Identifying with Authority

[Pseudonym]

Depends on the time, for example Authoritarian measures during a plague can be justified.

Let's start that as long as it's not literally nazi esque "pregnancy camps" (I just thought of a terrible pun "labor camp") and just the government emphasizing birthing more kids then there's nothing really bad or morally wrong about it, plus a nazi way is that the government wanting kids from "the right parents". Finally a war is an event that dehumanizes everyone, I'd feel worse for the soldiers being dehumanized as acceptable sacrifices in the war than women who live in relative safely.

The nazi's didn't do any and everything using camps, just some things. There were no 'nazi-esque pregnancy camps', but there was nazi-esque promoting of pregnancy like the fictional CoG does. How there isn't something morally wrong with the government telling people to have or not have babies is beyond me. Not being also horribly racist is a low bar to set.

As for war being dehumanizing. Surely, but I see no reason to make it more dehumanising for those at home on the off chance that you cannot (or more likely are unwilling to) make peace within decades to come.

 

[Worgen]

I'm just waiting for some shooting action game about your heroic fight against the brutal authoritarian government that wont let you yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The baby farms in Gears of War were always one of the most troubling aspects for me.

They might be necessary for the survival of the species. It's a debatable point. But you're still taking every woman born and saying "You have a choice: go fight subterranean ogres, or be gang-raped several times a day until you give birth, after which you will repeat the process until you're post-menopausal."

I don't think they were even given the choice in early games. They just took anyone over the age of ten [http://gearsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Birthing_Creche] and threw them into the rape factory. Brrr.

Anyway, that's not the point of the thread. Overall, I kind of agree with the OP. I sometimes sympathise much more strongly with the authority figures in video games than the freedom fighters.

Brink is a good example. So is Assassin's Creed. Watch Dogs. Other ones...Dragon Age, I never really sympathised with the mages over the templars. It killed DA2 for me. Titanfall was another one; what bugged me about that was that the only real "villain" was the South African guy with a hard-on for violence. In comics, the whole idea of superhero registration was a non-conflict to me. Yes, Cyclops. You have laser eyes, so you need a laser eye license. This isn't very complicated.

I feel that - in general - government is a good thing. I mean, until we perfect our monkey brains and become anarcho-communists, it's our best bet. So if you want me to not like the government, you have to do more than say "they're the government!" Give me some examples. Are they corrupt? Are they inept? Are they repressive and totalitarian? Do the freedom fighters have alternatives?

Like, in Star Wars I'm totally on the side of the Rebels. Mainly because a) their actual name is the Alliance to Restore the Republic, which is a pretty clear policy goal if I've ever seen one, and b) the Empire is an inefficient, brutally violent shitshow being run by an egotistical warlock. That's a freedom vs. fear set-up that I can agree with.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I don't think they were even given the choice in early games. They just took anyone over the age of ten [http://gearsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Birthing_Creche] and threw them into the rape factory. Brrr.

Good of OP to identify with the government-mandated prepubescent rape farms and against those nagging broads who have a problem with it.

OT: I think it has less to do with being older and thus leaning towards the side of the authorities and more the fact that as you grow older your ability to critically look at media also grows (at least hopefully, some people seem violently opposed to the notion of critically looking at media). As such, you no longer just accept everything presented to you by a piece of media as definitely the case. So when something lazily tries to establish one authority or group as the evil antagonists with little more than someone's say so, it can easily fail.

I'd even go so far as to say that, rather than identifying more with authority in media, you're more capable and willing to reject the authority of the protagonist's views and the creator's intentions when they haven't manifested convincingly.

I don't have high tolerance for feelings and personal issues in the first place.

In a situation such as the one in the Gears universe, I have precisely zero patience or empathy. We need more humans to survive, you're the ones who can make them, so guess what?

I know its' hard for a lot of people to imagine, but in the kind of situation the COG and humanity found themselves in after E-Day, little niceties like their society or ours would have go away and a lot of nasty things that we used to have to do to survive come back out.

That meant for females, unless you were exceptionally skill in combat (like Sam, Bernie or the redhead sniper from the comics), a needed skill (like Anya or her mother) you get to stay back and have babies and tend home. Hell, during the events of Gears 3 humanity basically didn't even have a society anymore - they were basically tribes just wandering around.

In Gears 4 they're recovered, but their population still is probably smaller than some city states overall, which means they're still in survival mode. They've got nicer tech and are rebuilding, but their still at the point where a few women getting to be like Kait and going "Nah, fuck that" could seriously endanger the survival or long-term prospects of a COG settlement or outpost.

