Why are Americans always the good guys in video games?

This is a very interesting question.

I've always wondered what the backlash would be if a studio were to release a Call of Duty style game from the point of view of middle eastern factions resisting the illegal invasion of their land and massacre of their people.

Because it seems to me that these FPS war simulations are very close to reality (ie using real location names and sometimes actual 3D rendered versions of said locations) and are somehow being used as a propanganda tool to get most people on board with whatever the political agenda is at the time. I know this sounds very conspiratorial and I'm open to counter arguments but I can't shake off this feeling. Hope I'm wrong though because this is rather depressing.

Because they are the good guys of course :-) Almost all triple A games are made in the US itself or allies (UK/Canada/Japan/EU) so it’s expected these games will have a positive view. Same reason it’s true in Hollywood. Most people just want to get on and have fun with a game, not overthink politics and ethics and I don’t see it as an issue. The more annoying thing is when you’re nudged to know random guy is evil due to generic Russian/Middle East accent.

Because the Americans make a lot of those types of video games, and if you want to pander to your biggest market, you make them the good guys.

I've played a lot of video games where they aren't. In fact, I'd posit most video games don't take place with real-world geopolitics/national boundaries at all. And where they do, I don't think it's unusual that the antagonist may be an American.

Because the US won the struggle against the USSR and now the global economy is loosely based around US-style liberal capitalism. Most countries and their place in the international order is relative to their participation in this system. This is best explained in Jihad vs. McWorld by Barber[1].

What this means is that those who want to buy-in to this global system have to deal with Western (US) media, Western (US) norms, and even the language of the West (the language most common in the US). English is the new lingua franca, and is the language of business. This creates huge incentives to develop media (games, movies, whatever) that can be ported into English and sold to wealthy US consumers (something the Japanese figured out in the 90s -- think of bad Final Fantasy translations a la FF7). Plus many studios are in the US and make games for the US market, and to a lesser degree the export market (Chinese and Korean gaming leagues being the biggest pushes, IMO).

That said, I remember one of the Medal of Honor games (WW2 themed) which has you killing Japanese in the Pacific -- and was still hugely popular in Japan.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld [2] https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers-love-a...

Because, as an English speaker, most video games you play are of American origin.