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FPS Gaming and the 'Just-World Hypothesis'
Hugh Pickens writes "When people witness someone subjected to some misfortune, they're susceptible to suggestions that the person deserved it and thus see the misfortune as evidence of karma or justice – hence the 'just' in 'just-world hypothesis.' Now consider the controversial new first-person shooter Homefront, which has you play as a freedom fighter in an America occupied by a North Korean superpower. The introduction to the game goes to great lengths to relieve you of any moral misgivings you might have about plugging away at the enemies it's getting ready to throw at you. 'You see enemy soldiers not only brutalizing American civilians, but outright murdering a mother in front of her children and callously tossing corpses around,' writes James Madigan, a gamer with a Ph.D. in psychology. 'The message is clear: Hey, these guys are evil. When we give you a gun, shoot them and feel good about it.' Madigan says the interesting thing about Homefront is that it's not leaving any blanks to be filled, which robs the game of some narrative depth."
It doesn't matter if it's the North Korean army invading the United States or the American army invading Iraq.
Protect your nation. Kill the invaders.
Make them pay for the theft of your national resources with rivers of blood.
How do we know that the mother of that child didn't deserve it?
Good heavens. We have to make this right by making it be the US soldiers we're shooting.
Why would you rob a game of narrative depth?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
I don't see how giving me more than enough justification for dropping Koreans is going to rob the game of depth...
Doom shows you that your enemies are incarnations of evil, leaving even less blanks. Did narrative suffer? Of course!
So how is this news?
(also, first post?)
Hypothesis above aside, is it me or does Homefront blow?
Homefront - Thrilling Gameplay Experience
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFVz6-A75Fc
Homefront tells the tale of one nation's struggle against the tyranny of locked doors.
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I don't think Slashdot sould dignify some things with a article. This game, probably don't deserve one, has is just another COD clone.
-Woof woof woof!
Half Life 2 jumps to mind. You kill a guard with your crowbar; they're beating up this guy while his wife scream "please, somebody help". Tha'ts how you get your pistol.
Games aren't the real world. A World War I game that forces you to ask "wait, why am I shooting them again?" just isn't any fun. I think that's why people like WWII so much - by war standards, it was morally unambiguous.
Moral ambiguity bothers people. It's not enjoyable. It shouldn't be enjoyable, and it's good that it bothers us. Is it surprising that we don't like it in games?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Now consider the controversial new first-person shooter Homefront, which has you play as a freedom fighter in an America occupied by a North Korean superpower.
Remind me again how this is all that much different from the US occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and (in the past) many other countries... I mean sure, we don't (usually) go around massacring civilians and all that, but I find it hard to draw a line between good and right and moral occupations (the US occupying other countries) and bad and wrong and evil ones (the other way 'round).
That said...
Madigan says the interesting thing about Homefront is that it's not leaving any blanks to be filled, which robs the game of some narrative depth."
Come on, it's an FPS game. I don't want narrative depth. I just want to shoot stuff!
No matter what choice a developer makes, someone is going to complain about it. If the North Koreans weren't unmistakably evil, critics would be complaining about a lack of motivation and calling the game racist for allowing non-whites to be shot.
Uncharted was called racist for having some Asian soldiers to shoot. So Uncharted 2 made all the enemies white (specifically Russian).
Cartoon worlds have cartoon enemies. Critics complain. And there's always someone around to label anything and everything racist.
What did they say to the North Korean Soldiers? That's a more interesting point.
Franck Martin
Avonsys
Shooters are rooted in well, shooting. Whatever moral conflict you may have about the taking of a life is quickly resolved and cast aside as you blast your way through hundreds, even thousands of enemies over the course of the game. Any hesitation must necessarily have been overcome in the first few minutes in these games.
This is largely due to the power fantasies that accompany the shooter genre. Players are powerful, and their "shooting" ability must be sufficient to overcome all obstacles thrown at them. Justification is needed to resolve the dissonance stemming from gunning down so many enemies. Uncharted is one example of a (great) game that has received some criticism for failing to address this point. Charming off-the-cuff quips are jarringly out of place after slaughtering hundreds of men. Even after the protagonist is himself shocked at the prospect of shooting museum security guards, and is instead offered tranquilizer darts, these guards are sedated right off walkways to fall several stories down. Or off the edge of rooftops where the fall is almost certainly fatal. The justification for shooting is made necessary by the nature of shooters.
So here's an interesting idea from the "Extra Credits" guys at www.escapistmagazine.com .
