EA on women in Battlefield V; "If you don't like it, don't buy it"

[Dalisclock]

"We can't have women because that would be unrealistic."

"Okay but what about healing all injuries within seconds, the prevalence of automatic weaponry, respawning after death, and all this random anachronistic gear floating around?"

"No, see, those are fun for me. Playing as a woman is only fun for other people."

And then we all sighed and slowly shook our heads

Didn't this series have the Russians invade South America for reasons(Something Something Japanese WW2 EMP device) and have the possibility of losing a QTE fight to a rat?

Yup, realism.

Its almost like the realism excuse is all a load of nonsense of something, isn't it?

To be fair, I'm more then happy to play that game with CoD as well, since CoD was apparently getting the same thing a couple titles back. Infinite Warfare was full of things that made no sense, even with it's Star Wars/Battlestar Galatica inspirations on full display.

Infinite Warfare is the worst CoD. for just some of those reasons.

I wouldn't say it was the worst but it had a lot of problems and definitely not one of the better ones. I didn't play BLOPS3, Ghosts or WW2 so I suspect one of those is probably worse.

 

[Dalisclock]

Here's something else you can try to explain to me.I played the closed alpha and it spawned me in as a sniper. A British ASIAN FEMALE sniper....... So show me where all the asians fighting in WW2 for the british are at in the history books? That's alright, go ahead and give me that go to answer "It's just a game."

Probably from the same place BF1 got all those man portable machine guns from, or the part where one damaged British Mark V tank cut through 20 miles of heavily defended German lines and took out like 20 enemy tanks and hundreds of german troops in the process. Or having to run around like a madman for 20 minutes to avoid constant airstrikes and super-fast super-accurate artillery from landing on your head every time you land a hit on an armored train.

Or you could say that since Britan had colonies across the globe during WW2, some of which were in East Asia, the idea of Asian troops fighting on behalf of Britian wasn't inconcievable. There's your semi-justification.

 

[144_v1legacy]

This is a more complicated and blurred issue than a lot of people are giving it credit for.

I will defer to the Broadway/ballet examples:

When the Russian ballet performed Swan Lake, everyone was white.
When the New York City Ballet performed Swan Lake, the swans were of varying race.
The show "The Book of Mormon" has certain roles always performed by whites, and other roles always performed by blacks.
The show "Hamilton" was meant to be an entirely black cast, but white outcry has led to subsequent casting being mixed.
The show "Les Mis?rables" has a cast that is seemingly indifferent to the race of those playing it.

First, I'd be lying to say that the Russian Ballet's Swan Lake wasn't impressive in its ability to have a group of almost identical swan dancers. It had a nice effect. However, I wasn't exactly pulled out of the experience when watching the NYC version, as the dancers had so much similarity otherwise that it was impressive in its own way.
When Hamilton originally premiered with its all-black representation of the American founding fathers, with only the King of England being white, it had a unique impact that helped to amplify the music's... attitude, per se. But alas, when new casting calls faced outcry for wanting only black people for their cast from white people (ironic, considering how black performers have more difficulty getting parts for most shows, and this was a nice break), it lessened the experience. Yet no one to my knowledge has ever decried the Book of Mormon for continuing to only cast white people for the Mormon parts and black people for the Ugandan parts.
When watching Les Mis?rables, no one cared about the race of the performer. We know it takes place during the French Revolution, and as such race isn't important.

In summation, sometimes it matters to make casting decisions based on race, and sometimes it doesn't or shouldn't. Sometimes, having people of different racial makeup makes a point in the show (the Book of Mormon's song "I am Africa", as sung by a bunch of Mormons, would be less on-the-nose sarcastic if they weren't all white). Other times, it is irrelevant (the best Javert I ever saw in Les Mis?rables was a black performer).

So.

How to compare this to the Battlefield V situation?

