frizzlebyte said:
I don't normally use this kind of language, but:
How the FUCK would "kids today" not know about World War II *or* Vietnam? Is this a real phenomenon, or is this white-tower CEOs being dumb-asses? Because if it is a real thing, education is even shittier than I thought possible.
While I'm sure he was also mostly referring to American children as that's gaming's main audience, over here Vietnam and WWII get less focus than WWI. WWII is definitely taught for the absolute tragedy it was, Vietnam is... Not remembered, as while we sent some troops over, it wasn't really our war. Honestly I didn't even know about it until I watched Forest Gump. A couple years later my school went to the one museum started up by vets from that war, but you'd hardly know it was about Vietnam from being there, and most kids didn't understand what the Vietnam war was when they left.
WWI? Gallipoli. A day of national pride, and sorrow, for us. National holidays dedicated to it, so you know what WWI is pretty early on.
As for M rated games, that's 15+ here, and honestly I have little faith in those 3 years younger than me, let alone 6. I think its less the fact that its not getting taught, and more the fact that they don't care. As opposed to the shows my generation watched when we were younger, which were made by people that I swear were on some serious drugs, but half of which at least tried to encourage learning [The other half being anti-intellectual crap that often used serious topics and chances at learning as the butt of "I'm bored" and "Who cares" jokes], while the shows that were on for the age group a few years younger... Predominantly the type that espoused the view of being bored and uninterested at school as being cool, and WWII and maths and such as boring subjects no-one wants to learn about. It does have an impression on those who watch them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they took that attitude.
I think it also pays to remember that a fair portion of the population is actually not that well educated. General knowledge isn't a big thing these days, and a lot of people just aren't aware of basic facts. Part of this is a lack of interest, part of it is the prevalence of the internet and the "I don't need to know it, I'll just Google it" mentality. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of youth in most countries didn't know about WWI. Maybe they knew it was a thing, but they wouldn't be able to give any defining characteristics of the war, name any pivotal or key battles, or even talk about who fought in the war. Its something that, sadly, isn't so much focused on in our cultural heritage these days, we tend to not remember the old wars as much, because most people alive haven't lived through them. And when you haven't lived through a war, its often hard to comprehend how important it is to understand how horrible war can be. For most these days, its just a thing they see in games and on the TV, and when that's what war is, of course they're not going to care or know much about some of the biggest conflicts in history. They have no need to, or at least that's how they'd likely see it.
Honestly, I think a lack of knowledge about WWI is a valid concern. Not in the "This game shouldn't be made" sense, but as a concern in its own right. Battlefield COULD be used to inform people about the era, but we'll see how good a job it does of that. Sadly, its likely to glorify the war and just make a mess of the lessons that should have been learnt. I hope though that at least the campaign portrays the horror of the war, rather than the gung-ho "Lets go kill people" attitude they normally have. Portraying the scale of the conflict, the huge number of lives lost, and the utter futility of it all would be a great thing to remind people about what war is. I just doubt Battlefield will be the game to do it sadly.
