How Will Contemporary War Games Affect Veterans? 288
An anonymous reader writes "Recently, video game developers have begun to make games about current conflicts the world over. Many veterans and current military personnel now take an active role in the video game community. Are game companies running the risk of walking into a public relations disaster when making games about current wars? More importantly, how will veterans react to playing games about a conflict in which they have participated? From the article: 'To portray conflict in a way that not only accurately depicts the acts of war, but does so in a manner that takes into account the sacrifices of soldiers within some sort of moral framing is a complicated matter. Now add to this the idea that such depictions are essentially created as entertainment and to make money. It is certainly mind numbing when looked at from a social perspective. ... Now try and apply this dynamic to a more recent conflict such as the Vietnam War or the current conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Considering that the latter wars are still in progress, the ability for a game developer to accurately gauge the morality of such a conflict is limited at best. To make a game that takes these factors into account while trying to create something that is both entertaining and capable of mass appeal among the gaming community is near impossible.'"
We caught a glimpse of this last year with the reactions to Six Days In Fallujah.
Bad guys (Score:4, Interesting)
What about the other side which is always portrayed as "bad guys" and are who the player tries to kill and ultimately to win the game you need to beat them? I think the games affect those more.
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So if I'm a guy who builds explosive devices to detonate in crowded markets or on school buses, I should get mad that kids get to play soldiers who kill me and men like me? Poor me!!
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Or you could worry about making a fun game (Score:5, Insightful)
And not trying to push your anti-war message. Seriously, it is a GAME, it is meant to be fun, not realistic, not educational. If you don't like that, don't buy them.
If you want to try to make a game like you are talking about, where you have a message you want to ram down people's throats, well be my guest. However don't be surprised if, like most "message" games it completely and totally bombs (the Christians have tried this for years).
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I guess you missed my point. I was replying to the AC stating that a game seen from "the other side" would be about suicide bombers and ended with "oh poor me". Stupid stereotype, s someone else said (but I think the "avoid the missile J&R" might actually be fun :P
Anyway I don't see how game would be less fun if you were playing afghani guerrillas shooting at "invading" UN troops. It might actually make the game stand out of the crowd in terms of gameplay.
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Anyway I don't see how game would be less fun if you were playing afghani guerrillas shooting at "invading" UN troops. It might actually make the game stand out of the crowd in terms of gameplay.
You have to take social programming into account to better understand what's considered 'fun'. My ex-army/afghan vet friend couldn't enjoy a game as the guy who killed his squad ('allegedly' - he apparently has a few versions).
And most people believe verbatim what the big news networks tell them to believe, so how could they play a game with a conflicting premise? (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN - all share certain sacred beliefs about the forever war, and differ only in unimportant details)
But I do understand you
Re:Or you could worry about making a fun game (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, it is a GAME, it is meant to be fun,
If you want to make it fun then don't put it into a current day war, better yet, don't put it into any war that ever happened, as you will just end up twisting and mutilating history. If you need war then do some fancy fantasy or sci-fi or whatever that is far removed from reality. If you portrait current day war you have a responsibility to do it at least somewhat accurately.
No, you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but I get tired of this "You have to make things realistic," crowd. I don't care if you think that's what's needed to prevent war (here's a hint: it's not) that's not how things work. Games are for fun, and they can use a wide variety of topics for that, including those which themselves aren't fun. They don't have any "responsibility" to make it real, no matter how much you claim.
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The responsibility aspect is that real modern wars involve real actual people. You are getting your jollies over the portrayal of events that are the most tragic moments of real people's lives. I mean, sure, if that is how you like your games. Still, I think it is not very respectful or classy. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/slackerwink/iraqfamily3.jpg [photobucket.com] This girl must be in her teens now. Imagine that by some unlikely circumstance she was in your neighborhood. She had the blood of her parents s
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Or, if they do publish such a game, you could choose to not purchase it.
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This CD has been waking me up for a couple years now. This morning I had a powerful reaction when I heard the words, "With, without. And who'll deny, it's what the fighting's all about?" I love compression in communication. It's so cool how they reduced the enormity of war and conflict to two words: with, without.
That's accurately portraying a war. And "Dark Side of the Moon" is one of the biggest-selling
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If you want to make it fun then don't put it into a current day war, better yet, don't put it into any war that ever happened, as you will just end up twisting and mutilating history.