Since there's no casting per se, there's really no harm done in simulating history as close as possible. That said, there's probably also no harm done in putting a few extra women here and there for the sake of modern happiness. But if an extremely accurate simulation is what they were going for (in terms of appearance, of course, gameplay necessitates liberties being taken regarding health or ammo or whatnot) then that should have been the EA response. To be more specific, something to the effect of "we were hoping to make a game that could virtually transport the player back in time, and if life was less progressive than it has become now, hopefully we succeeded in making it more apparent to the player the importance of equality." There is a problem in saying "if you don't like it, don't play it." By extension, that can be dangerous logic. For example: "if you don't like [insert famous political voice here], don't listen to him, your protests are unfounded."

 

[Avnger]

and zero training in shooting a weapon cause we all know women were taught how to shoot back then.

I'd love to see where you learned this "fact." I mean surely you're not just pulling random ideas out of your behind and presenting them as historical truths.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Here's something else you can try to explain to me.I played the closed alpha and it spawned me in as a sniper. A British ASIAN FEMALE sniper....... So show me where all the asians fighting in WW2 for the british are at in the history books? That's alright, go ahead and give me that go to answer "It's just a game."

Probably from the same place BF1 got all those man portable machine guns from, or the part where one damaged British Mark V tank cut through 20 miles of heavily defended German lines and took out like 20 enemy tanks and hundreds of german troops in the process.

Or you could say that since Britan had colonies across the globe during WW2, some of which were in East Asia, the idea of Asian troops fighting on behalf of Britian wasn't inconcievable. There's your semi-justification.

See, until recently I figured everybody had heard of troops like the Gurkhas.

I was apparently very mistaken.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

How do WW2 russian snipers not count as frontline?

Also how do WW2 Russian fighter pilots not count as frontline?

He also missed tank crew and combat medics. Totally not front line.

Don't forget the machine gunners. Machine guns aren't on the front lines though, so.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Here's something else you can try to explain to me.I played the closed alpha and it spawned me in as a sniper. A British ASIAN FEMALE sniper....... So show me where all the asians fighting in WW2 for the british are at in the history books? That's alright, go ahead and give me that go to answer "It's just a game."

I mean, they'd just be part of the British military, my dude. You can be a Brit and have Asian ancestry at the same time. It's not even hard, especially considering that British forces weren't segregated like American ones.

So, all you need for your fictional scenario to make sense is for a European of Asian ancestry to have a rifle, whether as a partisan or something like an SOE operative.

Which is certainly plausible.

 

[Dalisclock]

Here's something else you can try to explain to me.I played the closed alpha and it spawned me in as a sniper. A British ASIAN FEMALE sniper....... So show me where all the asians fighting in WW2 for the british are at in the history books? That's alright, go ahead and give me that go to answer "It's just a game."

Probably from the same place BF1 got all those man portable machine guns from, or the part where one damaged British Mark V tank cut through 20 miles of heavily defended German lines and took out like 20 enemy tanks and hundreds of german troops in the process.

Or you could say that since Britan had colonies across the globe during WW2, some of which were in East Asia, the idea of Asian troops fighting on behalf of Britian wasn't inconcievable. There's your semi-justification.

See, until recently I figured everybody had heard of troops like the Gurkhas.

I was apparently very mistaken.

I was gonna mention the GUrkhas and since IamGamer41 didn't mention what part of Asia, it would have probably worked nicely.

As someone else has mentioned, Not everyone in Britain is white. There are people of Indian, Asian and African Descent who have been living in the UK for centuries, because of the aforementioned colonialism.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I mean, they'd just be part of the British military, my dude. You can be a Brit and have Asian ancestry at the same time. It's not even hard, especially considering that British forces weren't segregated like American ones.

Actually, they were. The Commonwealth was very particular about not allowing indigenous people from the colonies the right to serve in units raised on the British islands. Their solution was to raise units that were colony specific, with officers drawn from the ruling colonial class. That is why there's a colony distinction between the 4th Indian Division and the 51st Infantry Division, for example. The British were also pretty uneasy about letting people from the colonies fight in Europe and it was only with great reluctance that Indian divisions were sent to North Africa to bolster the Commonwealth forces there. Most of their Asian subjects under arms were sent to fight the Japanese in Burma and no units from the Asian colonies showed up in mainland Europe.

