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War (Games) are Hell and so are the Ads
An anonymous reader writes "As the clock ticks down for ShellShock: Nam' 67 we find out that the press releases are as controversial as the game. RedassedBaboon quotes several of the email press releases that seem to brag about the joys of killing and fun of having sex with a base camp mama san. My favorite obnoxious and mostly non-sensical email quote: 'You'll always remember your first kill. And in ShellShock: Nam'67 you'll definitely get more than just one.'
The article goes on to point out how this behind the screens publicity push runs contrary to the public face of the game - which is supposed to depict the real horrors of war.
The article ends with this thought: 'I can't imagine Coppola or Stone sending out exhuberent messages to the national press about how fun it was going to be to catch a wave off the coast of Vietnam in Apocalypse Now or how sexy Platoon's mama sans are.
Before the gaming industry can be taken seriously by the world, it has to be taken seriously by itself.'
How very true."
I agree with the article, this IS pretty scary. I have no problem with war games, but basically making a joke out of a serious subject like this is somewhat over the line, IMO..
Mike
Is it just me, or is this a bad attempt at trying to gain sales numbers by being "as cool GTA3." I think that perhaps the gaming industry is taking itself too seriously. It certainly can be proven that a bad banned book gets read a lot more than just a bad book, and if they can stir up trouble, it might just stir up their sales.
--clarus
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?
... Seems like a precusor to, "And that's the way it actually happened," 20 years from now. Which do you think kids will associate with better -- the history book they didn't read, or getting to pillage and rape in a village in glorious 3D? :|
What's next, husbands beating women at The sims 3 and getting points for it?
What is worse, is that games like Manhunt that depicts a brutal *FANTASY* get more bad press than a game that depicts REAL SEXUAL ABUSE laughing at it. It makes me feel sick. I'm against any kind of censorship if you are going to show it, show it like it is, it's cruel, it's sad, it's something everyone should be ashamed of. Show it at a game or at a movie, but don't come to me saying than screwing mama-sans at the base camp is fun like some wicked holiday camp for kids with killing and raping included.
Uh realism is overrated in games.
Hands up who wants to play a soldier that's air dropped many miles away from the actual site due to various reasons ranging from "plane got shot" to "bad weather"
And then having to hike all the way for hours to the actual site and then getting your leg blown off in the first 10 seconds of the firefight. Then spending years in a PoW camp eating weeds[1] and some nondescript gruel.
[1] Apparently someone mixed ground up iron nails and weeds/leaves into the rations as a vitamin supplement while a PoW.
To many guns are not real and war is not real. You can see an excellent example in many young americans whose response to vietnam is that they should go back and finish the job. TV and movies have made them believe that they could have won and that is was the hippies that made america withdraw.
Make a realistic war game and people will at least get a real fast lesson in what war is really really like. No med packs. No magic armour. No "secret" weapons. Just you, a rifle designed by someone behind a desk, grenades wich hurt you just as easily as the enemy, friendly fire and of course the enemey. You die, you die.
Want to know what real war is like? Well real war does not allow you to retry the mission from the latest save point.
Just as motorist organisations use "drunk" driver simulations to safely teach the folly of driving a good war game can tell you the folly of war.
A good vietnam game would tell the story from both sides and not be afraid to be extremely controversial. America was defintly not the good guy in vietnam. Considering the amount of civilians killed you can not come to any other conclusion that they must have been deliberate targets.
A realistic vietnam game could never be made since it would not sell. Oliver stone made 3 vietnam movies. 2 showed the americans as "heroes". One did not. Guess wich one failed at the box office.
WW2 games are plentifull and many allow you to play both sides yet none reflect the true nature of WW2, the rounding up of civilians and the transports to the extermination camps, the shooting of prisoners of war. The punishment details against cities and towns.
Maybe china will make a game showing vietnam from the communist side.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No, you have it wrong.
Defending freedom of speech does not mean you are defending what people say, you are defending that they are legally allowed to say it.
This by no means suggests that saying it is a good idea - which is what these guys are arguing. They aren't arguing that people who say this kind of stuff should be locked away etc., they are saying that the people who make these games probably shouldn't (because it's rather immoral and unethical), but they can if they want to!
"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
"Just because you can say something, doesn't mean you should." -- Me
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I was waiting for somebody to make this argument.
