Iraq Game Sparks Outrage, Soldiers Have Mixed Reactions 196
We recently discussed news that Konami will be releasing a video game based on a 2004 battle in Fallujah. Many people have now had a chance to react to the game, and there has been a great deal of criticism voiced over the game's choice of setting. A group of families of soldiers who lost their lives in the war questioned "how anyone can trivialize a war that continues to kill and maim members of the military and Iraqi civilians to this day." Others criticized the game's glorification of the "massacre." Conversely, some soldiers and veterans have responded with optimism, hoping the game can raise awareness of the realities of war. Dan Rosenthal, Iraq veteran and long-time gamer, worries whether Konami will be able to do justice to the experience. Eurogamer posted a related story about the controversy over increasingly realistic war games.
This is clearly different... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is clearly different... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck the veterans families!
I am a veteran. I am very anti-war. If realism and expression of battle simulations upset people, maybe they should re-think their position on ACTUAL war. This isn't about "support your troops" it is about whether or not it is a good idea to put on a uniform and kill strangers in a foreign land.
I don't think it is and the more people that finally get that into their heads, the better.
All these kids are seeing recruiting ads and such about "being strong" and all this crap? They never know what they are getting into. If it takes a game to get the message through to people that wars kill and permanently damage people, their lives and their families lives, then let that game out for people to get that message. If my sons ever join the military service, I can't say how I would feel about it, but I can promise you I won't be proud or happy.
People with money hire people with leadership skills who hire people who can carry and use weapons. The people with money tell their leaders what they want done, the leaders tell their fighters to go threaten, kill and destroy and they do it. It is really as simple as all that. And when people see it all for what it is, they will be a lot less "patriotic."
People fighting and dying for independence? Great. All for it. People invading other countries and killing strangers "because they told me to?" I'll have none of it.
Re:This is clearly different... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If those don't convince them that war is a bad idea
Past war game are all about glorification, they show you all the fun parts of war and none of the bad ones.
Re:This is clearly different... (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the most powerful scenes I recall seeing on TV involved two brothers ambushed by mobsters in a field. They beat one brother to death in front of the other, and the actor did a fantastic job bringing to life the grief and horror the character felt - he didn't care that he was about to die too, only that his brother had been slain and he was helpless to prevent it.
Maybe if players get to see the effect on civilians and combatants, we will have a little less rah-rah-kill-them-all. It will certainly give the game world more depth.
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>I want to see a game where when you shoot the 'bad' guys, one of the others screams
>out "Billy! Oh god, noo!" I want to see games where the enemies are people and not just
>targets, and where civilians cry over the fallen.
Yeah! I agree, that would make the video games even COOLER!
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Vietnam was a bad idea. WWII? Seriously? If WWII games convince people that war is an inherently bad idea, then maybe they should start including levels where the player liberates death camps.
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WW2 was a bad idea just like any other war. That the alternative was an even worse idea doesn't change the fact that neither of the two options was inherently good.
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Well...FPS games based on the Revolutionary War or the Civil War are hard to come by...because they would be lame. Unfortunately, every other US military involvement fails your criteria. By your standard, the US involvement in WWII was an unjust, illegal war. Or when Clinton sent troops to Somalia.
Sometimes, you have to take the trash out, even if it IS in someone elses house. But if you can't be bothered to fight for OTHER people's future...well by all means, have none of it.
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The fact that anyone could possibly consider the Iraq war as fighting for somebody's future - in a positive sense - is staggering. Unless of course you mean Haliburton, which is a person too right?
The fact that your name is "gandhi" adds a whole 'nother level of interest to the mix too!
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Who said I was talking about Iraq? I said "sometimes" which is somewhere between Iraq and the Revolutionary War. Being content to sit on the sidelines, never intervening even when you can, is worse than intervening a little too often.
By the same logic, your neighbor can beat his wife...but you don't say anything, cause "hey, it's not MY problem".