Which, you know, doesn't really matter much in a game where V1 bombs will be deployed as tactical weapons and prototype tanks seems to be fairly commonplace.

 

[Elijin]

An army might have refused to hire female soldiers(that they knew were female anyway). But to pretend women never fought in WW2 is crazy, some factions did use women soldiers and theres also the fact that not everybody fighting in WW2 was in the army, during war random people can just show up with guns and start attacking your enemy, be they part of a political group militia or resistance fighters.

Go look at the Ukraine and its random pockets of nationalist groups unaffiliated with their military fighting to this day.

Is it so crazy to think a woman might have picked up their dead husbands hunting rifle and gone to fight in the resistance after their country is occupied?

Yeah maybe while they had their robot arm and zero training in shooting a weapon cause we all know women were taught how to shoot back then. Also there was zero females who fought on the front lines with the men. Female russian snipers? Yes( Dont give me that bull that snipers count as front line). Female russian pilots? Yes. As I have said there was next to no females fighting in the way the game portrays them in the trailer.

Here's something else you can try to explain to me.I played the closed alpha and it spawned me in as a sniper. A British ASIAN FEMALE sniper....... So show me where all the asians fighting in WW2 for the british are at in the history books? That's alright, go ahead and give me that go to answer "It's just a game."

Coming back to this, doesnt the existing information set say that character customisation is the thing being pushed. Which sort of implies you're either lying, or intentionally created an asian female sniper so you could be enraged about it.

 

[Kerg3927]

Snip

The didn't even hear his appeal, they don't know if there's enough of proof of bias. As for twice as many white people getting arrested, you're ignoring how statistics work. Proportionately, white people and black people smoke weed at the same rate. Let me give you an example. There's a building with 1000 white people and 100 black people in it. 400 white people and 40 black people all smoke pot. That's a proportional rate. Now, say police come in and arrest 20 black people and 40 white people. That would fit your argument that twice as many white people get arrested. Except 50% of the black people who smoked pot got arrested, while only 10% of the white people who did got arrested. And the black people got a harsher sentence for doing the same crime. That's how it's happening in America.

According to that DC judge I quoted (LINK [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/04/race-marijuana/2389677/]), who has 40 years of experience on the bench, that's not what is happening, though. His theory is that cops are trying to reach arrest quotas, so they focus on high crime neighborhoods, many of which happen to be black communities.

Or maybe that theory is incorrect, but it makes a lot more sense to me than racism. The idea that cops show up to work, flash an evil grin, and say, "I hate black people. Let's go fuck with them.".... and that it happens like that in pretty much every department across the country... seems pretty far-fetched to me in this day and age.

27% of cops in the U.S. are minorities, including 12% black [http://www.newsweek.com/racial-makeup-police-departments-331130]. In fact, that article seems to indicate that the way black cops treat black suspects is indistinguishable from the way white cops do, which to me says that there's something else besides racism going on.

As far as harsher sentencing, I think that is mainly a product of prior criminal record and legal representation. People who can afford lawyers are usually able to negotiate better outcomes and better able to keep their records clean. It's a class issue, not race.

Things are better, yes. But there's a saying I like to point out. "Better is not good." Yes, things have gotten better in a lot of ways, but they're still utterly terrible in lots of other ways. We've got a long way to go, and we cannot afford to get complacent, something a lot of people in the modern world want to do. They want to kick their feet up, say "it's all over, we're perfect" and not care.

But that's a matter of perception, which is a big part of the problem. How bad the situation is largely depends upon what agenda-driven news sources you frequent, and they are all heavily skewed and exaggerated one way or another, with the goal being to create as much outrage as possible, because outrage = clicks = ad revenue. It's hard to know what to believe, and I think most people just end up believing what they want to believe.