How about a game where you're a widowed mother trying to get your children to safety across war-torn Europe? The objective is clear, the motivation even more so. The focus would not be on charging into violence, but avoiding it where possible, or using it as an ugly means to a necessary end. A challenging premise for game design, and for game writers. It offers the potential to challenge the players with things like:
-Dialogue of a mother trying to raise children to be good people in an awful environment.
-Deciding what taboos may need to be broken to get the children to safety. Perhaps she will need to kill a man to protect them...and then explain to them why it was right (or wrong?) for her to do that. Perhaps she will need to sleep with a guard so the kids can slip past...but burdened with the memory of what happened.
-Being asked to risk your safety and that of your children on behalf of someone else, or even someone else's children. (and again, having to justify your choices to your children later).***
-Comforting a child.
Extra Credits offered this idea up as part of a discussion on what it takes to create a "good female character". They posited that a good /female/ character is not simply a gender-neutral character that would be good regardless of gender (which would simply be a "good character"). Rather, a good female character is a character whose femininity is innately tied to who she is. This would be an opportunity for a strong female character to flourish as a result of her femininity, rather than a lack of the same. And sex appeal would not have to factor in anywhere either.
P.S:
***An interesting dilemma came up for me in Fable 2 *minor spoiler ahead*:
Once of the quests involves being tricked by a villain, and finding yourself and an innocent woman, placed in front of a demon demanding life force from one of you. This meant that one of you would be instantly aged into a shriveled husk. In the end, I gave the demon the girl. After all, it was just an AI character, whereas I was a real human being who would feel some regret at having my avatar tarnished for the rest of the game.
But I had a twinge of regret, I had been playing virtuous hero throughout the game until this point, rescuing others, and refusing reward whenever it was offered. But now I was not being asked to be the hero, I was asked to be the martyr. Being defaced was a purely visual effect, but a significant one because this was the first time the player is asked to actually give up something irreplaceable. This was the one time where I was asked to make a real sacrifice, however small it was. I was surprised to find myself a bit ashamed at my selfishness, and the event sparked some brief introspection. Great stuff for a videogame.
I find it quite interesting that the author thinks that someone who would by "Homefront" would have moral misgivings that they needed to be relieved of. Shouldn't the Anit-Discrimination Group for all things Asian be kicking in about now? One usually hasknowledge of the game before it is purchased. I have never heard of the situation where the game was returned because some had to "kill too many things." My daughter was wathcing me play an FPS. She asked "how do you know which ones to shoot?" I repled "I shoot the ones shooting at me first", trying to be a little neutral. She asked "Do you get more points if you shoot them all?" No paternity test needed here...
Fast, cheap, correct. You get to pick two.
On Babylon 5, one of Marcus's lines was that he took great comfort in the basic unfairness of the Universe. If it were basically fair, that would mean he deserved everything that happened to him.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Madigan says the interesting thing about Homefront is that it's not leaving any blanks to be filled" - I would hardly call that interesting
I noticed the same thing playing the (original) Assassins' Creed. Just before you assassinate someone, they are invariably shown performing some terrible crime; either the commission or ordering of brutal murder, the threat thereof, slave trading, or human mutilation.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
We fail to realize how much power we control over our lives. I once had a friend go on about this woman who was robbed. I was like she's the victim. He said yes, but she went un-escorted, at dusk, at a place that was known to have several robberies in the last couple of months, and was a known place to avoid for the last several years, when everyone knows there is a good chance you are coming out within 20 minutes, stepping out of a SUV with pearls on.
I don't think his point was that she deserved it, but that she was careless, and I agree. You can't "justify" the robber pointing a gun at her. You just can't. But she could have done some things differently. She is the victim, but she also put herself out there. Some would blame her, and that is perhaps where the "just" part comes in. I try not to pass judgment until I know all of the facts. Maybe she didn't know, but then she was still careless in not making it a point to know. And some therefore might not "feel sorry" for her. I do, she was ignorant more than likely. I mean really, who likes to play with fire unless they don't "really" understand how bad they can get burnt? Only the mentally ill, or someone who wants to get burnt...
As far as the game, I don't play them anymore, but if I did, I'd likely go along with it unless it made me uncomfortable, or just pretend there were different circumstances, as surely others will. I don't have reservations about harming someone to protect an innocent, but I do have reservations about killing someone unarmed, "enemy" or not. Again, we don't know all of the facts. And pushing hate/anger on someone in the form of a bullet is not going to make friends.
