There does actually exist a game wherein one can end up as a pseudo-ISIS. One starts off as a generic opposition group in Syria and has to choose between trying to hold out until western diplomats sort things out or throwing jihadis at Assad and hoping that you can win the war of atrocity attrition. I thought it rather interesting approach to the conflict, but can no longer remember the name (it was browser-based).
How would you feel about a game with ISIS as the enemy?
- Thread starter Bob_McMillan
- Start date
So you're saying to not just make the enemy brown people- But brown people with a modernist twist.
Can we just have an original game idea instead? Is that an option?
Like, I feel like when a game tries to tackle a social issue overtly it usually ends up being bad- just like with any medium. "GAHHH YOU GOTTA KILL THE BAD GAIS" (Which, yes, ISIS has pretty much confirmed itself to be a "Bad guy" to an almost cartoonish level) is pretty stale. It's stale in everything. I mean, I could play COD4 and get the same experience I would get from playing this proposed idea.
Can we just have an original game idea instead? Is that an option?
Like, I feel like when a game tries to tackle a social issue overtly it usually ends up being bad- just like with any medium. "GAHHH YOU GOTTA KILL THE BAD GAIS" (Which, yes, ISIS has pretty much confirmed itself to be a "Bad guy" to an almost cartoonish level) is pretty stale. It's stale in everything. I mean, I could play COD4 and get the same experience I would get from playing this proposed idea.
It would just be another modern military shooter but they change the name of the terrorist organisation, so I guess it could be good but I doubt it would be.
But the concept of the devs or publishers highlighting how it is ISIS in their game?
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But the concept of the devs or publishers highlighting how it is ISIS in their game?
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For better or worse, a lot of good people feel a kind of tribal allegiance with others from their part of the world, no matter how insane they are.
I think having brown middle-easterners as enemies in media is probably a bad idea for the next decade or so.
Just use China and North Korea as your go-to enemies of choice. They censor everything anyway so you're not gonna upset anyone except their awful governments.
I think having brown middle-easterners as enemies in media is probably a bad idea for the next decade or so.
Just use China and North Korea as your go-to enemies of choice. They censor everything anyway so you're not gonna upset anyone except their awful governments.
You're a little bit myopic due to your own agenda, OP. The 'anti-gaming' crowd, while it has its fill of raving mongoloids (which group doesn't?) may have legitimate bones to pick with video games and their place in society.
I'd be pretty indignant, that is not only dehumanizing (hey, just like ISIS themselves!) but is abhorrent for the same reason that people celebrating Osama Bin Laden's 'death' were abhorrent. You're stooping to their level, you're fighting with monsters and becoming a monster yourself. Unless the game was satirical or provided some sort of social commentary, it'd just be a recruitment/patriotic masturbation tool used to pat America on its back.
Abhorrent due to sheer brutality and fanaticism? Maybe, but from the way I see it the true monsters are the ones you never hear about. The ones you only hear in passing, the white collar crime, the buying and selling of politicians, the use of your hard earned taxes to do things actively against your best interests. This mentality allows the true monsters among us to prolong the subterfuge. I'm not talking about 'Illuminati' here, no eyes wide shut shit but the outright corruption which is 'legal' and that we vote for will be more threatening to us as a species than a bunch of retards in the desert massacring people.
As said before, you're stooping to their level. You're dehumanizing your enemy just as they dehumanized you. It would be like having home grown suicide bombers to fight their suicide bombers. It makes no sense and is an afront to basic human decency.
As some have pointed out, you could essentially switch the enemy faction in most modern war games with ISIS and it'd be pretty much the same game.
I'd love a sincere look at the issue from a local standpoint though. Say you're an Iraqi militiamen defending one of the last refuges from an encroaching ISIS unit. Doesn't have to be something big or a long campaign either.
Emotional gut punches aplenty in that sort of setting...what with, you know, the horrific violence going on and all.
Didn't offend me in the slightest though, as it shouldn't, given that I haven't been under fire in a desert or anything.