It's also easy to get complacent when a lot of people don't see the problem in their day to day lives. Trans issues are particularly out of sight and out of mind for most people because they make up only like 0.5% of the population [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States]. It's hard to see it as a dire emergency when the majority of people have probably never met a trans person (that they know of), let alone seen one discriminated against. And a lot of that is probably working as intended. If I were a trans person, I wouldn't want to spend all day talking about that fact. I'd just want to be treated as a woman or a man, and if others don't know that I wasn't born that way, great.

Your opinion lacks perspective. I'm a cis white het male, and you know what I do? I talk to non cis het white males to learn more about what they're going through. I don't make declarations about what's going on for these people without either doing that, or some research into the topic.

Good for you. The problem with that approach is that it is unscientific and a lot of people are full of shit. How do you discern between a person who is actually being persecuted and someone who is just looking for attention and is willing to lie and exaggerate to get it? I know, I'm a cynic, but that is what my observation of the world has taught me, and I think it's better to be a cynic than to be naive. That's why I like to look at hard data, something that can be quantified, rather than representations from small numbers of vocal people with their own agendas.

And your tribalism falls apart because it acts like I can't both want to help poor people, and stop unequal sentencing for black people at the same time. I don't know why people always treat humans like they can only care strongly about one particular thing at a time, but I'm proud to say my brain is not that underdeveloped.

I didn't say people can't multitask. I was saying that people tend to advocate for themselves, their family, their friends, and their social groups, i.e. their "tribe." It's how we're wired. But that type of mentality can be counterproductive when we're trying to make public policy that benefits society as a whole.

And put away the fucking victim card. Me pointing out that you lack perspective when it comes to certain hardships you will never go through and whose existence you may not ever be aware of.

I am not a victim. But making stereotypical assumptions about someone because of their race/sex/sexual orientation/identification right in the middle of a discussion about those issues is probably THE most counterproductive thing a person can do. It makes that person look like a giant hypocrite.

And this whole "why can't we help everyone" line of thinking is a non-sequitor. You find problems and fix them, you don't just stand around declaring all problems should be fixed, because there are certain problems that require specific approaches and can't be fixed with a universal blanket one, just like how unequal sentencing for blacks needs a solution specifically tailored for that situation. Like I said. Your opinion lacks perspective.

Our opinions differ on which approach might prove more successful. For example, you see poor black people as a racism problem. I see it as part of a larger problem that affects all poor people of all colors, and I think it should be addressed as such, benefitting all. Same with marijuana. I see it as a problem that should be addressed across the board with legalization.

And can I just point out the irony of you saying we should leave identity politics behind while also pulling the identity politics of being the white man that everyone is picking on? Pick one. Either we can't use identity politics or we can. Don't wag your finger at me for using it before using it to paint yourself as a victim not a sentence later.

Again, I am not a victim. I am just giving you sound advice that resorting to racism/sexism/heterophobia is a terrible way to win an argument about racism/sexism/homophobia. I think your cause would be best served if you avoided the tactic.

Nah, we can curb calls for hate crimes and not become a fascist state. See, I like the freedom to criticize the government and those in power, THAT is the good part of 'freedom of speech', but the 'freedom to say whatever bullshit we want' is a bad thing. If nothing else, starting a holocaust or genocide is worthy of revoking certain rights. Nazis lost any rights after WW2, they had their chance and murdered millions with it. The US would not be keen to let Muslim extremists do whatever they want, why do we let Nazis?

I'd love to see a Taliban parade in NYC with burning flags and 'death to America' chanted and see what happens. My guess is the government would do something about it.

It's an extremely slippery slope. When two people disagree about something, there are two options: words or violence. If you take away the first option, guess what's left? The only peaceful way that bad ideas like nazi-ism can be discredited is through conversation.

The problem with hate speech laws is that someone has to decide what hate speech is, and guess who does that, the government. And then it's not much of a jump from banning Nazi rhetoric to banning criticism of government and those in power, and once that happens, our democracy is fucked. Just because certain speech makes some people uncomfortable is not a good enough reason to start jacking with the most important right we have. It's not worth the risk. People just need to suck it up and handle being uncomfortable, or exercise your own rights and go protest. That's how a good democracy works.