You can make a fun game *and* mutilate history at the same time. There's no reason you shouldn't.
If you portrait current day war you have a responsibility to do it at least somewhat accurately.
Why?
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What part of the airport scene in Modern Warfare 2 was "meant to be fun"?
Why don't you just say that today's games are creative works (sometimes) no less than movies, and not everything in a movie is meant to be fun.
Art is what it is, and there is a surprising variety in what people enjoy.
I'm just surprised people are talking about the "public relations nightmare" that's waiting for game manufacturers of realistic war games, but nobody explains ho
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I thought that was GTA.
Re:Bad guys (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, I understand and respect your position (even if I obviously don't agree with the reasons which placed you in Iraq). I was just applying the same sort of stereotype as the GP used to the other side of the coin.
Still, in the context of a game set in a contemporary war, there is no reason NOT to set the player as the "bad guy". Apart from the game play aspect (you are fighting against a technologically much stronger force), it might also be interesting to use the Single Player storyline to explore th
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Actually, I understand and respect your position (even if I obviously don't agree with the reasons which placed you in Iraq).
But you accuse him and other soldiers of killing people because they are bored, or over-reacting which if it does happen, happens rarely this is the media's wet dream story, and then justify your comments because the GGGGP said the enemy would be a suicide bomber or a IED builder which happen multiple times every day. You are a typical liberal pretending to support our troops but silently hating them and all they stand for.
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Scrap the "also". Cases of civilians being shot by western troops because they were erroneously thought to be suicide bombers are documented in the Afghanistan War Diary leak.
This will definitely boggle your mind, but you can support soldiers in that you don't want them to die and you want them to return safely home, whi
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Re:Bad guys (this shit doesn't equate) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad guys (Score:5, Insightful)
volunteering to fight an illegal recolonization effort and you want respect? It's precisely that sort of thinking that has them wanting to kill you in the first place. Think long and hard about what you said. Seriously. There are countless british and french army types who volunteered to help 'civilize' various parts of the world (including Iraq), and countless colonial troops of various countries who wanted to variously bring religion to 'savages', wipe out the natives to make living space etc. Volunteering to help a colonial power expand it's ambitions is not worthy of respect. It is worthy of our disgust and disdain. If you idiots would stop volunteering they'd be forced to make truly difficult choices about what to do in Iraq. Is it worth conscription? Even after what happened in Vietnam? Right now they pile on the money and they get mercenaries, I'm sorry PMC's, and volunteers, none of whom are helping the situation. The reason, after you apparently 'liberated' them from Saddam Hussein they still want to kill you is that your still there, and still volunteering to go, (and when you are there tend to have a habit of killing innocent people, though that by definition is not intentional). It would be comically farcical if it wasn't so serious. Iraq, whether there are colonization forces there or not is a teetering mess, because it's the hub of the clash between saudi and iran for status as the dominant regional power, stabilization comes when those two stop funding a proxy war, at least temporarily.
One could reasonably argue that Afghanistan at least started out as a different situation. It certainly isn't now. But back in the 1990's and 2000's the driving forces behind the Anti-US movement were related to Israel, Egypt, and the US forces in Saudi, not all of which were particularly legitimate grievances (hence the terrorism for all its flair remained mostly rare, and of somewhat less dramatic support). Since the US recolonization effort in Iraq, you've put a giant beacon to the world saying 'hey look at us, all that crazy evil stuff OBL claimed we were doing but weren't, well, now we are!'
And no, a /. posting isn't likely to change your mind, or your income tax free + 225/mo imminent danger pay either. But your sob story of 'oh I'm in Abu Ghraib, I volunteered and they still want to kill me, you should respect me' isn't going to change my view. I'll presume you weren't involved in that previous business in abu ghraib with the torture etc. The people trying to kill you are all volunteers too, though they're more likely to be in it for an ideology (however crazy that may be) than the money. So ok I'll be at least sympathetic to you for that, at least you're probably in it for the money rather than for some misguided ideology about bringing some combination of Christianity or civilization to iraq. So no, you don't have my respect, you might have my sympathy, if you were so hard up for work and money to feed yourself this seemed like your last resort. At least if you learn arabic while you're there you can get a respectable job importing or exporting stuff with the middle east, just as a tip, don't tell them you were in Iraq, unless you want them to try and kill you during a meeting.
