Starker on 28/3/2021 at 02:18
Quote Posted by DaBeast
Are there any games based on real wars that do?
Yes, of course. There are quite a few games that explore the civilian perspective of armed conflict. Valiant Hearts, This War of Mine, Through The Darkest of Times... Hell, you could even make an argument that Spec Ops: The Line was basically all about modern military adventurism of the US.
Not saying that all these games are necessarily great at depicting war, but they are considerably more nuanced than making "fun combat puzzles" out of breaching civilian buildings and trying to make war not political.
heywood on 28/3/2021 at 13:38
Quote Posted by catbarf
Frankly, I can't remember Call of Duty ever billing itself as survival horror, or having interviews with veterans talking about being scared to die on their kid's birthday. The industry standard is stoic grizzled special forces operators fighting evil caricature terrorist supervillains (Middle Eastern, Russian, or both) while rock music blares; pretty much War Is Fun writ large. So this is at least big step up from that.
On the other hand, I think it's a step down.
Grizzled special forces operators fighting evil caricature terrorist supervillains is a power fantasy, not that far off of James Bond and Jason Bourne.
It's one thing to create a fictional fantasy setting with a super-human protagonist fighting with the good guys against the evil terrorists. People enjoy that because it's escapeism. But it's a different thing to suggest that this fantasy is actually accessible in the real world - just join the Marines and you could do this too. That's what I find distasteful about shooters set in real events that are pretending to be realistic, and this one goes the extra mile in pretending to be realistic by using actual Marines who were there in their marketing.
Whitewashing, one-sidedness, politics, etc. are secondary issues. No matter how hard they try, video games can never give anyone even a small taste of what it's like to be in a war. And they wouldn't ever try because it wouldn't be fun. But here we have a game, that I presume will be escapist fun for the people who play it, set in a real world battle with the Marines who were really there helping to sell it as the real thing. That's what I find distasteful about it.
henke on 28/3/2021 at 16:36
Quote Posted by DaBeast
There was no political message in the video
What. Ok, look. The whole thing is incredibly skewed in favor or portraying the Americans as the heroes. When they do intervew some Iraqis the reason they give for staying in the city is "stubborness", with no mention of the fact that adult males were forbidden from leaving the city. The US soldiers are humanised with stories of how they missed their kids birthdays and the Iraqis are dehumanised to the point of being PROCEDURALLY GENERATED. The real geography of Fallujah is so inconsequential that they're gonna just go ahead and procedurally generate buildings in the name of replayability. The only way you can look at this video and think it has no political message is if you already agree 100% with the politics behind it.
If you truly are interested in hearing the perspective from the other side, Rami Ismail did a very good (
https://twitter.com/tha_rami/status/1374448997876736011) video+twitter thread digging into all the issues with it.
Starker on 28/3/2021 at 20:22
Yeah, from the promotion materials to the developer statements, so far everything seems to point to that it is pretty much the type of game Spec Ops: The Line was ruthlessly eviscerating.
Now all that's left to do is for someone to make a mod to put the Spec Ops loading screen tips in the game and the irony is complete.
catbarf on 29/3/2021 at 00:00
Quote Posted by heywood
But it's a different thing to suggest that this fantasy is actually accessible in the real world - just join the Marines and you could do this too.
Does the presentation of the game actually strike you as a desirable fantasy? With the Marines describing in detail how many of their unit died, and the devs billing it as 'survival horror', it doesn't sound like the design goal is to make you think the Second Battle of Fallujah was awesome and encourage you to enlist.
That's in stark contrast to contemporary military games that build power fantasies out of recognizable organizations and conflicts behind paper-thin aliases. We're not talking about James Bond stopping a space laser; games that leverage the appearance and participants of modern conflicts are inherently commenting on them even if they don't explicitly identify locales. The US Army is actively using Call of Duty as a recruitment tool- selling power fantasy as attainable reality is the bread and butter of recruitment propaganda. Writing it off as harmless escapism seems downright apologetic.
I think depicting real conflicts should be within the purview of videogames if handled properly, just as it is with film. Games have the potential to use player agency to make them confront uncomfortable truths in a more personal way than films; they don't have to all be fun power fantasy. A game with an honest portrayal of the war crimes, that treats Iraqis as real people rather than dehumanized targets, that acknowledges civilian casualties and the decisions made by Coalition forces (see: bombing mosques), would be a lot closer to Spec Ops: The Line than to Call of Duty. But if they're omitting all of those elements, then even if the portrayal of life as a Marine is authentically awful, it's at best half-truth.
Starker on 29/3/2021 at 03:38
I mean, even Call of Duty has its tragic heroic bits meant to show that war is hell in a very Hollywood sort of way. Like the nuke thing. Not a desirable fantasy, but still a fantasy.
faetal on 29/3/2021 at 12:53
I assume it is some kind of desirable fantasy since it's intended to be sold for money as an entertainment product to people whose interests are games and tactical combat.
EDIT: Also agree with what Henke says. Pitching Gunnery Sgt Biceps McHero and his crack squad of flawed but folksy guys just trying to get home for thanksgiving vs Middle Eastern Assholes 1 through 5000 is more than a bit tone deaf.
As is calling that scenario survival horror - a genre pretty unevenly tending towards surviving against something either not human, or completely psychotic.
And the idea of patching in the Spec Ops load screen text is gold dust.
catbarf on 29/3/2021 at 15:08
Quote Posted by faetal
I assume it is some kind of desirable fantasy since it's intended to be sold for money as an entertainment product to people whose interests are games and tactical combat.