Cops are given power, and SHOULD have responsibilities tied to it. Yeah, it is a touch job, so maybe we should not let just any psycho coward with a power trip problem have a fucking gun and the ability to abuse anyone they want!? No, the guy with a badge and gun is NOT the victim. When a cop fucks up, they get a paid vacation and someone else gets killed for it. Not even always the victim fucking up either, unless being black is a fuck up? Cops protect bad cops making them all guilty.

I'm all for higher standards and better training for cops. But it's going to cost more, and people don't like paying higher taxes.

1 is too many. Yeah, number-wise it is 'not a big deal' but people should be treated as more than numbers and statistics. We should never let ourselves view the world in such unfeeling, robotic terms.

The point is that that case now allows others to do the same with the government's blessing and protection! THAT is the issue. Any government protected bigotry is a horrendous thing.

That all sounds good. But in the real world people are going to make mistakes, and all you can do is take steps to minimize them. And there are trade-offs for everything.

We all like to drive our vehicles. Every year 30,000+ people [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year] die because of it. It's the same thing with cops. We want them armed so they can protect us from the bad guys and make us feel safe, but as a consequence, 1,000 of us [https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/] are going to get shot and killed by them each year. We just have to do whatever we can to minimize that number, and in particular, minimize the number of them that are shot for no good reason (i.e. weren't a legitimate threat to someone else).

As far as bigotry, has that ever been reasonably proven in any of these shootings? It's a very difficult thing to prove. On the internet, it's easy for some people to see a black man shot and assume racism, but you can't just make assumptions in a court of law without backing it up with hard evidence, and thankfully so.

I dont like viewing people as just numbers. Yeah, I point out the 15+ million people murdered by the Nazis often, but thats 15million PEOPLE. I cannot even imagine the pain and fear and hopelessness they each must have felt, and it scares me to live in a world that each day becomes more possible that I myself may finally know. I dont want to know, no one ever should experience such terror.

I can't imagine it, either.

I would add that, according to this article [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/04/race-marijuana/2389677/], overall about twice as many whites are arrested for weed.

And of there was one black person for every two white people in America, that would matter.

As I said above, I was merely pointing that out to acknowledge that white people get arrested, too, lots of them.

As far as sentencing, what happens once you get into a courtroom is HIGHLY dependent upon the quality of your legal counsel, and that's true for all races. Poor people, white and black, are much more likely to get the book thrown at them because they are using a shitty public defender and can't afford a real attorney. It just so happens that a high percentage of black people are poor, for reasons I discussed above. Prior record probably also plays into it, creating a snowball effect.

I'm sure that there are some actual racist cops out there, and it's probably a factor. But I would argue that the bigger factor is police going for easier arrests in black neighborhoods (fish in a barrel technique) and then a large percentage of those people not being able to afford an attorney.

Again, people should look at all factors before screaming zomg huge racism. Not doing so is part of the boy who cried wolf effect I mentioned.

So the cops and judges and legal system aren't racist, they're just lazy in a way that's indistinguishable from racism. That's a good defense.

I would say it's distinguishable from racism. The legal system has always been much more favorable to those who can afford the best lawyers. And that's a class issue, not racism.

As for cops, yeah, some would call that lazy. Others would call it an efficient use of available data, if targeting high crime neighborhoods results in more arrests. Maybe arrest quotas should be de-emphasized? But then you have politicians who got elected on promises to be tough on crime not getting the numbers they want, and so they fire a bunch of people at the police department. So rather than risk getting fired, they go for the easy numbers. There's no easy fix for that.

Maybe they could have a separate quota for each race? But how would that work? If they reach the black quota early, do they just let them do whatever they want for the rest of the fiscal year while cops focus on getting the white numbers up? You know most crimes committed by black people are against other black people, right? What about those black victims?