 

[The Madman]

How does that old quote go again?

"If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain."

I don't agree with it entirely, but there is definitely some truth to the sentiment. I imagine it has to do with the impetuousness of youth versus the desire for stability as most people grow older.

It's already happening to me, I know that for sure. I see a trailer like this:


And all I can think is 'damned punk kids'. Now someone's gotta clean up all that graffiti and I bet you're not cleaning up after those parties either, meanwhile the guard in the server room you just broke into is probably going to get fired (If you don't just kill him outright because hey, videogame.) all so some punks can get twitter followers 'hacking' news broadcasts to throw up some lame anti-establishment gif or whatever? Bleh.

 

[Saulkar]

The problem with so many games is they tend to offer blunt, black and white dichotomies with a little crosshatching slap-dash added to superficially imply some grey elements. I am not opposed to authority but at the same time I hold it in perpetual suspicion. Games often go out of their way to depict the authority in such a way as to manipulate the player's view of them until the game throws some twist about how they were right all along or not as bad as depicted (though sometimes worse) while doing its best to obfuscate the matter so that you had no idea up to that point. Ultimately I feel that a more balanced depiction of authority and those that oppose it should make its way into more games. I had a couple of older titles off the top of my head but I just cannot remember at the moment.

In closing, authority is too often depicted as wholly unreasonable and the opposition as virtuous (at least in the eyes of the game) with the gameplay and story crafted to maintain these viewpoints. A more nuanced approach would allow me to contently form my own opinions in games but until then it is not something I empathise with one way or the other.

In real life however, I find that while authority legitimately has its place it has begun to overstep its bounds in many ways under the disingenuous guise of being for our protection. Nauseating however are those I know that believe it wholesale and authority is virtuous on every level and for the benefit of everyone under it and I am retarded insane for remotely insinuating otherwise.

 

[Phasmal]

I don't think they were even given the choice in early games. They just took anyone over the age of ten [http://gearsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Birthing_Creche] and threw them into the rape factory. Brrr.

Good of OP to identify with the government-mandated prepubescent rape farms and against those nagging broads who have a problem with it.

Holy shit that is so much worse than I remembered it being. For some reason my brain threw the majority of information about Gears into the memory hole.

So yeah, not lazy and boring writing. Lazy, boring, pathetic and creepy writing.
Ugh and that just makes this thread ten million times ickier.

Fuckin' YIKES.

 

[Saelune]

I don't think they were even given the choice in early games. They just took anyone over the age of ten [http://gearsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Birthing_Creche] and threw them into the rape factory. Brrr.

Good of OP to identify with the government-mandated prepubescent rape farms and against those nagging broads who have a problem with it.

Holy shit that is so much worse than I remembered it being. For some reason my brain threw the majority of information about Gears into the memory hole.

So yeah, not lazy and boring writing. Lazy, boring, pathetic and creepy writing.
Ugh and that just makes this thread ten million times ickier.

Fuckin' YIKES.

Well, it seems all the depth and grey morality is just the comics. The games make little mention of it if they do at all. They occasionally touch on the treatment of The Stranded, but really in the games the Gears are the good guys and thats about it.

I dont think the games ever really cared to be more than an action shooter.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I don't think they were even given the choice in early games. They just took anyone over the age of ten [http://gearsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Birthing_Creche] and threw them into the rape factory. Brrr.

Good of OP to identify with the government-mandated prepubescent rape farms and against those nagging broads who have a problem with it.

Holy shit that is so much worse than I remembered it being. For some reason my brain threw the majority of information about Gears into the memory hole.

So yeah, not lazy and boring writing. Lazy, boring, pathetic and creepy writing.
Ugh and that just makes this thread ten million times ickier.

Fuckin' YIKES.

When it comes your species survival and you're facing perhaps the actual end, things are going to get nasty and you're going to do what you think you have to survive.

Under the Fortification Act everyone in the COG was conscripted into war work - factories, farms or combat. And making sure there are enough new humans to survive after the war was considered war work (especially since Sera had already been having a fertility problem that basically no one knew was connected to Imulsion).

Unsightly, unseemly and possible immoral? Yes. Needed to ensure humanity's survival? Yeah, probably.

That, and the treatment of the women at some of the clinics was mis-represented to both Colonel Hoffman and Chairman Prescott; when they found out what was happening and the women there rebelled, neither of them helped the administrators of the facilities and let them go "MIA" (read; they let them get killed and didn't do anything to the women).

 

[Thaluikhain]

When it comes your species survival and you're facing perhaps the actual end, things are going to get nasty and you're going to do what you think you have to survive.

