civilization games, when they were more

Russified and the names were written in Russian.

You create some Murmansk there, and it’s

spelled in a funny way. Then you just start

playing as everyone. Unfortunately, by the way,

in Civilization, obviously, the Americans

really made the Americans one of the

easiest factions to play. But playing as Russia

is fairly difficult because

the initial

priorities they assign

to that civilization don’t provide major

advantages. And playing against Russia is also

quite hard at certain

moments—when the Cossacks, when the Cossacks

come into play, yes, it gets tough. Did you take anything

away from Civilization for yourself,

after spending so much time on it?

Maybe even as a kind of justification,

including to your wife: “Darling, at least now

I understand how all this is supposed to work.”

Civilization is good for

simply recalling certain historical

moments. It’s a good supplement to

a history textbook. People who may have

gotten an F in history—by playing

Civilization, they still end up knowing something,

at least some of the main milestones of development.

I think it’s a very useful game for general

education overall. In actual

practical politics, of course, there’s nothing

you can really draw from it at all. And when

some new events happen around us,

I don’t have some unit

that I can send around the flank like a catapult

and use to crush someone’s cavalry. In

real life, it doesn’t work like that. I mean,

especially in the later installments, where

diplomacy is more developed and you need to make friends,

whereas earlier we played

only through conquest, right?

You just build up your civilization and conquer everyone,

but in the later ones you simply

can’t do that—you immediately lose a huge

number of potential allies, and all

your moves will be seen as, well...

Dude, where are you going? John, we don't even know what—

whether we've seen what happened to the previous ones, and already—

Playing it now is harder, and I actually like that.

Because I'm used to building these

militaristic states, but the game doesn't let you

just pursue that to the end — you have to negotiate,

make compromises, and there's even this concept of

a cultural victory in the latest

Civilization. It really has become quite

difficult to play, because now

there are all these new elements, and much more

attention is paid to religion — you need to

capture cities,

spread your religion, do some kind of

missionary work.

But even so, it's radically different from real life,

from real politics.

There are patterns there — in any

computer game. That's how it differs from

real life: there are simply patterns.

You understand that you need to act in a certain

way: okay, you got lucky, you have more

resources, fewer constraints, so you need to go in this

direction. But in real life, you might have been friends with this

politician, then you blurted something out

about him by accident on a radio broadcast, and

despite all the rational reasons and

the existing normal patterns

of behavior, he's not friends with you anymore, starts doing

all sorts of nasty things, and so on and so on.

People are people. It's all much more complicated.

It's all mixed up with personal ambitions; in

real politics there's much less

that's rational. In a game, if you behave

in the most rational way possible, then

you'll win. In real politics, it doesn't work like that.

An interesting observation, by the way.

Yes, I agree, I mean—

even if you're playing as the Russians,

by turn three you absolutely need to

build the Pyramids and adopt Deism,

and that satisfaction gives you exactly the points

that made you sit down to play this in the first place.

As for me, let me remind you that

I'm a thoughtful kind of player — not, you know,

a min-maxer, not one of those

power-gaming types. I'm not someone

who wants to achieve the maximum

result at any cost. I basically want

to see all aspects of the game.

For me, it's not important to win very quickly in

three minutes. I spend time on games because I have

the right and the opportunity to relax and spend

my time that way. So if I have that hour

or two, I sit down and really play like that —

slowly, and if something goes wrong, I'll restart and begin again.

I need it to

be genuinely interesting somehow,

to fully occupy my mind. And all

those years and years spent gaming—

well, I don't know if I'd call them wasted years, actually.

On the other hand, even in traffic jams

you can lose years. You know that the average

Muscovite (resident of Moscow) spends, over

30 years of living in Moscow, about a year and a half

stuck in traffic?

The years spent on games are, of course,

far more pleasant than years spent in

traffic jams. But yes, I agree — in the sense that

when you look back, you'll understand that

it was an important part of your

life, and you didn't lose anything. There's this

stereotype that if you play games,

you won't achieve anything, you're wasting

your time, and basically you're a loser sitting at home

just mashing buttons.

But by your own example, you're showing

that you somehow manage to combine

all of this. So for those parents

who forbid their children to play games,

if they asked you, what would you

say?

Especially considering that you've spent quite a lot on games,

I mean, they've clearly given you something.

Come on — I mashed buttons myself, my kids mash buttons,

their kids will mash buttons too, until

apparently they invent some kind of

amazing virtual buttons

that you can't mash. It's just the story of

humanity: once people read more,

then they watched more television, and once upon a time

people mostly just went to the theater. That's

normal. I play a lot, and I believe that

playing computer games is also

a form of development for a person: it's learning language,

it's learning about other cultures, it's

various skills in general. For small

children, it's simply motor skills. When

little kids play games and tap away

on a tablet, that develops

motor skills too. In any case, it gives

skills useful for life in modern society.

A person who has never played video games

basically

has a harder time socializing. It's already an

inseparable part of culture.

So you just need to maintain

the right balance. If a child does nothing but

play computer games and doesn't

read at all, that's not good — just as it's not

good if all they do is watch television.

So it's normal, but I think

it's pointless to try to keep people away from it.

Shielding your children from video games is

actually even harmful. Really, just keep

a balance, and everything will be fine in the end.