“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”
-- Abraham Lincoln
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
bind "mouse1" "hug"
Other character has a gun and is shooting at me? Light that sucker up. Moral considerations are for later when you're cleaning your weapon, something that always seems to be left out of these games.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
You see enemy soldiers not only brutalizing American civilians, but outright murdering a mother in front of her children and callously tossing corpses around
Ol' Estus Pirkle's gonna be PISSED that they stole his plot...
Ref: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? - a bizarro "come to Jeebus" flick built around a Communist takeover of the US
You know, in CoD: World at War, whenever I would play the Soviet campaign missions taking place in Berlin, all I could think about was the fact that, historically, most of the defenders of Berlin were either young teenage boys or men of middle age or older. Some volunteered, others were forcibly conscripted. No military training, with simple weapons that could be mass-produced quickly(google the VK 98 and the VG series of rifles). Conversely, the heroically portrayed Red Army was made up of conscripts and murdered and raped civilians as it crossed Eastern Europe(yes, the Germans murdered civilians as well-mostly Jews and suspected Communists). And you know what? To me, knowing this historical background actually makes these levels a lot more emotional and significant for me. Moral ambiguity has a lot more power to it and makes shooting games more, not less, fun. Read any soldier's memoirs. There is always this watershed moment, where the soldier pauses and realizes he is being told to, encouraged to, and rewarded for killing another person. It is a turning point for them, one that usually becomes a defining moment in their life. War is always at some point morally ambiguous, down to the individual level. If a game can actually accept this and embrace it, it will find itself being labelled as not simply another cookie cutter FPS, but as a legitimate and hard-hitting experience.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
My favorite multiplayer FPS has two teams of mercenaries who work for two different holding corporations and are fighting each other over various objectives, such as control points or intelligence briefcases.
Both holding corporations are run by the same person, known only as The Administrator.
The mercenaries appear to be clones of the same 9 people, but they wear different hats.
In case you're wondering, I'm describing Team Fortress 2. :P
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Most FPSes are not big on stories and choices. They are big on shooting things. There are games that focus more on story, but shooties are not them.
Heck some of the really popular shooties, the story is completely ignored by most players. Like Battlefield Bad Company 2. It is the online shooty I currently like. I have no idea what the story is, never tried the single player. It is US vs Russia but it doesn't really matter. It is people I am supposed to shoot vs people I am supposed to help. Heck, you swap sides each round.
People need to stop wanting games to be "perfectly real" or any of that shit. No, games need to be fun. Now for some games, that means a deep story, and maybe it means some hard choices. However for others, it means a bunch of baddies of some variety to shoot. Both are ok.
Simmons: D'You ever wonder why we're here?
Grif: It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some...cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything, you know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know man, but it keeps me up at night.
Simmons: What? I mean why are we out here, in this canyon?
Grif: Oh. Uhhhhh. Yeah.
Simmons: And what's all that stuff about God?
Grif: Uhhhhh. Hm? Nothing.
Simmons: Do you want to talk about it?
Grif: No.
Simmons: Sure?
Grif: Yeah.
Simmons: Seriously though, why are we out here? As far as I can tell, it's just a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. No way in or out.
Grif: Mmmhmmm.
Simmons: I mean, the only reason that we set up a red base here is because they have a blue base over there, and the only reason they have a blue base over there is because we have a red base here.
Grif: Well, yeah, that's because we're fighting each other.
Find a PHD to say some academicky things about your game = advertising in disguise!
The Just World hypothesis is appropriately explained in the summary, but I don't think the excerpt describing the game actually works with the phenomenon.
(1) You see people of a certain uniform brutalizing people you assume are innocent.
(2) When you harm the brutalizers, your justification is "eye for an eye" on a national level.
There is no issue there and such judgments are not noteworthy.
What the "Just World Hypothesis" (better referred to as the "Just World Fallacy") actually describes is that pattern of humans seeking a means to place blame on victims while ignoring the free will of the offender.
So, if we're going to actually use the Just World Fallacy appropriately in the context of this game, we would have to personally make the assumption that the dominated did something to deserve their plight.
"Wow, NK is dominating USA in the game. Well, the USA probably had it coming... just look at American Idol." --- Just World Fallacy
Other, more pertinent places we see the Just World Fallacy:
"Ya, you were robbed, but you left your door unlocked. You deserve what you got."
"Ya, she was sexually assaulted, but she was dressed like a whore..."
"The boy was killed while legally crossing a street in a crosswalk. But he was dressed in black, so he had it coming."
