Red Cross Investigating Virtual War Crimes

[Char-Nobyl]

[How many times am I going to have to say this, Modern Warfare's writing is not reflective of all games. Modern Warfare games are designed purely for action junkies who don't give a shit about story but want to see things blow up. They are, as you put it, the Michael Bay of video games.

And that is why I like them, sometimes I don't want an existential debate when I sit down for some light entertainment; I just want to gun down some terrorists.

That's hitting the nail on the head. If you want a 'realistic' shooter, you can play the SWAT games or something, where you have to call 'Police' before you discharge your weapon, declare fallen firearms, call in medics, zipstrip fucking everyone, etc. It's a completely different sort of game than CoD or...well, even stuff like Bioshock. Most games aren't supposed to function within the bureaucratic restraints of our world.

[If you want an intelligent, well-written shooter play Bioshock. I found it genuinely harrowing to have to beat the games antagonist to death, even though he was purportedly evil his character was well established and genuinely flawed.

Jesus, that scene. It ultimately had relatively little blood in it, but it had more power behind it than all the gore-soaked films and games I've played for the past decade combined. Ryan's at the end of his rope, and his final action is to show you, in the most harrowing way possible, that he's still in control of his fate.

[In Killzone 2, I had genuine respect for Colonel Radec when he shot himself rather than be taken alive by my team. I don't want to glorify suicide but it was a remarkable warrior's death.

Nah, you don't need to worry about that. That's been a military custom since the Romans. They would fall on their swords, and modern soldiers who embrace that mindset do their own version.

[And as I said before, I was upset when Ghost got shot in MW2, but then I got over it and ramped a snowmobile off a cliff again.

At the end of the day, the writing in Modern Warfare is watered down for the same reason that Die Hard didn't end with Bruce Willis filling out 16,000 pages of paperwork to justify shooting all those people: it is designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience so as to make the most money.

As I said, the majority of people playing CoD give less than a shit about story or character development, most of them are only there for the multiplayer and probably just breezed through the campaign to unlock trophies/achievements.

So, now that I've given you a few examples of solid writing in games (and I stuck with FPS games; I could easily expand into other genres) I'd love to see you continue to justify this weak pretense that all video game writing is mindless dross.

Like the easiest example: Grand Theft Auto. After killing dozens of people, causing millions in property damage, and being shot to death by the police...you awaken no worse for wear outside a local hospital. And they were even kind enough to let you keep the guns you looted from the police you killed.

 

[BreakfastMan]

We see too much violence,

video game soldiers take war like a fun adventure.

Careful. Those are two very different points you have there. Having one does not necessarily follow that you have the other. Games can be both incredibly violent whilst being anti-war.

Like wich one? I played all CoD's (not all except CoD 3) and some BF3, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and many others. War games and most of them a pretty shallow on killing consequences to the character.

COD 4 and the MGS games immediately spring to mind. Very violent and definitely anti-war. Oh, and just because most of the games aren't both ultra-violent and anti-war doesn't mean they can't be.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

What a bunch of pathetic morons. They just want to take the fun out of everything. Go spend your time and money on things that mater you useless cunts.

...seriously, do you not know what the red cross do?

I disagree with them on this one, but to say that they try to take the fun out of everything or are useless cunts?

So stopping you from experimenting on real people who are POW is taking the fun out of war?

Tending to the wounded of battle is being useless?

This isn't some government wing, this is an international body that try to maintain peace where they can. This is a incredibly tangential for them, but I don't think anyone would say they're useless

I'm pretty sure that he means they're being useless right now, which is kind of true. If they spent the time to come up with a "We want video games to follow the Geneva Convention" press release, they were actively failing at their jobs, regardless of what they've done in the past. What matters is that right now, they're not doing what they're supposed to be.

We see too much violence,

video game soldiers take war like a fun adventure.

Careful. Those are two very different points you have there. Having one does not necessarily follow that you have the other. Games can be both incredibly violent whilst being anti-war.