These are complicated issues. I would say what is lazy is just pointing at a number and crying racism, without looking at all the other factors and without coming up with any actual viable solutions.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

So the cops aren't racist, they're just going into neighborhoods looking to arrest people in order to fulfill a quota in a way that creates arrest rates that just so happen to be heavily skewed towards black people, making it indistinguishable from racism. I mean it's not like they're doing this to enforce laws that were created in the first place to be racist against black people. They're doing this to enforce laws that were created to be racist against Hispanics. (Crack was the drug the made harsher laws against to be racist against Black people. Opium for Asians) And historically have a history of not touching white people. So I have to say I really don't give a rat's ass how it's happening, the end result is black people doing a crime at the same rate as white people, and getting punished more for it. Because the funny thing about racism is that it doesn't matter if people intended for it to be racism or not. If it's racist, it's racist. And no, it isn't a result of prior criminal activity, first-time offenders. And here's the thing about police officers. The front line cops are generally just trying to do their jobs (though the police department is very good at instilling an us vs them mindset, with them being everyone that isn't a cop). They're not the ones who set up the arrest quotas and other policies that cause this to happen. Also, I'd like to know how many Black cops shoot unarmed black people. (And police don't grin at the idea of abusing black people, no kidding, can you please not engage in Strawman arguments with me?) Also I can't help but notice your source claims that the race disparity between weed arrests actually goes up in higher income neighborhoods. So that kind of pokes a hole in the "police are looking at high crime neighborhoods" argument.

https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illegal

I do plenty of research regarding this issue, I don't go to outrage clickbait sites in order to do it, and I look up plenty of hard statistics and personal experiences in order to do so. Give me some credit. And people getting complacent against trans people because they don't regularly interact with them is exactly the problem. And of course, it's hard to see it as an emergency if it's something that you have to actually do research on it. Frankly every time someone asks me that, I just have to keep asking the same question I always do when people respond to me claims of abuse and discrimination with statistics. How many people does it have to be before people give a shit? (Oh, and you claiming that if you were a trans person it'd be a good thing if people didn't know you were born that way is something an actual trans person would never actually say.)

So you're concerned that all the minorities who are talking about the abuse are lying. Great. No, just great. I'll be sure to double check that the trans person in my close group of friends isn't a dirty liar for you. In fact I'll just make sure that every last minority who ever complained about abuse isn't lying for you. No I don't consider it cynical. I consider it dismissive. Baselessly dismissive.

Considering the fact that I'm a cis straight white male and I find myself often caring about people who are none of those things (including black people when I have no black people in my group of friends) I'm not sure why you brought that up. I'm not poor and I know very few poor people, but I care about them all the same. Plenty of people who advocate against these problems often are in the same boat as me. You really aren't giving people enough credit.

You know, if you're not a victim, I really have to wonder where you were going with the "everyone gang up on the white male because fuck them" argument. Also, when you argue that we can't point out people engaging in isms when talking about isms, you're basically arguing that I should hobble my arguments. And sometimes, tough love is needed. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the greatest obstacle to equality was the white moderate, people who weren't being openly racist towards black people, but wrung their hands about the ways black people wanted equality and were more dedicated to a negative peace in the lack of tension than a positive peace in the presence of justice. I'm sorry, but asking me to not point it out when someone is doing something crappy? That's asking me to be a part of the negative peace.

I have to say, I can appreciate wanting to take a colorblind approach to solve problems, but I feel like it has a tendency to not work very well. When looking at variables, you don't selectively ignore them.

I already addressed this point.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

As for cops, yeah, some would call that lazy. Others would call it an efficient use of available data, if targeting high crime neighborhoods results in more arrests. Maybe arrest quotas should be de-emphasized? But then you have politicians who got elected on promises to be tough on crime not getting the numbers they want, and so they fire a bunch of people at the police department. So rather than risk getting fired, they go for the easy numbers. There's no easy fix for that.