"Her car was stolen, but it was her fault-- she left her keys in car."
I guess I agree in a different way. 'Play' that involves the fulfillment of violent revenge fantasies isn't morally ambiguous. Morally vacant is closer to the mark.
Morally ambiguous or conflicted, to me, means interesting.
The publisher could have at least had the shred of decency to call them insurgents.
If they're having North Korea as a superpower the game is already more deeply entrenched in a fantasy world than Lord of the Rings.
Americans don't need a reason to fight, just give them guns, point to a group of people and declare them to be the enemy. Hell, they'll split the country into 2 teams and fight themselves if nobody else has pissed them off lately.
great, first the VA shooter, and now this anti-korean game.
hope there's at least some south korean protagnoists in the game or else i'm pretty sure i'm gonna get capped in the face by some idiot for being korean.
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I find it funny when I play multi player FPS's I will get all fired up and yell at the enemy at how horrible and disgusting they are and how our team is so awesome and flawless, etc.
But when it comes time to balance teams and I get automatically switched, I'll start snubbing the team I was just on and start rooting for my new team.
I'm exaggerating a bit, but I do notice the whole us verses them attitude that can change in an instant when I switch teams. Always thought it was interesting.
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This is why enemies like zombies and Nazis are so popular in games - because they're unequivocally bad, and therefore, you shouldn't feel bad about shooting them. There are a few exceptions, of course: some games will let you do bad things and those games tend to be controversial (example: Grand Theft Auto and the Call of Duty scene where you're walking through a Russian airport killing civilians). Another common thing games and movies do is not showing you the face of the enemy - showing someone's face humanizes them, which makes killing them seem bad. Examples: Half-Life 2 soldiers have masks over their faces, storm troopers and a whole bunch of other Star Wars baddies have masks, Killzone enemies wear masks. In many cases, even Nazis wear masks (http://ui07.gamespot.com/806/returntocastlewolfenstein_2.jpg). In general, if you're supposed to like someone, they won't have a mask, and if they have a mask, they're probably bad.
(P.S. The Spy and Pyro in Team Fortess are always bad.)
All games provide a "just world" in the sense that they operate consistently according to rules. This is true from Tic-Tac-Toe to Mario Bros. to Crysis. One of the primary draws of gaming is the chance to experience the fantasy of a just world. In real life, you can do everything right and still lose -- or do everything wrong and still win. In (good) games, there is a direct relationship between following the rules and getting a reward. It doesn't matter what the effort and reward are, and these are often totally (and whimsically) arbitrary. The crucial thing is that you are rewarded for good performance and punished for bad performance consistently, according to the rules, every time. When this consistency breaks down, you end up with a frustratingly bad game.
In real life, you are told "if you go to college and get a degree, you will get a rewarding job and make a lot of money." However, many people who follow this advice will not receive the reward. By contrast, we know that when we are playing a game we will always progress to the next stage if we collect 5 stars, or open the door if we get the key, or receive 500 gold if we deliver the letter. Can you imagine if you did a quest and simply didn't receive the reward (and didn't get any chance for revenge)? Or if the rules just changed randomly without notice? Nobody would play such a game, except to create a hilariously virulent video review.
The fantasy of a morally just world is an extension of the fact that games create worlds that operate consistently according to rules.
After killing a few hundred of them?
Right on topic: if there's ambiguity, or if you suddenly start realizing that the opposition is human and can be sympathetic, it changes the whole FPS experience. And people know this, too, which is why we engage in demonization of our enemies in the run-up to a war: so we can less badly about killing them because we've already justified it to ourselves. We probably have to do that in order to survive, but propaganda is the least attractive form of advertising.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Starts with North Korean superpower.
Perhaps if we let them borrow part of our military as a part of the aid we supply them to keep the population from starving.
My brother always played Panzer General with the Germans. He said they had better weapons. Nice excuse. You better keep and eye on him...
It's quite simple really.
Do you want to make games educational or do you want them to be entertainment?
Yes, both of these are in stark contrast when it comes to replicating real life.
No one will have fun playing a game where falling a bit too far makes you limp for the rest of the game (or the remainder of the mission), where you slowly bleed to death and lose accuracy based on how close to death you are and so on and so forth.
Likewise, living a normal day life, or, heck, living the life of an actual soldier (sitting and waiting for hours on and, then somebody sneaks up on you and kills you) is also quite boring.
Moral ambiguity is one thing, actually teaching people about how real life works would be a horrible passtime.
