I agree, games could be a powerful art medium to show such things. The only problem is, video games are in their rebelling teens right now, and not grown up enough to incorporate such ideas, at least not on a major scale. There are indy developers doing games with mature content and hard topics, but games are first and foremost devices of recreation and fun. Board games for example. Show me a commercial war-themed board game that has concentration camps, merciless murdering of civilians or hepatic cancer in it. You'll find none. It's same as you won't find Lego Hitler or Hasbro Slave Camp Creation Kit in a Toys'R'Us. Video games are essentially the same. While there are WWII themed toys, games and model kits on the selves, you won't find no Holocaust there either, or any other topic alike. It's not because people want to omit these or try to conceal real history, it's just because watching or playing with people's suffering is not fun.cobra_ky said:no, i wasn't clear. i'm not saying every WWII game has to include the Holocaust now. the point i was trying to make is that if someone wrote a book or movie about WWII and didn't address the Holocaust, it wouldn't taken as a serious depiction of the war. i believe games can be an artistic medium equal to the finest film and literature, then it's an issue that can and should be addressed. if you don't want to play it, that's fine. most people don't want to take games seriously, the same way many people wouldn't want to watch schindler's list. but some people would and be better off for it.
basically, it's a worthwhile endeavor is all i'm trying to say.
It has been done [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/], therefor it can be done. Of course there will be those who will miss the point, but seeing the market for Nazi regalia these days that's not necessarily a fault of the game.SBoggart said:I don't think there would be away to humanize Nazis without making it look like you're defending them. I think that's the main reason no one has done it yet.
That I agree with whole-heartedly. Right now opponents in a video game are in the main clay pigeons, there for the shooting with nothing inside. I admit it's nigh-impossible to do differently in a shooter, but perhaps a FPSRPG or different genre might be able to tap into a bit more depth than the current Hogan's Alley design core.I also think portraying them the way we do demeans the significance of WWII in a way. It's easy to have them be faceless, mindless mobs with varying scales of difficulty- it's hard to portray them as people. I think it's easier for people to think of them as non-human as it further justifies their hatred.
First, most of the 'assumptions' that you mention above are accurate, not inaccurate as you claim. The war was primarily fought by uniformed men from opposing nations. The U.S. and the U.K. were the good guys. The governments of Japan and Germany were the bad guys. The 'good guys' alliance with Russia was a questionable but (debatably) necessary evil in order to achieve victory. All of these are reasonable generalizations that can be made from the historical facts, without the assistance of a videogame. The fact that WW2 videogames seem to be conveying these impressions could even be seen as a positive from your point of view. Yes, we all need to realize that evil people exist everywhere and on every side of every issue, but generally these claims are accurate when examined in the greater context.We know it was fought exclusively between uniformed men from opposing nations, as even the battles that take place in cities are completely devoid of civilians. We know that the U.S. and U.K. were the infallible "good guys," that Russia's role was questionable but necessary and that Japan and Germany were immoral nations that had to be defeated at any cost.
All of these assumptions are inaccurate and deserve to be addressed individually, but the one that irks me most is the representation of the Germans as evil without ever mentioning the Holocaust.
well, board games aren't nearly as expressive as video games. there's a necessary amount of abstraction involved when the players have to enforce all the rules. video games, on the other hand, are much more immersive and therefore, i think, more emotionally involving.Playbahnosh said:I agree, games could be a powerful art medium to show such things. The only problem is, video games are in their rebelling teens right now, and not grown up enough to incorporate such ideas, at least not on a major scale. There are indy developers doing games with mature content and hard topics, but games are first and foremost devices of recreation and fun. Board games for example. Show me a commercial war-themed board game that has concentration camps, merciless murdering of civilians or hepatic cancer in it. You'll find none. It's same as you won't find Lego Hitler or Hasbro Slave Camp Creation Kit in a Toys'R'Us. Video games are essentially the same. While there are WWII themed toys, games and model kits on the selves, you won't find no Holocaust there either, or any other topic alike. It's not because people want to omit these or try to conceal real history, it's just because watching or playing with people's suffering is not fun.
Think out of the box for a little.
And in most games that's fine; but you start to enter a moral gray area when the events in the game actually happened. Blowing up aliens is different from blowing up historical human beings. In a way it's kind of disturbing that video games have been able to turn a profit by making the horrors of war into something fun (doesn't stop me from playing them though...)Video games on the other hand retain the black and white, they provide the much needed escape from reality that we need at times. As the player, you ARE the good guy, the bad guys are doing stuff and you must stop them. We get a few cut scenes showing why the villains are bad so as to encourage you to defeat them and you go in and take them down.
True but then it is up to the parents to let the kids know how to differentiate from what is war in a video game and what it is in reality. You can't just replace the parents with just the game teaching the kid what's right and what's wrong. Parents are the ones who should sit down with their kids and tell them what happened and how in a video game the view on a subject can differ greatly from reality. In life you'll live on the gray side, video games allow you to enter a world of black and white, it's one of the few escapes we have left, sure we can introduce a little something to just spark some curiosity in the gamer to just look up what happened and see it for himself but when a game shows you stuff like the holocaust, when you get depressed or it carries a heavy emotional subject it really stops being what it should be: "Fun".JakeOfRavenclaw said:And in most games that's fine; but you start to enter a moral gray area when the events in the game actually happened. Blowing up aliens is different from blowing up historical human beings. In a way it's kind of disturbing that video games have been able to turn a profit by making the horrors of war into something fun (doesn't stop me from playing them though...)Video games on the other hand retain the black and white, they provide the much needed escape from reality that we need at times. As the player, you ARE the good guy, the bad guys are doing stuff and you must stop them. We get a few cut scenes showing why the villains are bad so as to encourage you to defeat them and you go in and take them down.
Most probably would be held up by the censors and a big red stamp would read "Too graphic". Loosing every single thing about the holocaust and concentration camps just to be put out. Most people just want to know there was the holocaust, but they don't want to discuss it, it's a sensitive subject, one that's not easy to look at without more than one trying to change the subject immediately.Striker1246 said:While I think the author brings up many good points, he fails to identify the reasons that such atrocities aren't mentioned in video games. firstly, call of duty; world at war a game, not Schindler's List. the demographic that the developers are targeting don't want to see ghettos and concentration camps. secondly, any game that featured such content would immediately be branded AO, and would hit mainstream audiences anyway.