Sure, and that sort of thing might happen.

Disagreement with such policy is a tad more than "personal opinions and discomfort".

 

[happyninja42]

snip

The issue with fiction when it comes to these things, is that most creators seriously filter down the situation to very unrealistic factors. They don't leave room for nuance, or situational morality, or anything like that. "X=Good, Y=Bad, now on with the action story I want to tell!" kind of stuff. Which makes for some very annoying situations, when you try and apply real world messiness to them.

For example, I'm rewatching season 2 of Daredevil, because my wife never saw it. Now, in the comics, the Punisher is a protagonist, we're supposed to root for him. But he's just an anarchistic, mass murderer, with severe mental damage and suffering from PTSD. In the real world, a guy that runs around, shooting high caliber weapons, and setting off explosives in a densely urban setting, isn't a hero, he's a psychopath. And yes, I know that's part of the storyline of Punisher, but bottom line is we're encouraged to root for him, despite his specific beliefs and worldviews, and how contrary they are to real world mentality.

*shrugs* It's just how entertainment is. It's hard to pack a good story into a finite runtime, if you don't streamline the motivations of the characters. And that, unfortunately, makes for some cognitive dissonance when compared to real life.

 

[sageoftruth]

I feel like you guys on focusing a little too much on the specific part of the Gears 4 example and not the general part that relates to the topic in general.

Anyway, I never really thought of myself as being conservative...rather I just didn't really get on board with the whole "freedom no matter what" stuff and attitude.

I can certainly relate to that. Lately, the word "Freedom" has become like the word "Fascism". Both have been used so often by so many different groups of people with such vastly different ideas regarding how a country should be run. What does it even mean anymore? Nowadays, I just get cynical when anyone uses "Freedom" to justify something. Often an appeal to "freedom" turns out to also be an appeal to suppress something else.

 

[Phasmal]

When it comes your species survival and you're facing perhaps the actual end, things are going to get nasty and you're going to do what you think you have to survive.

Under the Fortification Act everyone in the COG was conscripted into war work - factories, farms or combat. And making sure there are enough new humans to survive after the war was considered war work (especially since Sera had already been having a fertility problem that basically no one knew was connected to Imulsion).

Unsightly, unseemly and possible immoral? Yes. Needed to ensure humanity's survival? Yeah, probably.

That, and the treatment of the women at some of the clinics was mis-represented to both Colonel Hoffman and Chairman Prescott; when they found out what was happening and the women there rebelled, neither of them helped the administrators of the facilities and let them go "MIA" (read; they let them get killed and didn't do anything to the women).

Bruh, I dunno what part of my post made you think I wanted you to justify fake rape farms to me. I do not.

It's stupid and lazy writing, I very much doubt it's 'what they have to do' to survive, it's just some writer trying to be edgy.

And I think it's creepy as hell that anyone could identify with that. 'Possible immoral'. Fucking hell.

 

[Cicada 5]

snip

The issue with fiction when it comes to these things, is that most creators seriously filter down the situation to very unrealistic factors. They don't leave room for nuance, or situational morality, or anything like that. "X=Good, Y=Bad, now on with the action story I want to tell!" kind of stuff. Which makes for some very annoying situations, when you try and apply real world messiness to them.

For example, I'm rewatching season 2 of Daredevil, because my wife never saw it. Now, in the comics, the Punisher is a protagonist, we're supposed to root for him. But he's just an anarchistic, mass murderer, with severe mental damage and suffering from PTSD. In the real world, a guy that runs around, shooting high caliber weapons, and setting off explosives in a densely urban setting, isn't a hero, he's a psychopath. And yes, I know that's part of the storyline of Punisher, but bottom line is we're encouraged to root for him, despite his specific beliefs and worldviews, and how contrary they are to real world mentality.

*shrugs* It's just how entertainment is. It's hard to pack a good story into a finite runtime, if you don't streamline the motivations of the characters. And that, unfortunately, makes for some cognitive dissonance when compared to real life.

You weren't supposed to root for the Punisher in Daredevil. Depending on who's writing him in the comics, you're not supposed to root for him either.

 

[happyninja42]

snip

The issue with fiction when it comes to these things, is that most creators seriously filter down the situation to very unrealistic factors. They don't leave room for nuance, or situational morality, or anything like that. "X=Good, Y=Bad, now on with the action story I want to tell!" kind of stuff. Which makes for some very annoying situations, when you try and apply real world messiness to them.

