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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."
War sucks, yes. Without a doubt. I hope to never fight in one. But why are vietnam games in such 'bad taste' as opposed to the other war games? How is say, Vietcong (or whatever the name of that recent FPS is)different from MOH: Allied Assault? Is it ok to play a game where you shoot Germans, but not orientals?
1. Why is the Vietnam War a topic that should not be explored in games?
I mean we have Battlefield 1942, countless historical battle games (Medieval Total War comes to mind here), Terrorist encounter games (Rainbow6 anyone?)
They are all based on true events.
How is it that the Vietnam War deserves different treatement?
2. Why does the developer owe anything to the participants of those events, or to the audience.
Its a game, not a reconstruction. If it were so, it would be _static_. I mean there would be no game here.
I suppose that certain topics are harder for some to understand, but I am not seeing the difference between a game as Rainbow6 (very well received as far as I know) and something like the game proposed.
I am not trying to be a troll, and this is not a flame, I am simply trying to understand the issue a bit better.
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
Get a grip, guys.
I'm Vietnam-age. My father was WWII-age. My friends have children in the Middle East theatre. My grandfather was crippled in WWI. I lost ancestors on both sides of the Indian Wars, and one of my admired adults when I was child fought among Pancho Villa's insurgents and lost an eye.
The point: wars happen. Every generation. Viet Nam was no different. None. People die. Even civilians (when there's a realistic distinction: Sand Creek proves it wasn't considered much in the indian Wars.) No one expects considering the historical consequences of Castle Wolfenstein, WWI aerial combat, or the Punic Wars. Expecting a first-person shoot'em-up in Viet Nam to "consider the historical context" is idiotic.
<aol>Me too!</aol>
I was going to make the same comment. Why should Vietnam be a less suitable topic than any other war in history? About the only thing I can think of is that there are more Vietnam veterans still around than, say, WWII vets. I don't think that changes anything morally, though.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I think the things that make people get so uppity about the Vietnam being portrayed in games are:
1- Chronological distance - Vietnam is much fresher in the minds of people than other major conflicts.
2- Controversy - Vietnam was a very controversial war that never had any good resolution.
3- Psychological Healing - Most of the soldiers in Vietnam did not come home to heroes welcomes like their predecessors had. This makes it harder to get over the atrocities.
I think these points (and many others) make people really touchy about Vietnam. Now, does that make a game about Vietnam in bad taste. Not in my opinion. I frankly think these people need to get over themselves, and stop living in the past. I am personally tired of being expected to treat every one who has had something bad happen to them with kid gloves, and having to kowtow to every special interest group on the planet. Suck it up, and get on with living.
Personally I think its way to early for these kind of games, the horrors of Vietnam is just too close and most games haven't digesed the World War II games yet. Think about all those children that are struggling to bear the emotional burden of playing these games that in their search for historical correctness displays images that where not ment to be entertainment.
And there are plenty of other successfull wars that could have been covered instead of the Vietnam War. Take for example the American -Mexican war; a great historical drama and a proud moment in our contry's history that too few know about. Game developers should not make games on wars that resulted in great american losses and humiliating withdrawal, such games might destroy the moral of the country to wage war in the future. Instead they should seek to make historical correct games based on true success stories.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
I do not think that a first-person Vietnam game is in good taste. I will not be playing any of them.
I am slightly hypocritical, because I LOVE WWII shooters, and Rainbow 6, and Operation Flashpoint. I do feel sometimes guilty, though, at enjoying levels where I storm the beaches of Normandy. I mean, these were real people after all. Not those fake real people that you'll never meet... but real people that are still alive and you might run into. People I'm related to.
It's a tough call for me. But I respect other people who want to play them. But if a game comes out tomorrow titled: "Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Hunt for Saddam", I won't be buying it. No matter how fun it is.
no thanks
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.
Word. War is hell. Why is Vietnam so taboo? Korea was awful and we got MASH. WWII was terrible and we got Hogan's Heros, BF1942 et al. I'm not saying that war should be taken lightly, quite the opposite. Maybe it's just that Vietnam is still fresh in our minds, while we've forgotten about much of the repugnance of our earlier wars...
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
First of all the correct term is Asians, not Orientals. Second of all, WW2 is widely recognized as a "just" war. Hitler was a terrible person and needed to be stopped. Vietnam on the other hand is something that the US should have never gotten involved in. This involvement hurt thousands and thousands of people on both sides. Ask any Vietnam veteran and any WW2 veteran how they feel about this issue about their prospective wars, and you'll most likeley get two different answers.
Say what? Red Dawn is arguably "jingoistic" but has nothing IIRC to do with Vietnam.
