Rein Hagen a Georgian covert agent?
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 6:54 am
OK, weird conspiracy theory time.
After Rein ☻ Hagen got pushed out of White Wolf he did something much stranger than what Gary Gygax did after getting pushed out of TSR: he went to the post-Soviet kleptocracy of Georgia and started working as a paid propagandist for the government. I mean, a writing gig is a writing gig, right? Lots of science fiction and fantasy hacks have tried their hand at writing government copy. At first he was writing English language pap extolling the strong European roots of Georgia to try to encourage Westerners to come to Georgia as tourists and investors. But when the South Osetia War happened (which you may recall happened because Georgia attacked Russia having been apparently promised by John McCain that Bush's America would back them despite that being completely insane), the dotmeister turned to writing anti-Russian propaganda about how bad the Russians were and how important it was for NATO to start World War 3 to protect Georgian territorial claims on South Osetia and Abkhaz.
Anyway, supposedly after the war he went back to game design. But a funny thing about that... He's still writing it as Georgian propaganda. What? He's putting out "games" where the upshot is that the nation of Georgia has an ancient and important claim to South Osetia and the Russian invaders are literally monsters.
Doesn't that sound like he's still putting out government=approved anti-Russian propaganda for the nation of Georgia?
Now the fact that the game itself is a WoD title with the serials rubbed off that is about Zombies is an actual joke that people were making ten years ago. Like, my friend Matthew literally put together a nWoD "Zombie: the Brain Eating" in 2005, as a joke. But it's apparently serious. Or at least taken seriously enough by the Georgian government to use as a propaganda vehicle against Russians.
-Username17
After Rein ☻ Hagen got pushed out of White Wolf he did something much stranger than what Gary Gygax did after getting pushed out of TSR: he went to the post-Soviet kleptocracy of Georgia and started working as a paid propagandist for the government. I mean, a writing gig is a writing gig, right? Lots of science fiction and fantasy hacks have tried their hand at writing government copy. At first he was writing English language pap extolling the strong European roots of Georgia to try to encourage Westerners to come to Georgia as tourists and investors. But when the South Osetia War happened (which you may recall happened because Georgia attacked Russia having been apparently promised by John McCain that Bush's America would back them despite that being completely insane), the dotmeister turned to writing anti-Russian propaganda about how bad the Russians were and how important it was for NATO to start World War 3 to protect Georgian territorial claims on South Osetia and Abkhaz.
Anyway, supposedly after the war he went back to game design. But a funny thing about that... He's still writing it as Georgian propaganda. What? He's putting out "games" where the upshot is that the nation of Georgia has an ancient and important claim to South Osetia and the Russian invaders are literally monsters.
Doesn't that sound like he's still putting out government=approved anti-Russian propaganda for the nation of Georgia?
Now the fact that the game itself is a WoD title with the serials rubbed off that is about Zombies is an actual joke that people were making ten years ago. Like, my friend Matthew literally put together a nWoD "Zombie: the Brain Eating" in 2005, as a joke. But it's apparently serious. Or at least taken seriously enough by the Georgian government to use as a propaganda vehicle against Russians.
-Username17