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I often hear this from intelligent geeks. It's a viewpoint issue, imo. You assume that everyone thinks as you do and that nobody would enlist for good reasons. There are good reasons, you just don't think they are. To support and defend the constitution. Dad and Grandpa, and all the way down the line, were soldiers. You feel it is your calling. You want to protect the weak. You want to be a hero. You want to serve your country.
Then of course there are good reasons that people generally look down on
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I'm glad the military follows "bad orders" from the civilian government. It's not their job or their privilege to judge the merit of orders at that level.
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On a ground level, if your commander says "Rape that girl, I want to send a message" then yeah. On a high level, where the country has elected the president, and the president says "Go attack this country"... I don't care what the generals think. Civilian control of the military is such an important principle that it's worth an almost unlimited amount of bad decisions. What you're talking about is basically a coup by generals.
What are you going to do when some general's idea of bad orders doesn't coincide w
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Are you in the US (or other supporting country)?
Do you pay taxes?
If so, based on your comments, I have to wonder what your real convictions are.
To paraphrase your own argument:
YOU are responsible for the war, as a group, you tax payers. If most of you refused to pay taxes, specifically stating the cause, the war wouldn't have happened, regardless of what the "leaders" said.
So, put your actions where your words are.
I was one of the thousands that specifically asked you all not to go.
Well, whoo hoo. Good for you. Now, did you stop funding it? No? Why not? Maybe being put
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It's why you have this huge slew of World War II FPSes because the bad guys were very clear in these cases.
It's interesting how other nations are now being portrayed less and less as bad guys because they're potential paying customers. More and more, you're seeing games which allow you to play other nationalities a
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The game should offer the ability to play either side. Problem solved.
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Shame that Project Reality is not remotely realistic and falls into the trap of portraying player characters as though soldiers were all 90 year old alzheimers patients with parkinsons and horrible arthritis that left their glasses at home...
Re:Bad guys (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice stereotyping there. Terrorists are a completely different aspect than national defense forces. Did Iraq do so? No, nor did Vietnam or any other country that USA has attacked. North Korea and Iran haven't done anything like that either, but still US demands them to stop developing their defenses. Doesn't it kind of make sense for a country to develop same kind of defense mechanisms than what other countries have? Would you feel good if North Korea had nuclear weapons and USA didn't and they said they'll attack USA if they don't stop developing them?
Then there's games like Modern Warfare 2 where Russians are portrayed as bad guys. The entertainment industry alone is a big propaganda machine. It's quite boring how one-sided it always is.
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"Then there's games like Modern Warfare 2 where Russians are portrayed as bad guys."
One thing I liked about 'Operation Flashpoint' was that you could play as Americans, Russians or resistance fighters, so you could see all sides of the war.
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and truly experience the level of suck there is to be a grunt, as your character will die nearly randomly some double digit or more times during he first mission alone. This from bullets fired by enemies you had no chance of seeing.
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It is probably unfair for the US to demand that North Korea or Iran disarm themselves. But as an American, I don't care. North Korea has threatened to attack the US, and Iran has a day of hate directed towards the US. The call the US the great satan, and have threatened to try to destroy our allies if po
Re:Bad guys (Score:5, Informative)
"And I don't want those two countries, ruled by a dictatorship, to have weapons that will enable them to carry out their threats."
Presumably you missed the part where Iran was a democracy before America and Britain staged a coup to oust its democratic government in the 50s?
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Yeah, actually, I did. I wasn't even born yet.
Oh my god. Aren't we supposed to know things that happened before we were born? So much time lost in History classes.
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And yet, they wouldn't even be threatening us with anything if we'd left them the fuck alone instead of giving support to an insane man in order to oust a ruler who wouldn't give us the deal we wanted on oil. Is the war in Iraq about oil? Yes, fifty years later. It's the fallout from our fuckery.
I think the message was that maybe we should concentrate less on imperialism and more on cooperation so that people don't feel like they need nuclear weapons for protection from US, or should I say, USA?