This War of Mine is sold for money as an entertainment product to people whose interests are games and resource management. It obviously isn't promoting being a civilian caught in a warzone as a desirable fantasy. You're not supposed to walk away from Spec Ops viewing mass-murder of civilians as a desirable fantasy, either.
I thought it was pretty well established that gameplay alone doesn't equal endorsement. Plenty of valid reasons to dislike this title (that's a good point about 'survival horror' reflecting US-centric framing that further dehumanizes the Iraqis) without throwing the rest of the medium under the bus.
heywood on 29/3/2021 at 15:52
Quote Posted by catbarf
Does the presentation of the game actually strike you as a desirable fantasy? With the Marines describing in detail how many of their unit died, and the devs billing it as 'survival horror', it doesn't sound like the design goal is to make you think the Second Battle of Fallujah was awesome and encourage you to enlist.
That's in stark contrast to contemporary military games that build power fantasies out of recognizable organizations and conflicts behind paper-thin aliases. We're not talking about James Bond stopping a space laser; games that leverage the appearance and participants of modern conflicts are inherently commenting on them even if they don't explicitly identify locales. The US Army is actively using Call of Duty as a recruitment tool- selling power fantasy as attainable reality is the bread and butter of recruitment propaganda. Writing it off as harmless escapism seems downright apologetic.
faetal beat me to it. It has to be a desirable fantasy otherwise it won't sell. So we'll see what the market says.
Regarding Call of Duty, I'm aware of it's usefulness in recruiting and for that reason I'm not a fan of that game either. My point was that Six Days is worse because it's marketing itself as being authentic. Call of Duty is fiction and everybody knows that. But Highwire is saying this is a simulation of an actual real world battle and we have the Marines who were really there on our team to help make it authentic.
Quote:
I think depicting real conflicts should be within the purview of videogames if handled properly, just as it is with film. Games have the potential to use player agency to make them confront uncomfortable truths in a more personal way than films; they don't have to all be fun power fantasy. A game with an honest portrayal of the war crimes, that treats Iraqis as real people rather than dehumanized targets, that acknowledges civilian casualties and the decisions made by Coalition forces (see: bombing mosques), would be a lot closer to Spec Ops: The Line than to Call of Duty. But if they're omitting all of those elements, then even if the portrayal of life as a Marine is authentically awful, it's at best half-truth.
I think accurately portraying war is impossible in both games and film. It's not that you can't sell a morality play. It's that you can't sell the mundane. For 99% of the forces, war is full of boredom and repetitive work and filling dead time. Even the people at the tip of the spear spend most of their time planning and preparing.
DaBeast on 29/3/2021 at 17:29
Quote:
The only way you can look at this video and think it has no political message is if you already agree 100% with the politics behind it.
So either I agree with you or I'm literally Hitler, nice, fair and balanced, not at all reactionary.
Quote:
If you truly are interested in hearing the perspective from the other side, Rami Ismail
I must be literal Hitler because haven't viewed the not at all biased, premium grade, curated media? thats not at all insulting...
Quote Posted by henke
What. Ok, look. The whole thing is incredibly skewed in favor or portraying the Americans as the heroes. When they do intervew some Iraqis the reason they give for staying in the city is "stubborness", with no mention of the fact that adult males were forbidden from leaving the city.
With that logic, surely every game or film/tv series ought to be lambasted for the same reasons? Band of Brothers episodes opened with interviews from the soldiers who were there and they didn't kneel or beg forgiveness for bombing Dresden. Look. this amounts to engaging in whataboutisms and its futile at worst, self-serving at best. This game clearly isn't about the decisions that led to the 2nd Iraq war, it might only loosely feature decisions closer to the ground (like ordering "fighting age males back" out of fear of insurgents hiding among the civilians), its quite clearly, specifically, about the "marines' experiences" and trying to translate that into a video game...that features some replayability. If you watched the video and immediately envision MAGA hat neckbeards jerking off over it, that says more about you than the game.
If I didn't agree at all with the politics behind either Afghanistan or Iraq 2 would that surprise you? I know I'd feel a bit of a presumptuous twat :tsktsk:
Quote Posted by Starker
Yes, of course. There are quite a few games that explore the civilian perspective of armed conflict. Valiant Hearts, This War of Mine, Through The Darkest of Times... Hell, you could even make an argument that Spec Ops: The Line was basically all about modern military adventurism of the US.
Not saying that all these games are necessarily great at depicting war, but they are considerably more nuanced than making "fun combat puzzles" out of breaching civilian buildings and trying to make war not political.
Not quite what I was thinking of when it comes to war games, and although they're great, they also pretty niche, but point accepted.
Can those themes adequately be applied/explored in much bigger scale games? Arguably Spec Ops tried, I'm not sure how well it succeeded.
I was thinking more about how in all the Total War games they don't really bring up the horrible rape that tends to follow the pillaging etc. A game, much like a film, tends to have a narrower scope.
Is it the passing of time or general ignorance that leads us to stuff like 300, glamorizing a nation of child buggering slavers who gave zero shits about freedom unless it was their own (not much different to anyone else at the time, but still).
Quote Posted by heywood
I think accurately portraying war is impossible in both games and film. It's not that you can't sell a morality play. It's that you can't sell the mundane. For 99% of the forces, war is full of boredom and repetitive work and filling dead time. Even the people at the tip of the spear spend most of their time planning and preparing.
Arma/OFP nails the boredom part. It was effective, but I think I'm too old to sit for an hour in an online game only to do nothing, then roll on the next round.