Would have been genuinely interesting to see if gaming could have made its own Black Hawk Down or Hurt Locker, but, no. One segment, in this case I believe it was conservative folks, shut it down.
It swear, if it's not the hard right, it's the hard left. It's almost like extremism and oversensitivity are cancerous and retard artistic expression or something.
I'd love a sincere look at the issue from a local standpoint though. Say you're an Iraqi militiamen defending one of the last refuges from an encroaching ISIS unit. Doesn't have to be something big or a long campaign either.
Emotional gut punches aplenty in that sort of setting...what with, you know, the horrific violence going on and all.
I was actually really looking forward to that one and I have family/friends who've been over there too. A couple of them even expressed tentative willingness to see something like it, but I can definitely understand their reservations about being 'thrown' back into it while they're home, of all places.VanQ said:
Didn't offend me in the slightest though, as it shouldn't, given that I haven't been under fire in a desert or anything.
Would have been genuinely interesting to see if gaming could have made its own Black Hawk Down or Hurt Locker, but, no. One segment, in this case I believe it was conservative folks, shut it down.
It swear, if it's not the hard right, it's the hard left. It's almost like extremism and oversensitivity are cancerous and retard artistic expression or something.
I worry I might regret posting this, but..
Political Islam as an ideology evolved partly in response to Western interference in the middle east, and in particular the perceived role of the West in propping up of downright shitty secular nationalist governments (which were at the time tolerated or even held up as progressive for being sympathetic to Western interests, much like Saudi Arabia is today).
To understand why people turn to groups like AQ and ISIS, you have to understand what it means to live in a country where you cannot see any possibility of achieving meaningful political autonomy, and thus meaningful political change. Because that has been the basic reality of middle eastern politics for a long time now. None of the major players actually want to change the rules of the game. They want governments who are going to be reliable allies, not accountable.
Yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff like the rise of the piety movement, but there is a very strong rhetoric of autonomy and redress in jihadism.
For some people who are sufficiently angry and feel powerless, that will be enough.
Also, why is it better to hide the awful things that you do? Do you think the people who had their anuses torn open by "rectal exams" during enhanced interrogation understand that their interrogators were good people because they at least had the decency to try to conceal what they were doing?
There are people willing to do horrible things for almost any cause. I don't think the fact that some people hide it makes them better people. It may make them easier to understand for those of us who still feel revulsion at awful things, because presumably we'd want to hide it too, but they aren't doing it to spare us.. they're doing it to deceive us so that they can continue to live among us. The only difference with ISIS is that they have no need of that deception.
Why not both?ToastiestZombie said:
Political Islam as an ideology evolved partly in response to Western interference in the middle east, and in particular the perceived role of the West in propping up of downright shitty secular nationalist governments (which were at the time tolerated or even held up as progressive for being sympathetic to Western interests, much like Saudi Arabia is today).
To understand why people turn to groups like AQ and ISIS, you have to understand what it means to live in a country where you cannot see any possibility of achieving meaningful political autonomy, and thus meaningful political change. Because that has been the basic reality of middle eastern politics for a long time now. None of the major players actually want to change the rules of the game. They want governments who are going to be reliable allies, not accountable.
Yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff like the rise of the piety movement, but there is a very strong rhetoric of autonomy and redress in jihadism.
Because they get results. They have proven they are capable of not only resisting but actually striking back at and hurting those that they (and many people) see as oppressors. That has always been the central appeal of Jihadism.Hades said:
For some people who are sufficiently angry and feel powerless, that will be enough.
Also, why is it better to hide the awful things that you do? Do you think the people who had their anuses torn open by "rectal exams" during enhanced interrogation understand that their interrogators were good people because they at least had the decency to try to conceal what they were doing?
There are people willing to do horrible things for almost any cause. I don't think the fact that some people hide it makes them better people. It may make them easier to understand for those of us who still feel revulsion at awful things, because presumably we'd want to hide it too, but they aren't doing it to spare us.. they're doing it to deceive us so that they can continue to live among us. The only difference with ISIS is that they have no need of that deception.