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We called Iran part of the Axis of Evil, and put them on a to-be-destroyed list. I don't think we realize how often people in other parts of the world reference that really, really stupid speech.
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It was the typical right wing arrogance when dealing with other nations that caused most of the trouble.
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And because you don't care about fairness towards others, those others have no choice but to arm themselves so they can defend themselves against you.
Being unfair towards others generally tends to lead to that.
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Then there's games like Modern Warfare 2 where Russians are portrayed as bad guys.
Did you even play the game? My impression was that the overzealous American Military Industrial Complex was the "bad guys" for starting WWIII.
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I don't think he did considering that the bad guys weren't "Russians" but a group of "ultra-nationalists" that you fought with the aid of the rest of the Russians.
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Then there's games like Modern Warfare 2 where Russians are portrayed as bad guys. The entertainment industry alone is a big propaganda machine. It's quite boring how one-sided it always is.
Not just that, but there are two types of russians; loyalists and ultranationalists. And both are bad in some respect but the ultras are "baddest". They even get their politics completely confused between the two MW games. Some are loyalists (this is supposed to be either actual Russian government forces, or so-called loyalists to the government, who fight along side them.) and ultranationalists, who are either supposed to be some kind of neo-nazi group, OR depending on where you read on the internet, they
Re:Bad guys (Score:4, Insightful)
First: I'm military, just a disclaimer.
There's a difference, though even WE screw it up sometimes, between a 'terrorist' and an 'insurgent'.
What's the difference? The terrorist goes after civilians with marginal connection to any occupying military. Insurgents go after military forces.
Let's take a roadside bomb - if they deliberately detonate it when a schoolbus passes, they're terrorists. If they blow it up when a military convoy is passing, they're insurgents, even if civilians are killed. The deaths of the civilians are collateral/accidental/secondary effect.
As a military member, I'll do my best to kill both; differences in treatment comes later, when the terrorists end up on trial for murder who the insurgents are released when the conflict is over/settlement negotiated.
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I strongly disagree. Sometimes the future of the human race depends on not surrendering even in the face of overwhelming odds. YOU might die, but others will go on.
Well I'm not talking about surrender on an individual level. If your group surrenders and comes to acceptable peace terms, that's better than fighting just for the sake of pride. I don't understand your argument about the future of the human race depending on it, since what I'm saying has happened so many times in history and the human race is still around.
Let's talk about some concrete examples. Japan in WWII, France in the Franco-Prussian War, Egypt under Rome, Persia under Alexander the Great, and the So
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Repeating that problem because a bunch of people can't admit that perhaps the wars were of question
Movies (Score:2)
Just look at the movie industry to see how it has worked out.
Why target games specifically? (Score:5, Insightful)
For decades we've had films which are "essentially created as entertainment and to make money" and which depict major conflicts, often with input from people who fought in them. They'll often attack more recent subject matter than games will, too.
Not realistic at all (Score:2)
I'm sorry but anyone who thinks that a first person shooter, no matter how "realistic" the blood and guts is anything like actually going out and fighting has needs a reality check. They've either never played the game, or they've been playing for too long or they are just plain idiots.
Same goes for the movies. They might be used as recruiting tools (chiefly for cannon fodder as anyone dumb enough to think they're going to be Maverick from Top Gun clearly is too stupid and naive to be useful as much else).
I
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I'm sorry but anyone who thinks that a first person shooter, no matter how "realistic" the blood and guts is anything like actually going out and fighting has needs a reality check. They've either never played the game, or they've been playing for too long or they are just plain idiots.
Same goes for the movies. They might be used as recruiting tools (chiefly for cannon fodder as anyone dumb enough to think they're going to be Maverick from Top Gun clearly is too stupid and naive to be useful as much else).
You've clearly never watched Band of Brothers or The Pacific. They were placed in a conflict very different than the ones we are involved in now, but they were two of the most moving series I've ever watched and it truly changed the way I look at combat.
I'd say that The Wire had the same affect in terms of my perspective on crime.
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I think MUCH worse than anything to do with current wars (propaganda will always be around), which we still have the ability to challenge, not participate in, or stop entirely, is rewriting history.