I know you weren't talking to me, but I just have to interject to the point of 'efficient use of available data'

This is a fundamental idea of Illusory Correlation. To whit, an Arrest is defined by using legal authority to deprive a person of his or her freedom of movement. Any arrest goes into the record. I have never seen a yearly arrest record being corrected for false, wrong, or overturned arrest. So, if data is never corrected, how can it ever be efficient to use any source of data that doesn't reflect the realty of a situation and can only be served to be prejudicial?

You have have umpteen million arrests. That doesn't mean you have umpteen million guilty people. That means police officers have gathered up people and used their legal authority to detain people.

I'm going to trot out the Big Guns in no particular order. NYC Mayor De Blaiso changed the laws of being caught with weed to getting a summons instead of an automatic arrest back in 2015 [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gjke8/weed-is-basically-legal-in-new-york-city-now-but-only-if-youre-white-1023]. The problem with that is, in 2017 86% of the 17,880 people arrested for smoking weed out in public were black [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/21/bill-de-blasio-mayor-new-york-marijuana]. An alarming number, given that stats have prove white and blacks smoke in equal numbers. Especially in New York. But worst yet, Blacks are 15 times more likely to be arrested due to possession. Illegal possession has been changed in 2015 to be 25 grams. Or, if you want a visual representation, click here [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/guide-to-nycs-new-marijuana-policy.html]. These blacks are being arrested for joints that are legal for almost everyone else.

The Department of Justice itself admits an entire police force (Baltimore [https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/us/baltimore-justice-department-report/index.html]) has implicit racial bias and does unnecessary and false arrests. Chicago [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/us/chicago-police-dept-plagued-by-systemic-racism-task-force-finds.html] isn't far behind. Hell, one person (Annie Dookhan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan]) herself has falsified evidence in around 34,000 cases (mostly pointed to African Americans). These are just some of the actual data that was reported, compared it to the facts of the situation, and then found out the reality is troublesome.

There are arrests that are unfair, biased, and frankly faulty. But people like to look at the numbers, see the word 'arrest', and feel justified in having bias against a group. No one wants to dive deeper than that. Yes, there's actual crime in high crime areas. Normally, because high crime areas have impoverished people. But by simply being impoverished, you're apart of a group that everyone stigmatizes and no one cares about. You are easy pickings for a police officer who needs to make an arrest quota because it's thought that you're only doing your job due to the arrest and tickets you write each month [https://www.npr.org/2015/04/04/395061810/despite-laws-and-lawsuits-quota-based-policing-lingers]... Hell, if a cop has to decide on whether someone gets busted over an overblown ticket and whether he has a job to protect his family? I don't want to be that someone in that cop's way.

There are plenty reasons for arrests that go beyond actually finding guilty parties [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/40-reasons-why-our-jails-are-full-of-black-and-poor-people_b_7492902.html]. We will all do well to remember that. So that very fact taints the idea of 'efficient data' when it's gathered due for other means than scientific measuring.

 

[Callate]

I suppose that it would be petty to point out that women had particular roles on particular sides and particular fronts, and you weren't likely to see a woman on the front lines during WW II in most places. If you saw a French Resistance fighter sprinting around with a sub-machine gun in a pitched battle, they were doing it wrong.

I don't especially care; EA would have to do an awful lot to make me play their games again, and I guess if (as others have pointed out) we're at a point where World War II is essentially just our fantasy playground for shooting games with the occasional keep-a-straight-face shout out to "history" or "respect for service", it doesn't really matter if your avatar is historically a little unlikely.

But it would be nice to admit that this has very little to do with representing WW II historically and everything to do with wanting to be inclusive towards a female player base. If that's the goal- and it's not an unworthy one- don't hedge.

 

[Squilookle]

I suppose that it would be petty to point out that women had particular roles on particular sides and particular fronts, and you weren't likely to see a woman on the front lines during WW II in most places. If you saw a French Resistance fighter sprinting around with a sub-machine gun in a pitched battle, they were doing it wrong.

You sure about that?