For example, I'm rewatching season 2 of Daredevil, because my wife never saw it. Now, in the comics, the Punisher is a protagonist, we're supposed to root for him. But he's just an anarchistic, mass murderer, with severe mental damage and suffering from PTSD. In the real world, a guy that runs around, shooting high caliber weapons, and setting off explosives in a densely urban setting, isn't a hero, he's a psychopath. And yes, I know that's part of the storyline of Punisher, but bottom line is we're encouraged to root for him, despite his specific beliefs and worldviews, and how contrary they are to real world mentality.

*shrugs* It's just how entertainment is. It's hard to pack a good story into a finite runtime, if you don't streamline the motivations of the characters. And that, unfortunately, makes for some cognitive dissonance when compared to real life.

You weren't supposed to root for the Punisher in Daredevil. Depending on who's writing him in the comics, you're not supposed to root for him either.

And yet many people do. Many people actually see his "kill em all, let *insert being of your choice* sort it out" justice as the right thing, and consider him a good protagonist. And I would disagree that they didn't want you to root for him in Daredevil, given the way Karen Page went to bat for him, to try and show that he wasn't a monster, that he wasn't insane, that he was out there "doing good".

 

[CaitSeith]

While reading through this I tried to remember games where you played as part of a reasonable authority. The first game in my mind was FTL: Faster Than Light (where the roles were pretty much reversed).

 

[Cicada 5]

snip

The issue with fiction when it comes to these things, is that most creators seriously filter down the situation to very unrealistic factors. They don't leave room for nuance, or situational morality, or anything like that. "X=Good, Y=Bad, now on with the action story I want to tell!" kind of stuff. Which makes for some very annoying situations, when you try and apply real world messiness to them.

For example, I'm rewatching season 2 of Daredevil, because my wife never saw it. Now, in the comics, the Punisher is a protagonist, we're supposed to root for him. But he's just an anarchistic, mass murderer, with severe mental damage and suffering from PTSD. In the real world, a guy that runs around, shooting high caliber weapons, and setting off explosives in a densely urban setting, isn't a hero, he's a psychopath. And yes, I know that's part of the storyline of Punisher, but bottom line is we're encouraged to root for him, despite his specific beliefs and worldviews, and how contrary they are to real world mentality.

*shrugs* It's just how entertainment is. It's hard to pack a good story into a finite runtime, if you don't streamline the motivations of the characters. And that, unfortunately, makes for some cognitive dissonance when compared to real life.

You weren't supposed to root for the Punisher in Daredevil. Depending on who's writing him in the comics, you're not supposed to root for him either.

And yet many people do. Many people actually see his "kill em all, let *insert being of your choice* sort it out" justice as the right thing, and consider him a good protagonist. And I would disagree that they didn't want you to root for him in Daredevil, given the way Karen Page went to bat for him, to try and show that he wasn't a monster, that he wasn't insane, that he was out there "doing good".

The show actively proved Karen wrong. Even Frank himself knew he was a lost cause.

 

[springheeljack]

I guess my problem with a lot of Authorities in games is they're written by writers, not people who've actually worked for the Government. They're comically inept or openly evil with no redeeming qualities and apparently no regard for the actually citizens of their nations and no legal accountability whatsoever.

Now IRL some people in Government are surely power hungry and mean, but ALL of them?! What, John Koskinen, IRS director, is a nefarious amoral villain totally willing to go along with an evil plan to nuke New York to cover up a secret Government experiment on...weasels or something? He's basically just a lvl100 accountant in a decent suit, not Lex Luthor.

Most Government employees are honest people who are just doing their job and want a foot massage at the end of the day. And most of them are deathly afraid of doing a bad job or PR nightmares and very very very few of them have the ability to pull off full-on-cover-ups of anything. Because all those cover-up documents? Yeah, those are written by low level clerks and assistants, and they can't all be 10000% evil, nefarious power hungry lizard people.

And its bullshit how readily willing the Army always is to declare marshal-law on a population and start gunning down a mother and her kid who tried to escape the fence. First off troop movements like that don't go unnoticed. And second lots of Generals have a moral code of their own, and would object to using armed force on their own country. From what I can see most military leaders want to protect their country, not openly oppress its people for an obviously corrupt government.

While I do agree with the idea that most writers of videogames could do better than the whole entire government is composed with evil people trope I will have to disagree with you about your last statement. Our own recent world history is filled with generals and solders who were perfectly willing to use unrelenting force against their own people. Look at leaders like Idi Amin, Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet among others. They had no problems with gunning down mother and son. They probably did feel like they were helping and protecting their country. It's just that they were thinking about a particular subset of people that made up their country.