Incidentally, it's certainly true that the Hollywood version of Vietnam combat is distorted but not so much in the way they think. Depictions of the Vietnam War invariably involve American troops (usually single platoons) fighting lightly armed Viet Cong in a village or a jungle ambush, before some planes show up and napalm everyone and Hueys carry out the wounded.
In fact, the number one cause of US casualties in Vietnam was NVA artillery (followed by booby traps). How many movies show large NVA units, or artillery on either side? How many movies even mention the NVA? At this point, I think most people think the war was fought entirely between the US (French? What French? Aussies? Canadians?) and the Viet Cong.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Odds are excellent that the people in your Chinese restaurant are most disturbed by the fact that we lost. Why do you think they're here?
Except that it was from Full Metal Jacket.
But why are vietnam games in such 'bad taste' as opposed to the other war games?
WWII, for example, was a time of global insanity. It was the entirety of the free world in a blank-and-white battle for the future of mankind. Every game where Nazis get creamed and Kamakazis fall short is a celebration of good winning over evil. WWII veterans speak very proudly of that war, even though they went through hell during it.
Vietnam, however, was just different. I'm young enough to only know Vietnam in history books and documentaries, but even today thinking of Vietnam conjurs images of Nixon and LBJ and government meddling. It isn't as black-and-white as WWII. Vietnam wasn't really a victory over communism, and it highlighted flaws in the American "War Machine".
Vietnam, in the US, just doesn't have any video game appeal. However, a video game version of "Apocalypse Now" might be appropriate, because that movie was only partially about Vietnam and was actually based on a classic novel called "Heart of Darkness." Making "Platoon" into a video game would just be sad, period.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Why is Vietnam so taboo? Korea was awful and we got MASH.
MASH was a commentary on Vietnam, it's just that Vietnam was so taboo (especially at that time) that they set it in Korea. The simple fact is that helicopters (especially the types depicted in MASH) were not nearly as heavily used in Korea as in Vietnam (not to mention that it's been stated many times by the series' creators that this was the case).
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be able to make games based on Vietnam, just that it does cause some concern when people try to portray it in any medium.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
War is war, if your going to complain about Vietnam being an inappropriate subject matter than you need in include all of them.
My father fought in that war, and was active with a number of Vietnam veteran organizations when I was growing up. The impression I got spending time with some of the other families as to the reason that nobody liked to talk about the war had nothing to do with the moral ramifications or justifiability of the conflict, but rather it was related to Vietnam being the first war that America "lost". Many of the Vietnam veterans disliked veterans of other wars for not welcoming them home, and the other veterans disliked the Vietnam vets because they "lost".
I would say that the Vietnam war changed the American perception of war and the rest of the world every bit as much as the first and second world wars, it removed that candy coating around what America was really about. We learned that we are not infallible or invincible, we learned that good and evil wasn't always black and white. It's no wonder that people are still so sensitive to the time.
But the only way over it is through it, if we never talk about it or come to terms with it how are going to avoid a similar quagmire. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe games should only be about sunshine and kittens.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
The principles on which the Vietcong fought were just as 'evil' as the principles of Saddam and Bin Laden and Hitler at that time.
Yes, the North Vietnamese were supported by China and the USSR, but the whole scenario was just very complicated, it seems. This entry at Wikipedia discusses things in more detail. If you follow some of the links, you'll see that the Vietnam war has its roots in efforts for indpendence from French colonization. If this doesn't leave Americans feeling somewhat conflicted over the whole situation, then perhaps they should look back about 200 years in US history. There just isn't a unabmiguous blatant smoking gun like "Hitler Invades Poland" or "Japs Attack Pearl Harbor," nor does there appear to be full justification for what happened. Like I said, it was just complicated.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
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.
I believe the thread you are responding to meant that there is no justification for war, because it is invariably worse than the problem it seeks to solve.
Regarding your question in the first paragraph: The only lasting methods of social change are nonviolent, so the answer is through nonviolent methods. You might find George Orwell's Reflections On Gandhi relevant. Gandhi's comment regarding the Jews in Nazi Germany is distasteful and unpleasant, but most likely true. The last two sentences of your post are arguing from an emotional point of view, and I can only hope that should such a tragedy befall me, I will remain rational enough to practice what I preach.
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:
--
"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -- Jeannette Rankin
Free as in mason.
Actually, the helicopters in the film and TV show MASH were used extensivly in the Korean War by the United Nations.
The bubble cockpit piston driven helo from MASH is the H-13 Sioux (model 47) from Bell Aircraft. It was produced from 1946 to 1973. They were used for medivac and recon starting in 1951 and they evacuated around 18,000 UN casualties during the conflict.
The Sioux was replaced by the OH-6A Cayuse early in the Vietnam conflict.
In Korea the Navy used the Sikorsky H-19 Chickasaw and the H-21 Shawnee