Watch U-571. That teaches American kids that America captured the Enigma machine. Alan Turing would be turning in his grave watching that and it does an horrendous dis-service to the other countries involved in that war. Trouble is that it's hard to challenge something that seeps into the social subconscious a
What about movies? (Score:5, Interesting)
So why are movies entitled to depict ongoing wars for profit and entertainment without this risk for backlash?
How many movies haven't already been made about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, and often getting critical praise for their guts to comment on something so fresh and close to heart?
Re:What about movies? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:What about movies? (Score:5, Informative)
Do they?
By most accounts, Pathologic is a bleak, depressing game--yet some people find it quite compelling anyway, if they can look past its flaws (most notably an incomprehensible translation from Russian to English). From page 2 of the review "Butchering Pathologic" [rockpapershotgun.com]:
And this is coming from a rave review that opens with:
Okay, so it contradicts itself on whether Pathologic is a "game" or "not a game". But that's because there's a largely unexplored gray area in between, where something can play like a game--and be as rewarding as a game--without being "fun".
(If you want to read the full review of Pathologic, since there doesn't seem to be a good way to navigate between the pages: part 1 [rockpapershotgun.com], part 2 [rockpapershotgun.com], part 3 [rockpapershotgun.com])
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Really? I've yet to see large crowds walking out of a war movie before it ends, so if they're *capable* of showing that war is hell they certainly aren't doing it.
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I've yet to see large crowds walking out of a war movie before it ends, so if they're *capable* of showing that war is hell they certainly aren't doing it.
A live 120mm mortar round in going off in the middle of the movie theater should do it. Then the (surviving) people will have a fairly good idea about what war really is.
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Tardiggetydarnation! Someone's leaked our latest anti-piracy plan!
Yours in the MPAA,
Kilgore Trout
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Oh, is that what these 3d movie technology is about?
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Games, by definition, have to make war fun.
No. Games have to make war a compelling experience.
Silent Hill is not fun. Silent Hill is a frightening, hellish experience.
Heavy Rain is not fun. Heavy Rain is a gripping action drama.
Diablo isn't fun. Diablo is a Pavlovian masterpiece of reward pacing.
Most MMO's cease being fun in the middle, and become compelling reward treadmills with social aspects.
Flower isn't fun. Flower is peaceful, relaxing, and gorgeous.
EA Sports Active isn't fun. It has a compellin
Moral Framework (Score:2)
I'm looking forward to 'Grand Theft Auto: Baghdad' myself.
father-in-law Vietnam vet (Score:4, Interesting)
I did find one aspect of war games that upset him. He watched me playing Call of Duty or some game like that, and I was playing the offline campaign. A bunch of allied AI troops were in my way and I shot them down while laughing. He said that I, or maybe just my actions, were "sick" and said something else about how you shouldn't fire on your own guys, then got up and left the room.
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But shooting civilian "gooks" was A-OK?
Anyhow, the game designers don't really need to create new war games. Brush up the grap
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The reality now is that many G.I.s will be playing video games while deployed. Nothing new, deployments have a lot of boring time to kill (pun intended)
and most of them aren't going to get their panties in a wad.
Except for some old folks, the military is a young group who have grown up gaming. Just make good, interesting games.
Re:father-in-law Vietnam vet (Score:5, Interesting)
So while I could have or should have considered his perspective on the game, there's nothing "a little off" about my outlook.
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TFA is sorta right. Key: USE GOOD JUDGEMENT (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess the point that TFA is trying to make is that WW2, Vietnam games are tolerated because those are OLD, long-gone wars that don't have much resonance with most people these days. It doesn't get portrayed in the media every day, etc, etc... But games set in unresolved warzones are more tricky because fight hasn't finished and people still have skin in the game.
That's true and all, but I don't think it means you can't make modern conflicts into games. It just means good judgement is much more important. You can't apply some formula, you have to actually think about how you portray each side and how people are going to react. You have to be careful, but there is still a lot of room for creativity.
Ummm, like anything else probably (Score:2)
There will be some people who whine and bitch that it should be allowed since whatever their chosen cause/event is cannot be the subject of anything fun. There will be others who will say how great it is that something is shining light on their experience and so on. Ultimately the commercial success or failure will largely be determined by how much fun the game is, the specifics of the setting won't matter so much.