Seriously, imagine a game where you spend the entire game fighting a villain, everything points towards that he is the villain and he will walk.
You finally kill him, find out that you've been duped by the actual villain, then you get arrested and put on death row.
Game over.
Does that sound fun?
The point is, entertainment isn't supposed to be like real-life, if it where, you would only get a single chance at it and it wouldn't be straight-forward and entertaining all the time, cause life isn't.
So, no, unless you think that games should solely be based on learning things about real life, let them be just, let them be fun and let them be rewarding.
Not saying that depth isn't relevant, just saying that fiction usually let's the good guys win, even if that is a blatant lie.
I think that you are confusing the "Just World Hypothesis" with "Blaming the Victim". Note that the first phenomenon is often a motivation for the second, but they are not the same phenomenon.
The Just World Hypothesis does not require the observer to actually have evidence that the victim did something wrong. "Oh, he's poor -- he probably did something stupid to lose all of his money" is a better example of the Just World Hypothesis than the examples you gave. The assumption is that people who have bad things happen to them deserved to, even in the absence of any evidence that this is the case. When there is actual evidence (even flimsy) this starts to look more like Blaming the Victim in an attempt to be consistent with the Just World Hypothesis.
Those guys haven't even figured out how to feed themselves. By what conceivable quirk of fate would North Korea become a super power?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Like the guy who drove up to me and honked his horn, or the woman who walked into me, or the guy who swore at me while serving me at burger world, the game makes sure the people I shoot deserve it first so I feel ok with it
Sometimes the bad guys are exactly that..bad guys. In these cases, there is no moral dilemma.
What the "Just World Hypothesis" (better referred to as the "Just World Fallacy") actually describes is that pattern of humans seeking a means to place blame on victims while ignoring the free will of the offender.
Other, more pertinent places we see the Just World Fallacy:
"Ya, you were robbed, but you left your door unlocked. You deserve what you got."
"Ya, she was sexually assaulted, but she was dressed like a whore..."
"The boy was killed while legally crossing a street in a crosswalk. But he was dressed in black, so he had it coming."
"Her car was stolen, but it was her fault-- she left her keys in car."
Crimes are always the fault of the criminal, but I can't defend complete and utter ignorance of living in the real world. It's got absolutely nothing to do with a "Just World" fallacy, it's because I know the world is an unjust place and you need to look out for yourself and those you care about. If you didn't teach your kids not to play on the freeway and not get in a car with a stranger I'd say you've failed at parenting and eventually if you don't learn yourself you've failed at growing up.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Orcs = Evil
Zombies = Evil
Morgoth, once Melkor, most powerful of the Valar, wasn't evil outright, just envious. Then the whole cat plus curiosity issue arose and he went crazy. Like a fox.
It's all well and good to create a morally unambiguous killing experience. The Witcher went the other way -- you pretty much couldn't make a 100% win-win decision. It wears on you. Even life isn't that bad. It was like becoming Valedictorian (Yay!) and finding out that there's a kid in your class who would have not only been the first kid to go to college in his family, but would have had a free ride to Harvard if he'd been tops in the class instead of you (Boo.). Except with elves and stuff.
Wake at Hooters.
Damn the submit button for being so close to the preview button. The point is not to avoid every risk, that you should never forget anything or anything like that. But if you're purposely leaving your keys in your car and you act like it's a shock to you that there's car thieves then yes I will mock you for not knowing or not caring. Do you really want a world where people take zero responsibility to make themselves less vulnerable to crime? Of course I don't mean lock yourself in and never go out, that'd be throwing the baby out with the bathwater but it would not hurt people to apply sound judgement. That doesn't take it any less a crime when people don't, but it doesn't mean the unlit empty park is just as good a way home as the lit street with people.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
new first-person shooter Homefront, which has you play as a freedom fighter in an America occupied by a North Korean superpower.
A north Korean superpower... really? So it's a comedy then?
It is interesting how counter to Christian theology the 'just world' idea really is. Given that the primary 'hero' of Christians ( Jesus) was beaten, scorned, rejected and then Killed. The scripture is infiltrated with many sayings like:
"take up your cross and follow me"
"he who tried to save his own life, will lose it , but he who gives up his life, for my sake will save it' .
Christianity teaches that this world is certainly NOT just. There is more evil then we can stomach and more mercy then we can imagine.
So with Good Friday coming up , i think this topic is an interesting one to reflect on.
