Treblaine said:
"Neither of them are academy award winning historically accurate recreations, or for that matter, completely believable at all times."
COD4 was. I actually follow accounts of military operation of both Marines and SPecial Forces and COD4 seems to almost be an amalgam of operations that had happened over the past 6 years.
The SAS DID raid a ship at sea, abseiling in from helicopters. The US Marines, DID invade a coastal Middle Eastern country. many of the other scenarios SAS men have said they do train for and consider them a probably eventuality, including storming of a nuclear missile silo. The threat of nuclear terrorism has not yet materialised yet is a real danger.
COD4 was award winning for it's story telling. Like how it ended the nuke level, it was poignant and powerful without being melodramatic or contrived. Something MW2 failed to do.
I mean how did the Al-Assad (the little-bad, leading to big-bad) get captured in COD4? Got punched in the face. But MW2? The informant got tackled OUT OF A WINDOW onto the roof of a car, crushing its roof. That's Professional Wrestling bullshit.
I'm not going to really argue this point anymore. It's a matter of opinion. Despite what you may feel, you can't really be any more right than me when it comes to opinion. It is my opinion COD games are not particularly realistic. It is your opinion they are. Are they more realistic than TF2? Obviously. That doesn't mean they are particularly believable scenarios to me. They are thinly veiled action adventure games with guns and military fatigues. Adding a few "real world" scenarios does not make this seem any more real to me. I know military personnel. War is not an action adventure game. I'm not really going to trust your word for authenticity over theirs. Based on your theory, the game is "authentic" because it's an amalgam of a series of events that happened or might have been trained for over six years. That would make "Go Ask Alice" authentic as well, because it was also an amalgam of stories smashed together to make a single exciting narrative. If that's what makes authenticity for you, then there really isn't anything more for me to say on the matter, so we'll end this at that.
"These are video games, not documentaries."
Of course, why make such an obvious clarification... unless it is to weasely depict that that is what I SAID! I didn't. Authentic=/=documentary, it's a fallacy to dismiss authenticity with that extreme comparison.
It was clearly an exaggeration to illustrate a point, but perhaps you missed that. I shall clarify. You argued that because the early COD games were more "authentic", that made them better. I argued that they were no more authentic than any COD games, see my above statement on the matter. I was using this extreme example to drive home the issue that the main purpose of games is not to be authentic, but rather to entertain. Non-Fiction books however, are certainly written with the explicit purpose of being authentic, which readers expect. I was trying to say you are projecting a level of expectation onto a group that I feel doesn't exist.
"Perhaps books would be more your speed."
Nope, COD4 did it right, more of that. It is so denigrating of games to say you can't make them entertaining AND authentic. Yes, you can have artistic licence like infinite lives and save-checkpoints but you seem to have the attitude that if it isn't 100% authentic then it doesn't matter if it is 1% authentic.
You also just plain do not care about authenticity, or it's just an added extra to you... rather than something fundamental to the game's MEANING.
First: You argue that MW2 is not authentic enough to warrant the name COD, then you criticize me for saying something isn't really authentic. I'm having trouble following your line of argument here. Indeed, my threshold for what I consider authenticity is higher than yours. I just don't require authenticity in order to enjoy a military shooter.
Second: You know what's denigrating of games? Insisting they have something like authenticity to be a valid form of expression and entertainment, insisting they be "artistic" in order to have some value in this world.
Games do not need these things to be of importance. Music, television, books, all can have value simply by being entertaining. They don't need to be educational to have worth. They don't need to have deep meaning to have worth. They don't need to be authentic to have worth. Sometimes people buy stuff just to have fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I should not have to validate what I do for fun by shoehorning in these imaginary values just so society will accept my preferred medium of entertainment. It is denigrating to have to stoop to that level in order to be accepted. I refuse to do that. I play games because they are fun. If I get something more out of them, yes, that is highly enjoyable as well. But I should not have to be ashamed of playing MW2 because it's like a Micheal Bay film.
It is also silly to dismiss a game like MW2 based on the fact that
you don't find it believable enough to be authentic. I'm not the one with the hangup on authenticity. Surely, you can see that. Given the multifaceted nature of video games that are a complex interplay of story, characters user interface game play design, etc, it is unreasonable to expect every game will score 100% in every category across the board. Personally I take the position that it is the aggregate of all these aspects that come together to determine how enjoyable a game is to actually play.
PS: my quote of JourneyThroughHell is NOT misleading. It leads to a place that is uncomfortable to some as it challenges their prejudices, but still very true and relevant. I'm not going to quote an essay worth of waffle and manipulative fallacies. I have NOT changed what he said, I focused in on what he actually definitively DID say without all the snarky and sarcastic addendums.
He insinuates I should be ashamed to watch Extra Credits, a really thoughtful and insightful show, as if those are bad things. It's just a back handed insult, too cowardly to jut say it plainly.
You did change his quote, that is pretty clear to me. If you are going to excuse what he did by saying, "Well, he insulted me first in a petty way, so yeah," that's not really going to convince me what you did was right. It is not a good argument to say you lowered yourself to his level.
Finally:
Treblaine said:
PS: Supreme Court said they only granted Video game First Amendment as it was proven the medium had widespread artistic significance, you can't be a philistine on this point.
You are simply incorrect on this point. Though you can't really be blamed for this since the media certainly boiled the 24 page opinion down to this simple point. Scalia, and the other justices, actually said quite a few things, and they did not declare video games art, as the court has ruled in the past that the federal government cannot really determine what is and is not art. In the opinion, which can be read here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08-1448.pdf Scalia specifically states
"California correctly acknowledges that video games qualify for First Amendment protection. The Free Speech Clause exists principally to protect discourse on public matters, but we have long recognized that it is difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try."
The court is recognizing that video games are a form of expression, but they do not go so far to say that it is art. Art is after all, highly subjective, because as Justice Harlan wrote in the Cohen v. California case, "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric."
Scalia further writes, "Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas?and even social messages?through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player?s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection."
Again, he is stressing that video games communication of ideas is what protects them under the constitution, not their artistic merit.
Once more from Scalia "Under our Constitution, ?esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature . . . are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority.?
It's also important to note that the Justices decided video games were not obscene, which is the major important distinction, in my opinion as a constitutional scholar, of this opinion. This is important because obscenity can be legislated by the government despite the first amendment's protections of speech, because this is one of the few exceptions to the free speech amendment. The court disallowed the creation of a new class of exception, namely violence, to the free speech exceptions.
"Because speech about violence is not obscene, it is of no consequence that California?s statute mimics the New York statute regulating obscenity-for-minors that we upheld in Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629 (1968)"
In short, no, it was not because video games are art that they were protected, rather they are considered an expression of ideas. I know, semantics really, but that is what the law specializes in.