Part of the reason you don't see games based on more modern conflicts is that they aren't goin
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If you roll your eyes when people emphasize fun in games then you are probably one of the gamers who cries for overly realistic games that they wouldn't actually play if they came out. I see all sorts of people online scream and rant about how things have to be perfectly real or they hate it. However both their buying patters and the sales of overly realistic games says that in fact like everyone else what they really want is to have fun.
If you want, feel free to make a mod for a game, or your own game with
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"Fun" gets overused as a blanket statement about games. Even basic things like "that game is using exploration for fun" or "that game confuses the player in a fun puzzle to solve." Neither of those sound terribly uncommon when people talk about "fun" in videogames, but I was actually just referring to the movie Inception. Would you primarily say that Inception was "fun", or that nearly all movies are "fun"? Then why are games like Metal Gear referred to as "fun"?
The problem is that once you take the com
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I do not understand why this is such a hard concept for people here to grasp. None of this is saying games cannot or should not have a good story, or good graphics, or high level mechanics or realism or any of those things. All I am saying is that fun has to take precedence. So any of the things is does have need to be because the make the game fun. That can be things like a compelling story that you want to follow, or detail graphics that immerse you in the experience or interesting game mechanics that kee
I AM a Marine. (Score:2, Informative)
Here's what you can quote me on; "No developer that can get close to a realistic warfare game without making it as unfun as war actually is."
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what the fuck? (Score:2)
We want art to be relevant, so has to talk about actual events or something. So, of course, we want games to talk about actual events. Movies can do it, so.. why not games?
The danger lies in the opposite, stupid games about killing zombified nazis... thas has not danger, but also not reward.
Realism will never be allowed (Score:5, Insightful)
A triple-A game costs $lots, and every developer wants to maximise returns. They want words like 'fun', and 'exciting' to be used by reviewers and players describing their games. Phrases like 'screams of the wounded', and 'dragging intestines' are right out. It doesn't matter how good physics engines get, or how much memory is in a PC; when bodies are shot, they will fall to the floor inert, and no amount of further shooting will do anything other than maybe nudge them about a bit. Enemies will have hit points, and once they're gone, they're dead, but until then, they're fully functional. Nobody's ever going to crawl away with a shattered kneecap, or frantically flail for their medkit trying to staunch a spurting artery.
There will never be children in a warzone, either as refugees or inhabitants. There will never be veiled and burqa'd women with suicide vests approaching soldiers at checkpoints. There will never be entire rows of houses filled with the dead, some still frozen in place with food in their hands, killed by cyanide gas bombs. What will be presented in-game will be the illusion of war, as seen from the safety and comfort of an armchair; sanitised by the news corporations who don't show you footage of anything that might actually upset you. Oddly enough, this doesn't extend to natural disasters, where they're often ghoulishly happy to show piles of fly-blown corpses, or 'dozers shoving piles of limed and flopping meat into vast unmarked graves.
It would be perfectly possible for a developer, hell, probably even some members of the modding community, to release a game that came a good deal closer to replicating the horrors of war than anything we've seen so far. Instead, I think they'll continue releasing things that are essentially toy soldiers, because nobody wants to be pilloried in the media for what amounts to trying to tell the truth.
You also run in to external restrictions (Score:4, Informative)
For example if you play Fallout 3, you'll discover you can't kill children. You can shoot them, but they just pass out and pop back up (critical NPCs do this too so you can't permanently screw over your game). Now why is that? It doesn't have to be that way by engine limitations, there are mods to change it. It also wasn't that was in the original Fallout. There not only could you kill children, you got a special evil perk for it which lead to more people wanting to kill you.
Well the reason is that in some countries, it is illegal to have a game where you can kill kids. In the case of the original Fallout, they had to modify it to make all the children go away (they replaced them with invisible sprites). In the case of Fallout 3, they opted for the path of least resistance and just made them unkillable, since some of the kids play a role in the plot and can't be removed.
Oh and games do sometimes go for some nasty scenes, even big ones. In Call of Duty 4 you play as a solider when a nuclear weapon detonates. You then are crawling around, trying to get out of your downed chopper, as you die.
However the real reason has nothing to do with "telling the truth" or any of the rest of the things you scream about. It is because people want to play games to have fun. It is the same reason many non-controversial choices are made in games. You'll notice that having food and water in a game at all is somewhat rare, and being forced to eat to survive is near non existent. Why? It's boring to worry about. So they dispense with that. Less realistic, but more fun.
