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Vietnam-Based Shooters - A Suitable Topic?
Thanks to GamePro for their 'Pro Vs. Pro' feature focusing on Vietnam-based combat games are justified in their choice of setting. Opinions vary from: "I can't say that I can ever look on Vietnam games as being in good taste", through: "..if it's handled with respect, not only to the soldiers but to the reality of the war and the people involved, then I'll be right there lined up", to: "If developers make the claim of 'historical accuracy', they owe it to the veterans, victims, and the audience to cast an unflinching look at the human consequences of war."
I think movies about historical wars and conflicts are appropriate; Blackhawk Down was one of the most horrifying films i have ever seen. I enjoyed it only in the sense that the filmmaking was really good and the movie exposed (as much as a movie can anyway) the moral dilemnas that urban warfare, and war in general bring about. Contrast this with a game, which is explictly supposed to be fun and enjoyable, and I think one could say that playing as an American soldier firing on young armed Vietcong children, is not, or at least SHOULD not be fun. Again, it's the fact that this actually happened that makes it offensive to me; make a game about evil psycho kids from the cornfields and i'll blast em with a laser gun, but the pain and horror this game would try to emulate is REAL.
anyway, just to be clear i don't think this should be legally prohibited or anything, i just think it's in bad taste.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
i'm chipping in here too.
.. umm. for example black hawk down(game) isn't that bad then but vietnam is? how is their traumatic event so horrible that it should be banned from culture(yeah, that's a real good way to handle such cultural-traumas, deny them totally).
and what makes games in this part any different from movies except those vets aren't likely to see those games even, if ever?
and.. eh.. why
the wars in games aren't that spesific usually anyways(you could change it easily to some other war by just changing some titles and graphics).
they should be happy that kids nowadays can learn of the 'wonders' of wars from games rather than firsthand(and not be totally ignorant of what war really is to promote it). it's the people that would like to twist history to their own ends that are dangerous..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
My dad also fought in Vietnam, and died from agent orange exposure years later(non-hogkins lymphoma for those interested).
The reason Vietnam is so "disliked" is because it was/became a political war and over time the soliders figured this out.
While I don't believe Iraq is a political war(i know many disagree no flames please), if the soliders ever started feeling this way, it could become like a Vietnam.
The average Nazi or Nazi supporter knew nothing of the atrocities that happened in the death camps, the death camps were by and large run by the SS, so you could group all the SS into the evil category, but the Nazi movement was mostly a movement of national solidarity, with some people being purposely left out, The mothers at the rallies with their children might not have been happy with their neighbors being dragged out in the middle of the night, but the US did the same to it's Japanese, German, and Italian citizens.
Some Nazis were pure evil, and some just wanted to be part of their nation's glory.
It seems to me that the question is one of how to tell a story. If you notice, Nazis are a common bad guy. They've earned that title. WWII was pretty clear. The Axis powers were the bad guys. So it's safe in a political sense to use Nazis as cannon fodder.
Vietnam wasn't nearly as black and white. Moral clarity is absent from that conflict. So playing as the righteous American fighter has the distinct possibility of pissing off a lot of people. Which I think is a fine thing to do from time to time, but when trying to make a product that's going to appeal to a massive part of the gaming populace, there has to be NO question in the motives of the main character. Not unless you're interested in raking in the dough like Gigli.
Sure, you can play a hitman in the Hitman series and nobody cares. But basing a game on a controversial subject does nothing but invite controversy.
I'm guessing that this is a constant problem in storytelling. Nobody wants to be portrayed as the bad guy. We know Nazis are okay to rag on. The Russians are still okay but they were more devilishly portrayed during the Cold War. The Gulf War and the Gulf War Strikes Back have made it okay to demonize Arabs. But in the 80s, the WWF ran into problems with their character The Iron Sheik. So it hasn't always been okay to make Arabs the bad guys. White guys make good bad guys. They run things, so they're used to playing the bad role. Black guys only make good bad guys if they're selling drugs. I could go on, but I think you see my point. In order to be a bad guy, you have to be extinct, a culturally approved negative stereotype or so hated by everybody that it's okay. Of course, if the bad guys and good guys never really existed, then you can damn near get away with anything.
As for your question about why the developers owe anything to the public, they actually don't. But they do want the public to buy their product. As such, it's a good thing to consider the sensitivities of the target audience. Personally, I think most people that buy Vietcong weren't alive when Vietnam was going on and couldn't care less if it's authentic or not. But if I were the developer, I'd have done my research to make sure that's true. Because the worst thing ever would be to develop a great game and then have it not sell because it was based on Vietnam and not on something less controversial.
Let me share something with you. I'm austrian, both my granddads were fighting in ww2.
One of them was a teacher and had to join the NSDAP (national socialist german workers' party) or he would have been banned from teaching (he had a family to support, too), so technically he was a nazi without supporting the actual ideology.
Being in the NSDAP still didn't save him from having to "defend his home soil" in africa (wehrmacht/regular army) once the war started. (Austria joined the german reich in 1938 in a still embarassing mixture of being taken by force -- the german army apparently was ready to crush what was left of the austrian one after our civil war -- and being overly enthusiastic, welcoming and flag-waving. The official version is that austria was the first victim of germany, but the pictures and movies from the time seem to tell a different story.)
The other one, my mother's father, was a Siebenburgener Sachse, a member of the german minority in romania. When romania joined the war he couldn't join the german regular army (because he wasn't a german citizen) and he didn't want to join the regular romanian army (because he had bad experiences with how the romanians treated the germans, or so i was told). Hence, he joined the SS after getting himself stretched so he met the minimum height.
He died when i was six, but what my mother told me about him was twofold: Firstly, he was -- and i guess that didn't change even after the war -- a nazi by heart and very convinced of his ideology.
And secondly, she told me that he wouldn't have hurt a fly.
Obviously, she loved her father and probably has a very idealized picture of him, also seeing him more as a victim of the war (he came back from a russian POW camp weighing something around thirty kilos, iirc, and suffered from diabetes afterwards).
I do not know wether he was actually involved in any war atrocities, but even without that i see a huge dissonance between not hurting a fly and being a member of the SS and a convinced nazi (because nazism in itself IS aggressive and violent). But i have no doubt at all that both aspects were part of his personality, because people just aren't only good or only evil.
Two different people from very different backgrounds with different motivations for joining nazi organisations. Yet, i can understand both of them in some way, and even though i despise fascism and racism nowadays, i know that if i was in their position i might have acted the same.
Of course, anyone who lives in the time I live in and knows what I know and STILL insists in being a fascist or racist or neo nazi should be severely beaten with a cluestick.
Just my two cents.
Especially for this post, i'll double up my regular signature with this jewel that i strongly believe in:
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"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -- Jeannette Rankin
Free as in mason.