Poll: Would you be comfortable killing your country's military in a game?

[the_dramatica]

Depends on it's justification in the narrative. I mean most video games these days have stupid, unimmersive stories anyway so i'd probably just play through it.

MW2 airport scene does a pretty good on killing innocent civilians, it's all politics. I can't speak for the rest of the game.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I loved it when it happened in Half-Life 1 and Spec Ops: The Line. Not that I love killing US soldiers, but because that is one of the few times they were the bad guys that you wanted to kill.

 

[Nieroshai]

I think there are actually plenty of games where the U.S. military are the villains. It's never a military shooter, of course, but the earliest example I can think of is the original Half-Life. I've never taken great umbrage, but it always seemed to be under the paradigm of government cover-ups and oppression of the player character. The feel is usually "Yes! The cavalry's finally arrived--holy shit the cavalry's shooting at me!"

 

[DerangedHobo]

Fuckin' A, I don't descriminate in my virtual holocausts.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Umm I'm pretty sure I was killing US soldiers in modern warfare 2 because we were betrayed or something. I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to that boring campaign.

 

[Michel Henzel]

I've committed genocide against the entire human race several times over, I bitched about how the other gunmen in the MW2 no russian level kept stealing my kills, so why would I hold any different feeling about shooting virtual soldiers that are supposedly from my own country?

 

[Kerethos]

You, good Sir, pretty much summed up my own feelings on the subject; attacking Sweden would feel like a joke, at least in a modern setting.

I already play some Grand Strategy, where areas need conquering and rebellious Swedes get put down and their cities given to my heirs. So technically I've killed plenty of my own countries military, though only in a historic setting so far. Which was when Sweden was actually a big military power in Europe, some 200 years ago, and people had cause to declare war on us.

Nowadays we don't have much of a standing army, or reason to maintain any large enough force to fend of invasion. So, as with Ireland, it'd be a really short game. You'd conquer Stockholm in a blitz attack, probably in under an hour, and we'd surrender before too much got broken. Then we'd try to talk our way out of the conflict.

We have IIRC 40 000 people (That includes the home guard) to defend a total population of about 9,5 million. Our military chief of staff a couple years back (Not sure if he retired or not since) estimated that our ability to resist a serious invasion from a well organized attacker would only be able to hold out for at most 3 weeks. And yeah, we can pretty much forget about any coastal city, when we can't even keep Russian subs from floating straight on to the capital and can't keep Russian jets from flying over our territory. Hell, I don't even know if out coastal defence gun batteries have been updated since the 60s. I doubt it.

Only way for us to not be obliterated instantly is most likely to withdraw up North to the mountains, but then I'd assume the inability to supply necessary resources (Like food) would be what would ruins us. You can manufacture and stockpile all the munitions in the world (We do produce a crapton of munitions - Which we sell to non-democracies - Hypocrisy woo!), you still can't fight on an empty stomach.

So yeah... Not a lot of confidence in out defensive capabilities, because even the guy in charge of it all lacks confidence in them.

I also know a guy who used to do the yearly audits for the Swedish military, and his paraphrased summary of the state of their finances was "Holy shit they went bankrupt years ago! This is a fucking disaster!"

But - in theory - they can never go bankrupt. They just guess how much money they'll get in the next budget and spend that too, so - last I heard - they where about 3 budgets ahead in spending.

He retired a few years ago, but I don't imagine things have improved since he worked there. They're likely still spending imaginary money.

As for Swedish weapon selling; I think we're like third in the world if you count weapons exported per inhabitant. So yeah, we've got plenty of weapons. But not enough people to use them in case of emergency, and most of them are technically some other military's property and just briefly stored here before shipping.

TL;DR: Please don't invade us. We can't afford that shit and it would make everyone sad

 

[Dalisclock]

TL;DR: Please don't invade us. We can't afford that shit and it would make everyone sad

Then I'm sure you wouldn't mind signing over the rights to your delicious meatball farms and your needs assembly furniture industry in exchange for "Protection".

 

[Kittyhawk]

Keep telling yourself the truth, which is that its a game at the end of the day.

Assassin Creed III did this kind of thing, but many of us know its based on key parts of history. Film and books have done the same before, so there's no use in getting hung up on this stuff.