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Have you served in the military? Have you ever killed a person? If not, I don't think you're more qualified on this subject than I am. And I'm not qualified. Some countries have required military service. Let's do that, then chicken hawks go away.
Re:This is clearly different... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was an Infantryman from 96 to almost 2003 in the Regular Army. I've been a National Guard Artillerymen ever since. I was in Ramadi for OIF5, where I spent time on FOB defense and patrolling. I've been shot at with RPGs, SAF, and indirect fire more times than I can remember. I don't talk about shooting people unless it's with my fellow troops, but I've "killed" probably thousands of cans of soda, gatorades, and partially-moldy blueberry muffins there. Did I beat Iraqis? Damn right, I beat an Iraqi soldier at rock-paper-scissors once! It went two out of three, I let him have my can of Coke anyway.
I was in during Clinton and Bush, I did my duty. I will continue to do it under Obama. Why? I'm good at it. The fact remains, appeasement doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to take the trash out.
BTW, if we are the chicken hawks, what do you call France and Russia for refusing to get involved? They were selling weapons and buying oil under the table, undermining the UN oil-for-food program the entire time. Is that the honorable alternative?
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what do you call France and Russia for refusing to get involved?
Smart.
They were selling weapons and buying oil under the table
Remind us who is the world's #1 supplier of arms again? Same country that backs military coups and brutal dictatorships as long as they support our "national interests"?
undermining the UN oil-for-food program the entire time.
Wow. Continuing to rag on the oil-for-food program after Haliburton, after KBR, after literally losing billions of dollars in Iraq - shows a serious disconnect
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No, his name is "gandhi 2," completely different [google.com].
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'They never know what they are getting into. '
If they don't know what they're getting into, then "FUCK the veteran's families" seems to be assigning the blame in the wrong place, no?
I agree that war and militarism are bad when they are in the service of empire. But defense does serve an important role in principle. Let's not defame our troops because we disagree with the reason they are deployed - as we both, clearly, do.
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I do agree in principle with your post. Particularly where it is might show the young recruits with no experience what they are getting themselves into. It is a problem though where there is a lot of stuff being left out. I've more than a few friends that left the service. They are true soldiers and didn't mind the combat. They do suffer from a lot of the psychological problems that people can think they can just bury and no one notices after being in combat. I haven't served but whatever they saw that's sc
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Arm-chair quarterback much do you?
Personally, I know I have what it takes to take the life of another actual human being. I don't want to. Personally, I know what it means to be in the cross-hairs of another. I really don't like that. Neither of these positions are symbolic of a "greater thing." If money-guy-A wants what money-guy-B has, I say let THEM fight it out. Don't use my country or my flag to get it.
I think people don't mind the idea of killing other people so long as they never actually see i
Yeah all those WW2 games are offensive too (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, those WW2 games are offensive too. That's why there are so many of them that hardly anyone complains about. Let's all stop playing FPSs set in a warzone, and make it all happen in a magic land with evil ponies that shoot lasers from their mouth.
If they think this is offensive, wait until someone makes a game where you get to eat babies.
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Yeah, those WW2 games are offensive too.
Anything that enshrines violence is offensive. Wait, was that a subjective statement?
If they think this is offensive, wait until someone makes a game where you get to eat babies.
Sounds like an obvious feature for a Zombie-protagonist game. It also reminds me of my favorite joke. It is my favorite because it makes people go away. I'm not telling you the punchline, though, because it won't have the desired effect here. Surely someone out there knows it, anyway. The question is What do you get when you stick a knife in a dead baby?
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The question is What do you get when you stick a knife in a dead baby?
an erection?
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It's called "too soon". Although it probably also has to do with getting to historically accurate.
Although the family in question does have a point, "When our loved one's 'health meter' dropped to '0', they didn't get to 'retry' the mission."
Instead of getting to retry you should switch bodies with another member of your unit, that would detrivialise things a bit and give a better sense of what death does. Actually I can't believe no war game ever used that idea before..