Simone Segouin and hundreds of French girls just like her would say otherwise, once they'd finished up liberating places from the Germans such as Chartres and Paris...

 

[Callate]

I suppose that it would be petty to point out that women had particular roles on particular sides and particular fronts, and you weren't likely to see a woman on the front lines during WW II in most places. If you saw a French Resistance fighter sprinting around with a sub-machine gun in a pitched battle, they were doing it wrong.

You sure about that?

Simone Segouin and hundreds of French girls just like her would say otherwise, once they'd finished up liberating places from the Germans such as Chartres and Paris...

That doesn't especially dispute what I said. The vast majority of actions of the French resistance had little to do with head-on fighting- perfectly understandably, as for much of the occupation they would have been outgunned. They conducted assassinations, collected intelligence, and performed a great many acts of sabotage, but that's not the sort of asymmetrical conflict most FPSs center around.

I happily concede that there was at least one battle with a visible French Resistance fighter with a sub-machine gun. But as I said, that's one particular side on one particular front.

 

[Squilookle]

That doesn't especially dispute what I said. The vast majority of actions of the French resistance had little to do with head-on fighting- perfectly understandably, as for much of the occupation they would have been outgunned. They conducted assassinations, collected intelligence, and performed a great many acts of sabotage, but that's not the sort of asymmetrical conflict most FPSs center around.

I happily concede that there was at least one battle with a visible French Resistance fighter with a sub-machine gun. But as I said, that's one particular side on one particular front.

The whole point of the Resistance was to conduct sabotage and subversion in order to leave the Germans as disorganised as possible during the eventual opening of the second front. Once D-Day happened, and German reinforcements had been delayed as best they could, all bets were off. This was not one particular side on one particular front. These fighters linked up with any and every allied units they could find and actively participated in the fight to reclaim their country. It is far from an isolated incident. You may as well say the vast majority of time the British spent in Europe was on their own soil. France was a very different place once Overlord got underway.

 

[Terminal Blue]

That doesn't especially dispute what I said. The vast majority of actions of the French resistance had little to do with head-on fighting- perfectly understandably, as for much of the occupation they would have been outgunned. They conducted assassinations, collected intelligence, and performed a great many acts of sabotage, but that's not the sort of asymmetrical conflict most FPSs center around.

So, June 1944 this thing happened where suddenly lots of British, American and Canadian immigrants showed up in German occupied Normandy. You might have heard about it, it was a pretty big thing. What's less well known is that, a couple of months later, a second invasion force crossed the Mediterranean and landed in Southern France.

The French resistance was deeply involved in the preparation for these events (in fact, a large scale campaign of sabotage prior to the event played a major role in their success) and pretty much from the point paratroopers landed in Northern France, they were able to make contact with large assemblies of resistance fighters.

On the 20th of June, only a couple of weeks after the landing in Normandy, the French high command issued a statement effectively folding the French resistance in liberated areas into the French army under the designation Forces Francaises de l'Interieur (or FFI for short). From that point onward, resistance fighters in areas which had been liberated began to organise into batallions and were often incorporated into existing formations to make up the manpower of what was left of the French army. Ultimately, the FFI made up three quarters of the French army which took part in the liberation of France.

When you see pictures of French resistance fighters, unless those fighters have been captured and are being photographed by their captors, they are FFI fighters during the period in which the FFI was taking part in "head-on-fighting". Understandably, the resistance was not in the habit of photographing themselves posing with captured machine guns during the occupation period.

 

[Zontar]

Are we really trying to use the 0.001% of women who fought in combat roles to justify the downright travesty that has been everything revolving around Battlefield V? Because that isn't really a justification, especially when you remember the very rare and specific circumstances that those instances happened in, the fact none of them where the ones we saw in the trailer, the fact none of those exceptionally few women in combat where amputees, and the fact I'm pretty sure none of them served in a rag-tag unit that was temporarily desegregated.

It's alternate history with nothing resembling reality, and that's not a problem, why are we trying to justify the realism in a game that is openly and boldly trying to not be realistic?