A parting shot, many service peeps play games too, especially those deployed in the middle of sandy deserts etc. So try not to feel too bad as some of their favourite games are CoD and BF, in their down time. Gamers know its best not to rock that applecart, as it goes nowhere.

Spec Ops: The Line was awesome and you'll find that most nations have done questionable stuff, that they'll not be punished for.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I suppose it'd depend on the game really. Not that Canada's military would make a very credible threat.

 

[bat32391]

It wouldn't bother me much, but on another note does killing the Enclave in Fallout count as killing American soldiers?

 

[mrdude2010]

I'm actually kind of irritated by how heroically the U.S. is constantly portrayed. I have a lot of respect for most of the military people I know, but I feel like a game usually should have you as the underdog against a technologically and numerically superior foe, not the other way around.

I thought it would be interesting to do a game about some unnamed small, tropical, country with some valuable resource resisting invasion/occupation by some vague stand in for the U.S. See what it's like when the other side has AC-130's for once.

 

[Dalisclock]

I thought it would be interesting to do a game about some unnamed small, tropical, country with some valuable resource resisting invasion/occupation by some vague stand in for the U.S. See what it's like when the other side has AC-130's for once.

Not quite the same thing but in Tropico 4, your fictional Caribbean island could receive foreign aid from the US, the USSR or both at the same time, depending on your policies and living conditions Though if you ended up becoming either too communist or too capitalist, the other faction would cry to the the US/USSR, who would invade you. And if you don't keep the military happy, they might stage a coup on their own.

 

[TheRundownRabbit]

I play BF4, so I do it all the time, I'm not going to pretend it affects my patriotism

 

[NeutralDrow]

Depends on the game, I suppose.

In Prototype, I did feel guilty for killing marines, since we really were working towards the same goal. I got over it by realizing that they weren't able to accept my aid and would shoot me regardless...and of course, at the very end, I ate them without compunction, because the Godzilla Threshold had been well-and-truly crossed.

In Spec Ops: The Line, once I realized just how ridiculously far off the deep end they'd gone (after a few failed attempts at communication), I killed them without pity. Hilariously, the game tried to make me feel guilty after the fact...while giving me every piece of evidence to realize just how justified my actions were.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Would I be comfortable fighting Germans in a war game? Gee, I don't know, it's not like that could ever happen. Sarcasm.

Seriously though, actually fighting the modern Bundeswehr rather than the Nazis? I wouldn'tbe offended or anything but I think it would be very hard to justify that premise in a halfway believable way.

 

[SweetWarmIce]

Of course, it's just a game.

 

[Jandau]

I'm from a small country that isn't particularly well know, so it rarely comes up as an issue. But there was one example: I can't remember the name of the game, but you played a demon-possessed crusader and one level took place during the siege of Zara at the start of the 4th Crusade. Not only did this level require me to kill my countrymen (I'm Croatian), but it was also based on a real historical event, and one that is hardly the proudest moment in the history of the Crusades - basically, the Venetians got the Crusaders to sack Zara, a Catholic city that was a rival of Venice, as payment for transportation to the Holy Land.

And I have to admit, it did make me uncomfortable. I disliked fighting my countrymen, especially in a context where they did nothing wrong and were the victims...

 

[cikame]

There are people who feel strongly about their country and countrymen so obviously those people would respond very poorly to having to kill them, personally i don't really have any fondness for the UK or its people so i'm totally fine with it.

There are plenty of multiplayer games already where one team is technically killing western soldiers, but there's no gravity to that it's just red vs blue, you kill "players" rather than soldiers. Insurgency is a bit different in that one team is very obviously the American army with plenty of voice work coming from the soldiers giving them an identity, but we haven't taken it to an extreme yet i don't think... Maybe Battlefield 3 where you kill your squad leader but the story reason for it is comically stupid so it misses any controversy.

 

[Kathinka]

The whole notion of being offended or uncomfortable by that strikes me as rather odd. It implies that "your" countries military is somehow more worthy, it's soldiers being the more valuable human beings than those of other militaries. The thought carries some unfortunate, deeply ingrained racist undertones camouflaged as patriotism.