Jesus said " can a student be greater then his master? "
So why then do we all expect to be able to go through the world without suffering ? living in a world were 'we / the good' prevail and 'them/ the enemy' are overcomes.
And are 'we/ the Good'? The bible says: ...." the just man sins 100 times a day" .... " no there are non worthy, no not One" ... "show me the man who says he is without sin and I will show you a lier "
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
I don't recall MASH (the TV show) portraying the North Koreans all that badly. Generally it showed them as intelligent people in hard situations. Example, the NK doctor who was helping them treat patients and Hawkeye was trying to pass off as a Korean American. Or, the infiltrator into the camp that was loving the chow because it was so much better than the food he had had (Igor the cook's incompetence aside). Or the two NK soldiers passing themselves off as ROK medics to get medical supplies who took Maj Burns to get them through checkpoints and then released him.
The only NK I remember who was morally amiguous was a North Korean woman who attempted to kill US patients after Hawkeye had stuck up for her. She was turned over to a South Korean officer who was portrayed as a monster, and we saw that she was being patriotic to her side.
If they were going to make a game about an evil empire successfully invading the U.S., wouldn't it have made more sense to use China, a rising imperialistic power (just ask there neighbors, with most of whom they have territorial disputes) with a large enough population to support an occupation army?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I use a bit of irony to swap roles for our normal protaganists, and I'm modded troll. Yay.
The mods need to read Mark Twains "The War Prayer". Perhaps that will be blatant enough for getting through heads.
In an FPS, you're usually going to have someone who is portrayed negatively. It's nearly a given in the genre. If it was a game being aimed at a Moslem audience concerning the Crusades, you wouldn't expect it to portray the forces of Richard the LionHeart as nifty neato keen guys.
I do find it odd that people wonder if this is desensitizing people to killing the "other guys". Slashdot has long been a forum that mostly holds that violent video games and movies have no effect on people in the real world. Why doesn't that same idea hold here?
The world is not fair or just. Good thing too.
This isn't very original, but consider a world where life was fair and just and all the horrible things that happen to people happened because they actually deserved them. A pretty frightening thought, isn't it?
As such, I recommend taking great comfort in the general unfairness of the world.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
You actually demonstrate the linguistic confusion most people who are thought to believe the Just World Fallacy really exhibit: confusing "just deserts" with "don't be surprised".
Most people don't actually believe that leaving one's keys in one's car genuinely deserves having that car removed from the owner's possession. Instead, when they say, "She deserves to get her car stolen...," they mean to convey, "She really shouldn't be surprised. Criminals are looking for the easiest means of profit and she created an extremely easy means for profit."
"Crimes are always the fault of the criminal, but I can't defend complete and utter ignorance of living in the real world."
Oddly enough, I don't have a problem defending genuine ignorance. Nor should you. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge, not denial of reality.
For example: I am ignorant to the intricacies of genetic manipulations required to make banana seeds negligibly small.
Children are ignorant to many things in the world and we forgive them. Often, so are those who grow up in homogeneous populations. I have no problem accepting/forgiving faux pas in such situations.
And I don't think you take issue with that either.
Instead, I think you're particularly annoyed by people you perceive to think themselves invincible or those who make nonchalant decisions in their lives regardless of information historically at their disposal. (Such as the person, say, who grows up in Los Angeles and leaves her keys in her car.) And it's even worse when those people act as though there was no way to predict that their actions would enable a criminal to take advantage of a situation.
The Swiss were not attacked and did not attack anyone in WW2.
That's a lot different from not participating.
That is the same as not participating. They did not participate in the war, which is the fighting.
The GP is correct, the Swiss did not fight but they did participate. Their bankers participated in the financing of the third reich and the looting of occupied territories and people (after the fact, as in the laundering and depositing). To Swiss bankers neutrality meant not discriminating against Nazi gold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_Switzerland#Swiss_Banks_and_World_War_II
The only real exceptions are a couple of interactive-fiction games. (They're definitely notable, though.)
Video games are best at atmosphere - eliciting emotions or audience reactions largely through interactive presentation. There are plenty of games that are more effective at this - take STALKER: Call of Pripyat for instance, which has the player wander through a largely deserted, though once populated, city in the middle of a nuclear exclusion zone. By comparison, hiding in a pile of bodies in Homefront, or the 'airport slaughter' scene (as some YouTube users have termed it) from Modern Warfare 2, seems rather flat.
"Ya, he got a virus, but the dumb noob was using Internet Explorer."
"Ya, she got a virus, but the dumb noob used MS Security Essentials."