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Instead of getting to retry you should switch bodies with another member of your unit, that would detrivialise things a bit and give a better sense of what death does. Actually I can't believe no war game ever used that idea before..
I seem to recall at least one game (Rainbow Six maybe?) that did this. You started each mission with a squad, and if you died then you got to switch to another body to continue. You failed the mission if all of your squad died. Between missions, you could get members of your squad replaced, although I don't think there were any negative consequences for getting most of your squad killed every mission. Probably doing this should result in the AI for your squadmates dropping, since you're going to find it
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If all your squad died you'd rather be placed into another squad than have a whole new squad based around you.
That's the sad thing about most video games with NPCs, they're heavily unrealistically biased towards you. It's like in GTA games, any gangster can shoot you right before the eyes of a bunch of cops and not get in trouble, but if you so much as shoot back you'll have every cop in town on your tail.
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The way GTA works makes good sense, because it's all about you. Besides, you can shoot a guy in the head with a shotgun right behind a cop as long as he's a couple carlengths away and you do it in one shot, in GTA:SA.
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Well, I submit that in a multiplayer game that's what you want, but in a single player game it would get out of hand quickly because the AI is not capable of operating everyone lawfully all the time. What an amazing parallel to real life :)
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I'd say what's good about multiplayer games is that you're playing against human opponents. A bot doesn't get angry when it loses, or gloat when it wins. There's a certain amount of creativity lacking in a bot -- and humans tend to have entirely different and unpredictable flaws and strengths.
I've played multiplayer games in which particular humans had a severe handicap, and it was still fun.
No, the main thing I don't like about special treatment for the player is that it's unrealistic, and it's a cop-out -
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Re:Yeah all those WW2 games are offensive too (Score:5, Insightful)
Put simply (very simply) - WW2 games are tolerated without outrage because it's an OLD war, a long-gone war that doesn't have any resonance with most people these days. It doesn't get portrayed in the media every day because, unlike the Iraq war, it's over and done with. There's very little for people to associate with in WW2 because we're not continually reminded of it in our daily lives, or when we read/watch the news.
Games set in unresolved warzones are a tricky subject simply because the fight hasn't finished. They're still way too raw among people's minds, whereas WW2 is condemned to the history books and a decreasing pool of veterans. Once the war in Iraq is finished, and enough time has passed for reflection and consideration about how it went, a game released about the war probably wouldn't result in as much outrage. "Time heals all wounds" might not hold up so well with people, but it works well enough for video games.
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We need current, visceral games (Score:3, Interesting)
We want games to get better recognition as an art form, as a narrative form, or something of other social value. Covering contemporary issues (not just Vietnam or Antietam or WWII) is, in my opinion, a GOOD thing. We already have games like Call of Duty ("modern warfare": a very current theme to the game) which have good narratives, which seem like they could be pulled from either a Tom Clancy novel or from the news. (And yes, there's the R6 series which *is* from Clancy.)
The soldiers' perspective, whethe
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>>WW2 games are tolerated without outrage because it's an OLD war
What, the rule is you can only be outraged about ongoing conflicts? That's kind of an odd principle to adhere to.
I'd like to see how these people explain America's Army, the "official" game of the US Army, set in modern times, with modern equipment, between Army guys and terrorists.
I mean, if soldiers are offended by portrayals of current conflicts only, and (let's assume) the US Army is filled with soldiers, then it would be very odd if
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You sound like a war vet yourself.
Captain Obvious, to be precise.
Nothing escapes the notice of Major Asshole.
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Nor General Chaos.
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If they think this is offensive, wait until someone makes a game where you get to eat babies.
Any yet, somehow, nobody has posted a link to such a thing.
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Re:Yeah all those WW2 games are offensive too (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe something with a Battlestar Galactica theme. Since Cylon fetus tissue has such miraculous properties, that could become the main 'power up' as you go around fighting. You could call it 'Toaster Strudel'. "Scored me some strudel, fresh from the oven!"