Censorship does not START with a law being inacted against saying XYZ.
Censorship STARTS with someone saying "Saying XYZ goes too far" - without qualifying the statement further.
You want to say "This game is disgusting, deals with subject matter in a way that I cannot agree with." that's fine. Whatever.
But using the phrase "... Goes too far" (Direct quote, look up - way up) is implying that some unwritten rule of what's acceptable has been broken. If you want to use that or similar phrases, but still support free speech, you MUST qualify that statement further. (ie. "This game goes too far. I do not think it should be consored, but I still find it disgusting.".
All it takes to start down the slippery slope is for one guy to say "This goes too far.", and a few more to agree with the literal meaning of the phrase.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
You're right that wargames sell better if the player can use American troops.
There are noteable exceptions, like the massively sucessful Panzer General, which only allowed you to play as the Germans. If you played skilfully, you crushed continental Europe and Britain before the Americans even joined the war. The optimum plot line had you invading America.
The Eastern Front is a popular wargaming setting. I love the Russian/German tank battles of Combat Mission and Close Combat.
The KKK (or groups like it) have been around in the United States for about one hundred years, I'd reckon that most people think what they say is extreme now and think it goes too far, but I still don't see any laws preventing them from saying what they say.
I hear the phrase 'slippery slope' on Slashdot alot, but it's a pathetic argument (being a logical fallacy). There are plenty of extremist groups which express their right to freedom of speech in the US, who are still allowed to say it even though what they say may be unethical.
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So are you saying that people who use the phrase "goes too far" are going too far?
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I hear that it's not very good, but the people who say that are likely stereotypical twitch gamers, so take that with a grain of salt. I haven't played it yet, but it sounds a lot like Vietcong, which was pretty good.
Anyway, this article just proves that marketing people are idiots. If that means that the gaming industry doesn't take itself seriously, then just about anything else that involves marketing doesn't take itself seriously either.
Rob
I think this confusion arises because most of Europe thinks of WW2 as mostly being the war in Europe. VE day was in May 1945 (69 months, also in my head).
I think (could be wrong about this) that the first (direct) action by the US in Europe was in Operation Torch in November 1942 (about 39 months after the "start" of the war).
So, by this reckoning, the US did not join in the war in Europe until well after half-way through. This was also after the crucial battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad -- hence the common European viewpoint that the US's participation was less significant compared to the US's point of view.
I hear the phrase 'slippery slope' on Slashdot alot, but it's a pathetic argument (being a logical fallacy [datanation.com]).
Wow - did you even read the link you posted? Do you have any clue what a logical fallacy actually is?
What YOUR OWN link is saying is that the way to refute a 'Slippery Slope' argument is to show how the huge consequence does not necessarily follow from the initial step.
Slippery Slope arguments are perfectly valid - EVEN ACCORDING TO YOUR OWN LINK.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
From http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html
This type is based upon the claim that a controversial type of action will lead inevitably to some admittedly bad type of action. It is the slide from A to Z via the intermediate steps B through Y that is the "slope", and the smallness of each step that makes it "slippery".
This type of argument is by no means invariably fallacious, but the strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the number of steps between A and Z, and directly proportional to the causal strength of the connections between adjacent steps. If there are many intervening steps, and the causal connections between them are weak, or even unknown, then the resulting argument will be very weak, if not downright fallacious.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Yes, they are valid sometimes - in this case, no.
1. Game produced which has some rather tasteless material.
2. People comment that the material is tasteless.
3. More people agree that this is very tasteless and request laws against this kind of stuff.
4. Laws against tasteless material brought in. Freedom of speech destroyed.
This is your great slipperly slope argument (which hasn't happened FYI). Now let's look at a real life situation of far greater magnitude than a computer game:
1. KKK founded ~100 years ago, starts hate speech against blacks (and others).
2. KKK popular for 20~ years.
3. KKK wanes in popularity.
4. Civil rights movement turns public opinion against KKK. Hate speech from KKK still exists.
5. Now - KKK thought of as racists, still deliver hate speech.
I don't see any slippery slope there. There's hundreds of other groups which deliver hate messages which most people would agree is, at best, tasteless, but I don't see any laws stopping them from delivering their message.