"Ya, he got trojaned, but the dumb noob didn't run Malwarebytes or Combofix in Safe Mode."
"Ya, her WiFi was infiltrated, but the dumb noob only used WEP."
"Ya, his server was infiltrated, but the dumb noob didn't use port forwarding."
"Ya, her box was infiltrated, but the dumb noob used Windows instead of Linux."
"Ya, his network was infiltrated, but the dumb noob used Ubuntu instead of Red Hat Enterprise."
"Ya, her network was infiltrated, but the dumb noob used FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD."
Ya, crap happens, because I'm a dumb noob about a lot of subjects. Who isn't?
One more, and back on topic: "Ya, this game is about Korea invading the US, but didn't the US in reality invade Korea in the 1950s? And just because the US did it, does that mean Korea deserved it?"
The lack of consistent long term support from manufactures (think MW2 as an example) the sheer sociopathic digital behavior of young people (I'm 50) not only is irritating but scares me, these kids (in game) have no morals, no mercy and are seriously into "griefing" (if you don't know don't ask) and I know...it's only a game, maybe I'm to old for it and I can't understand their behavior therefore it isn't what I think it is.
But the drone issues in our multiplicity of "wars" (corporate policing / asset consolidation) show me that the next generation of digital soldiers will be all to happy to kill that target, and once the "government" has a autonomous robotic army it gets even worse.
I guess I'm old and paranoid but the consistent torture I see in video games (griefing) and the "kill teams" in Afghanistan and Iraq, the multiple errors made during drone missile targeting (damn how many weddings this week?) leave me feeling it's all gone sideways and Terminator is nothing compared to what's coming.
It's got nothing to do with FPS. Donkey Kong kidnapped that girl, dammit, so there's a good reason to be destroying his barrels with your maul.
Or maybe you're just projecting a whole bunch of bullshit to make yourself feel superior, when in fact you're too fucking dim to realize that the game is just RED FUCKING DAWN AS A VIDEO GAME.
That's it, period. It's Red Dawn, but a video game, because someone saw Red Dawn and thought "boy that'd make a pretty rad game".
Get off your high fucking horse and go find an ounce of cultural knowledge, kid.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
the obvious correlation to the occupation in Iraq/Afghanistan? My own personal beliefs aside, this storyline is such a clear swapping of the roles using different countries. The storyline reflects those two countries' perception of and response to America's presence. I believe this game is an attempt at a political commentary more than an attempt to be a fun FPS. I saw the video. Doesn't look too engaging...
I hate to be one of those 'think of the children' harpies, but really, the intended audience of these types of games is the younger generations. What kind of message are we sending when we present the world in such stark, black and white terms? Anyone here who thinks its OK to go around killing someone just because your government has labeled them 'the enemy' is morally bankrupt, and has not given any serious consideration to the consequences of what they believe. Sure, the nazis did some bad things. Sure, north korea's leadership leaves a lot to be desired. However, the people in those societies are human beings, the same as you and me. If we keep setting the stage as 'us vs. them', then we will simply continue to blow each others brains out, both in the video game world and in the real world, and the ones we label 'enemy' will continue to comply.
There's no takebacks in real life. When you kill someone, they are dead, and all the people who loved them will suffer. Every dead body represents 20, 30, 50+ years of life experiences, gone forever. Even if they have commited heinous crimes, two wrongs will never make a right, and killing for the sake of killing is always wrong. I guess what I'm trying to say is, after its all said and done we are all just ordinary men and women, trying to survive. Give peace a chance.
Well, America is accelerating rapidly and inexorably towards failed state status. Perhaps when it reaches that destination in the not-too-distant future, North Korea will be a "superpower", relatively speaking, of course...
'You see enemy soldiers not only brutalizing American civilians, but outright murdering a mother in front of her children and callously tossing corpses around,'
Oh, so pretty much what the US military does in many parts of the world every day. Making this game pernicious propaganda intended to demonise a universal enemy—"foreigners = bad guys"—along with its tag team of TV and Hollywood.
And it works very effectively: You quickly end up with Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, an astonishing rate of civilian massacre by flying robots piloted by laughing good ole boys, trophy killings for sport, and all the rest of the bloody, horrible theatre perpetrated by the world's most dangerous rogue state.
you had me at #!
That foreigners are dangerous, evil people with no worth as human beings. What could possibly be the outcome of that belief...
you had me at #!
We need a game that actually questions whether the USA really are the good guys.