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OMG PONIES! Can we play a rainbow pony who needs to stop the dark army of evil ponies? This game sounds fucking awesome!
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"Yeah, those WW2 games are offensive too. That's why there are so many of them that hardly anyone complains about. Let's all stop playing FPSs set in a warzone, and make it all happen in a magic land with evil ponies that shoot lasers from their mouth."
Chess is pretty nasty also, with pawns being as expendable as a Red Shirt on Star Trek.
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Where you get to eat babies? It sounds as if you're looking forward to it.
To quote a bad movie: "Babies, the other white meat"
Re:Yeah all those WW2 games are offensive too (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that because gamers are a jingoistic bunch who wouldn't want to shoot their own side? Or is it just that the British and Americans mostly won their wars, and games tend to cast the player as part of the winning side?
I'm actually surprised there aren't more games where you play a guerrilla or terrorist, especially with the current topical interest in the whole subject. There was a rather good strategy game I picked up long ago called 'Central Intelligence' in which your job is to organise a revolution on behalf of the CIA in some banana republic. Set up safe houses, establish contacts with sympathisers in the media and among the student radicals, organise a leaflet campaign, put up propaganda posters, raid the quarry and steal explosives, send a letter bomb to the chief of police... Wonderful idea, but crippled by a terribly clumsy interface.
There's got to be a market for this. 'Freedom Fighter' - play as Lenin, Collins, Mao, de Gaulle, Guevara, Khomeini! Overthrow the corrupt puppet government of the oppressors! Establish liberty and justice for the common people! Intimidate and beat up collaborators! Execute informers! Blow up police stations!
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If they really want to cause offence.. (Score:2)
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I really don't think the Ferengi would get involved in a stand-up fight! They'd just buy the opposition, surely!
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Depends on the game. In Day of Defeat, for instance, the Nazis win as often as the Allies.
The problem is not realistic war games (Score:5, Insightful)
If a war game is realistic, they will push people to avoid war if possible. However pain, disability, and choices that are bad either way (someone's firing from within a crowd, do we return fire ?) and their consequences (getting sued for saving 99% of the protestors (this means a few innocents dead by your bullets, for the idiots) for the terrorists' guns), they might actually get a realistic view of a bad situation.
But what are the chances of that ?
A bigger problem is unrealistic war games. If people start believing, even a tiny little bit, that you do actually respawn, that will be a sad day for world peace. Of course the same goes for people believing "god" rewards killing women or "unbelievers" after death. And the same goes for systems that encourage doing nothing at all very strongly, not showing the consequences of refusing to go to war when confronted with certain situations.
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"If a war game is realistic, they will push people to avoid war if possible."
For a lot of young people it wil ascociate feelings of fun and laughter with graphic imagery of death and decay
(not a good way to raise a child)
I am not against (war)games and played them a lot but ever since I got back from war myself I never played them much, it gives me mixed feelings
I do believe in the future these 'games' will play a part in 'education' or 'historic' preservation.....but for now I think it is mostly propaganda
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For a lot of young people it wil ascociate feelings of fun and laughter with graphic imagery of death and decay
Depends, the trouble with most games is that they don't give you any breathing room, they drive you from mission to mission without ever giving you time to think or even understand what you have done. They are also extremely low on background story and consequences, while being insanely high on the kill count. Those things however are not things that all games must do, most can be easily avoided. We have to see how it ends up in the end, but according to first reports this game is placed in the survival hor
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Are you implying that bombing and invading Iraq was justified?
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Yes -- in 1990.
And that's the point -- both absolute pacifists and absolute militarists are wrong most of the time.
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You know I once had an argument with a "pacifist". After a while exposing the gigantic logical inconsistencies and historical "details" in their beliefs, to no avail. The guy goes on "gandhi this, gandhi that", even after he acknowledged that gandhi is responsible for massacres that killed over 10 million people, and tried to get more Jews into Hitler's gas chambers. Is gandhi a man of peace ? Apparently ordering Jews into gas chambers and causing massacres is peaceful to these idiots. And "Che", dear God,
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War games are no different from any previous work of art depicting war.