Re:Realism will never be allowed (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to reference the Soldier of Fortune series of games. If you remember, they caused much controversy because they tried to depict actual gun wounds and realistic death sequences. (The first one was a bit too early to get decent graphics so it was all pixels anyway, but the second one was pretty good). A shotgun slug to the stomach meant guts would spill out. 7.62mm to the face...well it took a good chunk of face right off. Explosives meant severed limbs.
People were up in arms about it (no pun intended) because it was too realistic, and all kinds of restrictions were imposed on it. Personally, I thought surely this realism is a good thing. Why sugar-coat what combat is like? It didnt make the game any less fun, but more poignant. I took the time to realise that "thank god this is just a game", and that I dont have to do this in real life.
Re: (Score:2)
Oddly enough, this doesn't extend to natural disasters
In the case of casualties of war, they don't tend to show all the gory details because it reminds people that
a) those people are dead because Our Boys killed them; and
b) Our Boys are dying in the same ways
Both of those can have the effect of reducing or destroying popular support for the war.
In the case of natural disasters it's just an act of God, there's no one to blame and no support to be withdrawn.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
" Instead, I think they'll continue releasing things that are essentially toy soldiers, because nobody wants to be pilloried in the media for what amounts to trying to tell the truth."
While that moral high-horse may be a very comfortable, self-validating place to perch, my explanation would be more prosaic: nobody's going to release the game you describe because it's NOT ENTERTAINING and their jobs are to make something that will SELL.
Not sure how this got missed, but "games" are meant to be fun. Kids play
To make money. (Score:2)
Now add to this the idea that such depictions are essentially created as entertainment and to make money.
You do realise that the wars themselves are there to make money?
And if you don't think there's a certain segment of the public deriving entertainment from it, you have never been to the youtube channel where you can read the comments on videos showing Iraqi insurgents being killed by Apache gunfire.
At least the video games are honest about it.
Is Harry Patch still going? (Score:2)
Enjoy killing (Score:2)
Well, seeing how the US Army seems to (partially) enjoy killing and their wonderful power over civil, er, sorry, terrorists, I'm sure the veterans will like more video games like that.
(Yes, I read WikiLeaks)
Moral? (Score:2)
As a nation we have many secrets. Our public has no way to evaluate the morality of a war in which we were involved. And we can never judge the consequences of a war either. For example Adolph Hitler was subjected to the type of percussive shelling that is now known to cause serious brain injuries in the first World War. He was also gassed and the effects of that gassing may also include brain damage. He was hospitalized by the British to treat his gassing injuries after WWI ended. It may very wel
Penny Arcade posed an interesting question (Score:3, Interesting)
The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.
October 13 2003, Tycho posts [penny-arcade.com]:
Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again [penny-arcade.com]:
Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts [penny-arcade.com]:
Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.
On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post [penny-arcade.com]:
To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview [penny-arcade.com].
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.
What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.
There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo
Re: (Score:2)
As if anyone cared about veterans. (Score:2)
Just go to the streets and talk to the homeless, and you will see how many of them are veterans. Or just keep yourself in the comfort of your basement and see this guy's work: http://www.fotolog.com/mashuga/75578872 [fotolog.com]
Seriously, your people just doesn't care about them. So why bother?
Contemporary War Games suck (Score:2)
I was very excited when I heard about it, but then it just sucked. I'm now not expecting anything better from the upcoming contemporary Tron movie.
dZ.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's like you have entire cities composed of ghost towns occupied by nothing but soldiers, something that detracts from the experience and atmosphere.
On a similar note, there are also no children or killable children in most "violent" video games. They were not put in Oblivion and made unkillable in Fallout 3 because of moral objections. You don't see 'em in the
Re: (Score:2)
As Bertrand Russell once said: "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
Re: (Score:2)
"The real problem is a society that transforms such things as WAR into ENTERTAINMENT in any form. That is just plain sick and wrong."
That would be any warring society. War dances are entertainment too.
War is often useful, has been so through history, and since it trumps "everything else" it is depicted in "entertainment" and otherwise considered.
Re:This shit doesn't equate (enjoy killing) (Score:3, Interesting)