 

[Erttheking]

The COG's attempt to boost its popularity is utterly futile, and in the long run it might have actually hurt their society in the long run. I'm not talking about Gears 4 so much here, as I am everything before it.

Let's wind the clock back. Emergence Day. Humanity comes out of a century long war, only for shit to hit the fan six weeks later. Locust invade and the COG need to retreat to Jacinto and torch everything else. Life sucks. For the next fifteen years they hold out against the Locust, and the whole time they reduce women to being baby farms. This is an utterly stupid idea. Think about it. Really think about it. You've been reduced to a single plateau and a handful of cities. The majority of your territory is gone, and that means you have a limited supply of food. You are being lay under siege by a species that wants to murder every last one of you. And your plan to deal with that is to tie down half of the population to have babies, which will bloat the population with useless mouths!?

It should be pretty obvious with the way the war is going that, one way or another, it's going to be over before these kids become adults that are old enough to fight and make a difference. If you push it, the kids born within the first year or two of the war would be able to contribute in meaningful ways. If you rush them. And even then they would only be ready to fight during the events of Gears 3, at which point the COG has more or less fallen apart.

So here's what the COG managed to win for itself. It took all of the women that could've been contributing to the war effort, whether via direct combat or support roles, and tied them up doing nothing, produced a ton of children that will suck down the little food the COG has left and will, at best, make the Locust waste a few bullets on them (Assuming the kids don't get fed alive to a Corpser), and stretched their existing army thin as now they have to defend all these little brats.

If we're identifying with authority, can we get an authority that isn't stupid? I mean it's LESS stupid in 4 considering that they now have robots defending them, but at this point there's no need to rush repopulation. The director of the COG in that game takes a long freaking time to buy that there's a threat that isn't just the Outsiders, so why bother? And even IF there was a bigger threat that they believed in, the majority of the military seems to be robots now, so why bother rushing? It's not like you need more soldiers and you need them now. It's be smarter to have less settlements over more. Build tall, not wide. This isn't freaking Civilization where you want to have as many people as possible because because.

 

[Paragon Fury]

The COG's attempt to boost its popularity is utterly futile, and in the long run it might have actually hurt their society in the long run. I'm not talking about Gears 4 so much here, as I am everything before it.

Let's wind the clock back. Emergence Day. Humanity comes out of a century long war, only for shit to hit the fan six weeks later. Locust invade and the COG need to retreat to Jacinto and torch everything else. Life sucks. For the next fifteen years they hold out against the Locust, and the whole time they reduce women to being baby farms. This is an utterly stupid idea. Think about it. Really think about it. You've been reduced to a single plateau and a handful of cities. The majority of your territory is gone, and that means you have a limited supply of food. You are being lay under siege by a species that wants to murder every last one of you. And your plan to deal with that is to tie down half of the population to have babies, which will bloat the population with useless mouths!?

It should be pretty obvious with the way the war is going that, one way or another, it's going to be over before these kids become adults that are old enough to fight and make a difference. If you push it, the kids born within the first year or two of the war would be able to contribute in meaningful ways. If you rush them. And even then they would only be ready to fight during the events of Gears 3, at which point the COG has more or less fallen apart.

So here's what the COG managed to win for itself. It took all of the women that could've been contributing to the war effort, whether via direct combat or support roles, and tied them up doing nothing, produced a ton of children that will suck down the little food the COG has left and will, at best, make the Locust waste a few bullets on them (Assuming the kids don't get fed alive to a Corpser), and stretched their existing army thin as now they have to defend all these little brats.

If we're identifying with authority, can we get an authority that isn't stupid? I mean it's LESS stupid in 4 considering that they now have robots defending them, but at this point there's no need to rush repopulation. The director of the COG in that game takes a long freaking time to buy that there's a threat that isn't just the Outsiders, so why bother? And even IF there was a bigger threat that they believed in, the majority of the military seems to be robots now, so why bother rushing? It's not like you need more soldiers and you need them now. It's be smarter to have less settlements over more. Build tall, not wide. This isn't freaking Civilization where you want to have as many people as possible because because.

The is a reason most successful societies didn't allow their women to engage in dangerous or hard work en masse - its' a terrible survival strategy. Every woman that dies is several times more devastating to your society's survival than any man (unless that man has a very important skill or skillset).

That in the case of the COG pregnant women can still perform functions like nursing, teaching, tending the protein vats and comms/support for the military. But letting them slack off on the very important function of having children means that even if you win, you lose, whereas having them keep focusing on it means you have some small chance to keep going afterwards.

It basically prevents you from bottlenecking/human resource starving your society.