Stories that gloss over the ugly parts and glorify heroes will inspire people to try to become them.
Stories that talk of the horrors of war will make young men feel that they need this horror to have real feeling.
Before every major war there were poems about the glory of battle. After every one there were songs of how terrible it was. Neither of them has ever stopped a war. Only the memories of those who lived it have done that, and only
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Stories that talk of the horrors of war will make young men feel that they need this horror to have real feeling.
Stupid young men that is, and you can never reason with people like that.
I read All Quiet on the Western Front in 7th grade and I quickly figured out that I did not want any part of that shit.
"Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die"
--Tennyson
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If a war game is realistic, they will push people to avoid war if possible.
What?!??
That's not how things work in this reality. I don't know what fantasy land you're living in, but here the people in power push for war with every conceivable excuse they can come up with, and the population is driven to a "freedom fries" frenzy of hatred over those who don't buy the excuses.
It's all about playing a game of Risk with flesh and blood peons. They want to grab territories to get the resources they produce, and they try not to lose too many units per turn because they want to move those
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You know... depending how they do this (read: totally not going to happen this way), it could be a powerful medium to show what it was like and how traumatizing it is for every one on all sides.
Rather than respawns and taking the place of a soldier, it's done in the fashion of, say, Eternal Darkness. Your "character" is the son or daughter or other relative who came into possesion of the soldier's diary. Levels are broken up between catnaps and sleeping. No ingame pausing (probably a sales killer right t
Lot's assumptions (Score:2, Interesting)
People are making a whole lot of assumptions about a game that hasn't even been released yet. Assuming for a moment that the game does not in fact glorify the war, but instead brings to the front the realities of it, why is this a bad thing? If anything, I'd say the American public needs to see what war really does, people need to know that there is a reason that "War is Hell", maybe if we saw what really happens we would be less likely to so carelessly throw people that volunteer their lives for their coun
Re:Lot's assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there are always people like a friend of mine:
Who volunteered for deployment AGAIN, and is now disappointed that he isn't shooting people.
Who was part of the initial invasion force.
Who was probably changed by his experiences and now feels civilian life is boring and dull.
Oh well, I wonder if he'll still not regret it if he loses a limb or something ..
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More and more of the people who aren't like that want no part of any bullshit war, so they're not signing up. Consequently the military has had to tap groups they wouldn't normally recruit from, and accept people who normally wouldn't pass a psych eval. Contrary to popular belief the military does not want crazy inductees. They want to take sane men and make them very specifically crazy, e.g. willing to follow orders even when they are insane.
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I am making an effort not to be judgmental about your friend.
A long time ago, I was an infantry officer in the Army during peacetime. As a soldier in the combat arms who has never seen combat, you PRAY for war. You want to experience for yourself all of those things that you've heard about, read about, watched on screen. Everything.
After you experience all or some of those things, the rational person should pray that it doesn't happen again.
There's a lot of reasons men "volunteer" for redeployment. I ha
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I would certainly be open to that idea ...
I assume that when he watches movies about assassination, leading assaults, war, his talk of "That's the best job in the world, I wish I could do that" is bullshit.
He was part of the initial invasion force of the Marines, so I have to assume that if anyone saw action - it would have been him. While he was out there he claimed the whole experience sucked, one of his squad members decided to taste brain, etc.
A few years later he wants to go again. His job sucks, but i
this is premature (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because it's a video game doesn't mean anyone should assume it can't be a serious, respectful work of art.
The only thing that's been announced is the game's setting.
...families of dead soldiers... (Score:5, Insightful)
I always noticed how they seem to know what the soldier would feel if he were alive. Families of soldiers still with us, who have lived through this experience, don't say anything, because the soldiers would tell them to shut the hell up.