We played, and our parents used to tell us,

"Oh God, this is terrible, you'll ruin your eyesight,

you'll get stupid because you sit there endlessly

playing Doom." But no, my eyesight turned out fine,

I didn't ruin it, and I don't seem to have gotten any stupider either.

Which video game are you really looking forward to?

Looking forward to?

Jagged Alliance. It's just that not that many

people played it. It wasn't the most

popular game, but for me—I spent

just an enormous amount of time on it. I

remember I had this buggy disc, and in the

early versions of the game

it was impossible to save during

a mission, and it would suddenly freeze. It was

a total nightmare. You'd practically finish

a contract with not a single fighter wounded, and then it

would freeze. But when you replay things because of that,

you end up reaching perfection too.

So I have this tremendous nostalgia for it.

That's why I really like games of that kind,

like Fallout, and I can't wait

for them to finally release

the new version. My dears—I remember all

those characters by name. I'll be able to

spend time with them again. Though things there are not looking good.

I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. I'd advise

you not to count on it. X-COM, for example—well, X-COM

is much poorer, much more—I don't know—somehow

I played X-COM too, of course.

Well,

as for Jagged Alliance, they're saying it's planned.

I think some kind of Jagged

Alliance Online is coming out.

And that tells you that I regularly

google it. They write there that it supposedly

is supposed to come out, but it's all very

unclear who owns the rights, so I

simply wouldn't, in your place, get your hopes

up too much, so you don't end up

disappointed. And besides, for a long time

it's been unclear whether it will come out at all, and in whose

hands the license is. And that doesn't mean it

will be good. That's another big

problem, because video games are like

movies: films we wait for

sometimes turn out to be complete garbage.

You never really know with video games either. And

let me unexpectedly turn to another topic—

a gender issue, a gender question, about

how many

men and women play video games. According

to the latest data from Mail.ru (a major Russian internet company),

a fairly substantial number of women, in

percentage terms, almost

half—half, yes. According to their data,

play games. Though of course we're talking

here about browser games, social

games, and the like. But still,

they are actively embracing this form of activity

and leisure, however you want to put it. So what do you

think about that—girls and

video games?

How compatible are they? Video games are

wonderful. It's one of the best

combinations there can be. And

my wife plays video games on her iPad

all the time, and if she didn't

keep refusing to play something

interesting on a console with me, I would

love my wife—whom I adore—even

a little more. That's an interesting

statistic, what you're saying, because I

had thought that, percentage-wise,

girls still played video

games less. But if that's really true,

then it simply confirms the idea that

video games are here with

humanity forever, and it's pointless to

fight them. Once people fought against books,

then against the harmful influence of theater,

cinema, or television. It's useless, and

video games will always be with us. Let's

just love them. Let's get

something useful out of them.

That's the main idea

our site promotes as well. That's what we want,

really—to reach as many

people as possible. Well, now you have the opportunity

to address our readers

and viewers.

So, as a gamer, a citizen, and a candidate,

what would you like to see

from the gaming industry? Or however you want

to develop it in Moscow and the Moscow region?

From that point of view, as a gamer,

a citizen, and a candidate, I call on everyone

to play video games and enjoy video

games, but also to remember that there is

another kind of game, so to speak—

the political game that we play our whole

lives, and in it the stakes are sometimes much

higher than the stakes you have

in Warcraft. Remember: when someone in Warcraft

takes away your gold, that's one thing,

but when, in real life, the existing

authorities steal very real, enormous

amounts of money flowing into the country,

that's far worse. So while playing

video games and spending your time

with pleasure, you need to remember that you also need

to take part in this

great game of ours, in which

millions of people really do participate.

You need to take part in elections, you need to.

You need to make your position heard.

You shouldn’t be shy about campaigning there,

including among your friends, acquaintances, and so on.

Because the way our government is set up right now,

it’s such that it just doesn’t,

understand the internet, it doesn’t understand

video games; it ignores all of this completely and

considers it harmful. To them, all of it

is incomprehensible. Some old guys are sitting there who

say, ‘Let’s ban everything violent,’

‘let’s ban any swearing, basically everything,’

‘let’s ban it all, and this internet thing is some strange

contraption that does nothing but harm, so let’s shield

children from the internet.’ That’s nonsense, and millions of

people who spend time on gaming portals,

who play, who understand what it is,

who understand that there’s no harm in it,

you know, this is a huge industry

that creates jobs, brings in money, and improves

people’s lives. These people should also

gain political influence. Gamers, in this

sense, need to realize their strength,

because I’m sure that just

the users of your portal alone, for example,

among Muscovites, number in the hundreds of thousands. These

hundreds of thousands of people have the opportunity

to come to the polls on September 8 and express

their clear political opinion and influence

one group or another, to help elect the kind of mayor

who might be more supportive of video games

and maybe be a little less eager to, I don’t know,

keep a hidden grudge, so to speak, toward

those who are against video games, toward those who

are introducing censorship on the internet at all.

You just need to realize your strength, and I

think that many of us, many of you, have

the skills to unite in online games.

So let’s actually come together already, and

let’s really start defeating the villains

who exist in real life, which

is far more dangerous than the virtual one.

The villains. With us today was Alexei

Navalny, with whom we spoke about

video games. Bye everyone, thank you.