There is a lot of stuff going on in the USA right now that many Americans are OK with, but which may not be 'right'. Some examples here:
- People get violated to fly a plane. Recently a story here said if you complain about it, you'll be violated more.
- FBI and other authorities disregard and break laws constantly to serve 'justice'
- President has the right to kill anyone he likes, provided he accuses them of terrorism first.
- The way the USA treats foreign countries, including those it calls its allies. Spying, pressuring, blackmailing, interfering in their internal affairs... Americans may be happy with it since it serves their interests, but in a just world where we all try to get along and work together for the greater good then this can not be tolerated. In a just world there are no Americans, Europeans, and other foreigners, there are just humans.
- Guantanamo, a place where people labeled 'enemies' are held and are never tried. They're even tortured and detained in inhumane conditions.
- The war in Iraq, not only an illegal war BUT also a war that killed over 100k civilians (and not even counting those who died due to shortage of food or medicine). While we can argue about which side killed civilians, this massive death toll was predictable before the war started and the USA did not care at all about these innocent people.
I think we really need games that start asking questions, such as:
- Are we really the good guys we believe we are?
- When should we stop putting our own interests (as US citizens) before that of foreigners?
- How far can we support our country? When is too far?
And frankly, I find it disturbing that nobody seems to draw a parallel between the USA today and Nazi Germany considering all those video games based on World War II. Same 'We're superior to everyone else' mentality, replace Iraq with France, replace the FBI with the Gestapo, Guantanamo is a concentration camp, the police have more authority than they should even be allowed to dream of, the leader of the nation seems to answer to nobody... The only thing missing is the death camps and genocide. Why aren't games and movies asking questions, criticizing, showing people what's going on? Instead, you have people making idiotic games where once again the USA are the good guy and the bad guy is... today's most evil country on the planet. Yay!
Unfortunately most people simply won't get it, and consider that perhaps North Korea has been pissed off with the US being in their country for the past 60 years. But if its someone invading the US, oh its all good.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
That was precisely what came to my mind as well, that German soldier seeing the humanity in the dying Frenchman as he lay in the artillery crater
All Quiet On The Western Front was a powerful film in general (yes, I read the book too), but that scene was definitely one of those that stood out.
I think there's definitely an analogous point, though: being shown the humanity of those you're shooting at interferes with the will/ability to shoot at them.
the xkcd does make the point that doing so can hurt the gameplay experience.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I bet they wouldn't make a similar game, but with the U.S. taken over by JEWS, would they.
Or taken over by AFRICANS, or MEXICANS.
Because we can't have the Jews' 'cattle' actually seeing who their REAL enemies are, can we...
"When people witness someone subjected to some misfortune, they're susceptible to suggestions that the person deserved it and thus see the misfortune as evidence of karma or justice"
I always assumed this was only true of fascists and other psychopaths moral defectives.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"The only NK I remember who was morally amiguous was a North Korean woman who attempted to kill US patients after Hawkeye had stuck up for her. She was turned over to a South Korean officer who was portrayed as a monster, and we saw that she was being patriotic to her side."
Funny but I do not see how killing a helpless patient as morally ambiguous. I also didn't see as being patriotic for the act. I just saw two monsters instead of one.
If it had been an American solder that tried to murder a helpless patient I doubt that anybody would say that he was being patriotic no matter how terrible the enemy was.
Any way my MASH comment was meant to be a joke but your comment so creeped me out that I just had to reply. Just what??? You have a very odd view of the world is all I can say.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This line of discussion started with morals. So far you've avoided that topic with the single exception of "I've been playing Homefront, and it reminds me why pacifism is an morally corrupt philosophy." We seem to be just trading words and not getting anywhere. So perhaps, if you're at all interested in expanding moral philosophy beyond a cartoon war game, you'd consider checking out Kohlberg's work on moral development. Hint: believing your (or any country's) government is always right is obedience to authority, a child's level of morality.
"You have a very odd view of the world is all I can say."
That wasn't my view of that, but the way it was portrayed in the show. At least the way I interpreted it.
Given the way that it showed Hawkeye sticking up for her (or at least cursing the officer) even when he heard the translations of what she was saying, it's hard to say the show was portraying her nearly as negatively as the ROK intelligence officer.
In fact, I had much the same reaction as you, not having a warm fuzzy for any one of them, including Hawkeye who seemed at best naive.
But there were many shows in that not long past Vietnam era that tried to be "cool" or "edgy" by showing rather sympathetic viewpoints of those opposing the US, and negative viewpoints of those we had supported.