I just remember how people used to treat Vietnam Vets before First Blood came out. My uncle credited that with a change in viewpoint that allowed him to feel human again. Considering it is the largest money maker in entertainment, maybe this game will allow people to get an idea what happens in combat, and what decisions you have to go through, split-second, every day.
For those "offended" by this, the game play is based on first-hand accounts by VETERANS. I think they have more of a right than any civilian to speak for themselves. If you are offended, fine. Everyone is allowed to have an opinion. It's in the constitution I swore an oath to protect and defend. Don't go dragging out the names of the dead, however, to support your own sensibilities.
I just hope they don't allow you to "save game". You don't get that option in war.
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the fish was THAT BIG, I swear (Score:3, Insightful)
For those "offended" by this, the game play is based on first-hand accounts by VETERANS.
And no one ever paints themselves in a better light than what really transpired?
I'm not offended by a videogame, but those guys obviously have a biased view of the events, so I'm a tad offended by your inappropriate use of quotation marks and by your flawed belief that a first-hand account is equivalent to an objective view of events.
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How about the civilians of Falluja? After all, it was their homes that were blown up, their families that were murdered.
Wasn't that the reason the US troops went in?
To stop the killing and terrorizing of Fallujahs' civilians by the insurgents, many if not most of which were not Iraqis but jihadists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc? Isn't that what basically turned the war around for the Coalition, that the civilians were tired of being bullied, held as hostages/human shields, and killed by all the fore
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The "insurgents" controlling Fallujah were overwhelmingly local Iraqis, some of which were islamists. Fallujah had for a long time been a center for the resistance to the US occupation, and some of the first larger confrontations between the occupation and the Iraqis happened in Fallujah. You may remember that the citizens of Fallujah demonstrated to get the occupation forces to leave a school, but were fired upon [commondreams.org].
This led to widespread anger in Iraq and particularly Fallujah. As the strength and resolve of
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The "insurgents" controlling Fallujah were overwhelmingly local Iraqis, some of which were islamists. Fallujah had for a long time been a center for the resistance to the US occupation, and some of the first larger confrontations between the occupation and the Iraqis happened in Fallujah. You may remember that the citizens of Fallujah demonstrated to get the occupation forces to leave a school, but were fired upon.
This led to widespread anger in Iraq and particularly Fallujah. As the strength and resolve of
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"Hint: Anti-war, liberal/Democrat, pro-jihadi, United Nations, and war-protest websites and sources with obvious anti-West, anti-US, anti-Bush, and anti-war agendas don't count as citation."
On that days, even CNN made clear rebels in Fallujah were mostly (if not all) Iraquis themselves. I still remember US army telling they were going to go into by such and such date so everybody that didn't want to be killed should flee away.
I am not going to go into the ethics or if the US army was right or not in this p
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Rainbow Six did this. The effect was, if you got shot, you re-started and tried again. It could be very frustrating when you are clearing the final room of terrorists, and get shot ... or worse, kill the terrorists but a hostage panics and runs in the line of fire. (That's still one of my most memorable "Nooooo!" moments from a game.)
NO different than Black Hawk Down (Score:5, Insightful)
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Outrage leads to bloody revolt. (Score:2, Insightful)
People who 'outrage' at the realism and graphic nature of art, in a hope that such a reaction does anything but reenforce the purpose of its exhibition, obviously have no idea what the point of art is. So... maybe someone should tell them. The point of art, is to evoke emotion. The more you 'outrage' at art, the more effective said art is. You cannot really argue with art by outraging at its exposition. All you do is affirm its effectiveness and the reason we have a need for such art to exist.
If gore and r
Oblig Penny Arcade ref. (Score:5, Interesting)
Interview with 'Grandpa' on 12/6/07 about WWII and Gaming [penny-arcade.com]:
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Horse puckey.
Little boys have been shooting each other with imaginary guns since guns have been around.
Before then, they used to play with sticks and pretended they were sword.