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All this from an anonymous person quoting someone named RedassedBaboon.
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Those writing the press releases sound---intentionally or not, ironically or not---like military recruiters. One could argue that, by lauding the joys of killing and the pleasures of Mama San (how racist-sounding can you get?), Eidos is starting the immersion before you even begin playing the game.
All movies about the horror of war have to deal with this problem in one way or another. How do you simultaneously:
One way to do this is to go ahead and let the audience get desensitized. Then, when they are high on blood and ammo, punch them in the gut with something they didn't get desensitized enough for. To some extent, that's what happened in the last part of Full Metal Jacket. The problem with this approach is that individuals have widely differing responses to the tactic. A substantial part of the audience will be over-desensitized and miss the point entirely; others will remain sensitive throughout, and think of the film as glorifying violence even when the intent is quite the opposite. I suspect something similar will happen with this game. The additional interactivity only makes identification happen that much faster.
It just feels... wrong.
Good. It should feel wrong. If the game helps USA voters think harder about sending an all-white paratroop to kill a few "bad guy" Africans in the middle of a large, heavily-armed African town, so much the better.
Considering the hundreds of thousands who were affected in horrible ways by the accident-
You're off by a factor of 50x there, if not 500x.
The KKK (or groups like it) have been around in the United States for about one hundred years,
No. 100 years ago was 1904. The KKK goes back to before 1840.
Fun fact: The KKK was founded in response to a group of abolitionist terrorists that went around in black robes with pointy hats.
they wouldn't be playing graphically detailed and realistic war games. At least not until they're old enough to distinguish reality and fantasy. It's called Parenting. Of course, I'm too lazy to acually do it, which is precicely why I don't have kids (it's got nothing to do with me posting on /. on a Saturday night, really :D ).
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I was referring to the "second" KKK (the one restablished during WW I), so around 90 years. I wasn't really interested in looking it up, but you made me do that now. :)
Chris
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I take quite a few games seriously. They can be works of art, not mere diversions. I'm sorry for you if you can't see that. You must be playing the wrong games.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with a good fun game that's not that serious from time to time.
Whether it's too recent or not is up for interpretation, but as far as the enemies all being black, that's just what happened. It was in Somalia, after all. It wasn't because of race, though, it was because of politics (war being an extension of politics by other means). I mean, in Vietnam games, all your enemies are Vietnamese. In any WWII Pacific game, all your enemies would be Japanese. I can play any of these games without having any sort of ill will toward a specific race just because they make up all the enemies in a game or a real war.
I'm sure very few if any serious games about any Middle East conflict will be made soon, with everything going on now. Notice how any game (that I've seen) about terrorism lacks Arab/Muslim terrorists. There's that console game where you kill terrorists and beat up Bin Laden, but it's gotten terrible reviews and is basically a joke. A serious war game in such a situation, I'd be interested it, although it might still be too recent.
Honestly be allowed to say what they say, *unless* they are actively urging people to commit violence (which IIRC is illegal in any case) against a minority.
I think that people have a right to not like a particular group and even talk about how they don't like that group, but the moment that they specifically urge violence, it becomes illegal.
Disclaimer: I'm not a member of any of this sort of group, nor am I racist in the least. I just think that no matter how unpopular or morally reprehensible to most people, everyone should get to express their views.
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Um, Capcom is a Japanese company. And its hit games 1942 and 1943 are about the player as a lone US pilot shooting up loads of Japanese planes.
Plays like a crappy console port. Maybe it is. The motion is impossible to get used to, slow, non-responsive. The terrain is outdated.
The graphics are interesting, and "filmed" through a grainy lens.
But the combat plays somewhat like a Vietnam-themed Painkiller; enemies pour endlessly out of tunnels until you destroy the tunnel. Your squaddies seemingly never get hit. You can stumble drunkenly (since you can't really run fast or maneuver) through clouds of bullets that should slap you down faster than a fifty cent crackwhore.
For single-player experience, Vietcong KILLS this game. Utterly.
For multi, BFV is king of the genre.
Eidos had better go back to the drawing board with this one. The fact that it has rape isn't going to save it from the bargain bin, then the dustbin of history where it will fester along with "Custer's Revenge" for the Atari.
Feh on this. Certainly glad I didn't pay money for this shitty pig in a poke.
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