But, no, let's not be killing each other in games. Let's [b]strategize[/b] instead. Go play some chess where the killing is abstracted and the point is to assassinate the king instead.
Let's not pretend that playing games that allow us to kill and defeat the enemy hasn't been with us since time immemorial and isn't a part of the huma
It's the Daily Mail. (Score:2)
"Many people have now had a chance to react" (Score:2)
So, of the people who are currently going frothy at the lips with outrage at this game, exactly how many of them have actually seen it, let alone played it?
Something tells me this is the usual rent-a-rage that the conservative press wheels out whenever they get tired of being outraged at immigration and welfare.
Parallel to 1940's war films? (Score:2)
If they did have such qualms it didn't prevent them from making dozens upon dozens of such films. Is this just a case of "new era, new medium" or are games fundamentally different from film?
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"If they did have such qualms it didn't prevent them from making dozens upon dozens of such films."
They did such dozens upon dozens of films *because* such ethical qualms. So you know why bombs explode so far away from the camera point of view and why soldiers die with so little mud, so little suffering and so little blood? Do you know why on such films Germans are so bad guys beyond retaliation and US gals so heroic beyond sanctity? Do you know what "war effort" means?
If I were holding a gun in real life... (Score:2)
If I were holding a gun in real life, I'd want something better than mixed reactions, I want reactions of a 12yr old FPS player!
All before anyone actually plays the game. (Score:2)
What about the "educational" benefit? (Score:2)
I used to be a big flight simulator fan. I remember the difficulties of trying to ID friendlies on night bombing runs. When there was a big stink a while back about pilots killing civilians on a night run, my immediate thought was how difficult it is to ID targets at night, miles up in the air, and traveling at 100s of yards a second. While not being anything close to a pilot, I had an elementary understanding of what pilots are going through (especially when you throw in the stress and emotions of doing
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If in most cultures killing is not ethically accepted, should not everything celebrating wars be truly immoral?
Countries that don't celebrate the sacrifices of their soldiers tend to have problems recruiting soldiers in following generations. They tend to get conquered by countries that can actually fight and win wars.
If they are lucky, they are conquered by nice countries [wikipedia.org] and get their independence back eventually. If not, they are conquered by somebody who keeps them [wikipedia.org].
Winning a war sucks. It's just that lo
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Funnily enough, quite a lot. Dulce et decorum est and all that. People
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When you're dead, all your $49.95 software shows from then on is a cross on a military graveyard. You have to buy another copy to join the game again.
A few MMORPG games do have permanent death. [wikipedia.org] There's something to be said for that. Few of them are A titles, though.
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Except that in the case of XBL they call that getting banned by MS.
More to the point, you shouldn't give a player the same type of consequence that he would get if he were caught hacking a server or using a cheaterbox to play with.
Being effectively punished as a cheater just because you died is unfair.
Particularly if the death surprises you by being permanent, and it will be a very ugly surprise indeed if it's not disclosed adequately BEFORE you plunk down a non-refundable wad of cash to buy the game. Play
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Uh, who are the bad guys?
Who do you root for when watching Red Dawn?
Go Wolverines!
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The Wolverines aren't fanatics who snuck in from Canada, they're a bunch of unfortunate teenagers unwillingly pulled into the war.
The Wolverines don't bomb the church and markets in Calumet with the express intention of mass murder.
The Wolverines risk their own lives to save civilians rather than use them as human shields.
And if you want to compare the US to the Soviets, show
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Ignorance and apathy are the two most dangerous diseases of our time, and very difficult to cure. Take the Red Pill.
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"The purpose of this (and other) video games is to desensitize people to violence and make them believe war is necessary and ok. Why do you think mainstream media loves to report on violence and other more trivial things,"
Because it sells?
" rather than keeping us up to date on what the Congress and/or Senate has been doing"
Because it sells less?
Seriously: do you really think there's some kind of conspiration so mainstream media publish blood and misery in order to desensitize population while convinced they