Like wich one? I played all CoD's (not all except CoD 3) and some BF3, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and many others. War games and most of them a pretty shallow on killing consequences to the character.

A 'fun adventure'? I'm surprised that you picked only games where the protagonist clearly isn't having "a fun adventure." Are you talking about "consequences" for killing people, or are you talking about whether or not they enjoyed killing people?

so are books or movies next? wait that doesnt sound like it makes sense? well damn that is interesting that you wont hear this same argument applied to either of those......

almost like it doesnt make sence at all.....

Oh, no, books and movies already went through this. It was well before your/my time, but movies (for quite some time) were subjected to the "Motion Picture Production Code [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_Code]," better known as the Hays Code. It was a bizarre system of moral standards that films had to meet if they wanted the MPAA seal of approval, including such tenants as...

-No films with political commentary. This prevented the production of an anti-Nazi film about the horrors of the concentration camps.

-No portrayals of drug abuse, prostitution, or rape, among other 'morally objectionable' things. They weren't even allowed to be mentioned.

-No mixed-race relationships.

-Crime can never go unpunished, and criminals can never be portrayed as sympathetic.

One quote that neatly summarizes the Hays Code was the desire That, "...throughout [the film], the audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right." Yeah. It was hilarously stupid. What's worse is that the code itself collapsed, but the MPAA is still the group that rates movies, and they're still as much the pussies they were back then.

 

[badgersprite]

Jesus. At this rate, fictional video game NPC characters are going to have more human rights and protections than people in the real world.

I like how context is never brought up as an issue, either. Like if a video game has you violate the Geneva Conventions and shoot prisoners of war, and it is portrayed as a horrible, awful thing, doesn't that do more to make people care about human rights than if they portrayed war as this awesome great happy thing where no rules were ever broken?

 

[brazuca]

We see too much violence,

video game soldiers take war like a fun adventure.

Careful. Those are two very different points you have there. Having one does not necessarily follow that you have the other. Games can be both incredibly violent whilst being anti-war.

Like wich one? I played all CoD's (not all except CoD 3) and some BF3, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and many others. War games and most of them a pretty shallow on killing consequences to the character.

COD 4 and the MGS games immediately spring to mind. Very violent and definitely anti-war. Oh, and just because most of the games aren't both ultra-violent and anti-war doesn't mean they can't be.

Exceptions that prove the rule. MGS okay, but CoD 4?! Perhaps you died to much and kept only reading the quotes.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Exceptions that prove the rule.

Sorry to break it to you, but if the rule has exceptions, it just might not be 100% true. Just something to think about...

MGS okay, but CoD 4?! Perhaps you died to much and kept only reading the quotes.

Okay, lets put on our smarty game-analysis caps, shall we?

The game portrays the American protagonists as treating war as a game and acting gung-ho. They do stupidly heroic stuff and act like they are the star of their own action movie. What do they get for it? A nuclear explosion that kills most of the American cast in an extremely horrific way. Now, let us take a look at the British SAS characters. These characters are portrayed as decidedly less noble than their American counterparts. They sneak around in the underbrush and kill innocents for the sake of the mission. Yet, they are the ones who survive in the end. This makes it seem to me that the game is saying that, in order to be successful in war (or indeed, survive war), you essentially have to let go of your morals. Considering how letting go of traditional morals is viewed in our culture, it essentially seems to be saying that you need to be (or become) a sort of inhuman sociopath.

Also, consider the imagery of the game. Never are the war zones colorful. They are always portrayed as bleak and gray. They are filled with ruined houses and streets. The few nice-looking places that are not torn apart are soon torn apart by gun-fire and explosions. The entire game conveys bleak and depressing theme through the visuals. Does that say or give the impression of "gung-ho war funtimes" to you? Because it sure didn't come of that way to me.

While it might not immediately give the impression of being anti-war, if you look beneath the surface, it certainly seems to be giving off those messages.

 

[Sephychu]

And so it shall be. xXsNiPeReLiTeXx shall have 4 consecutive life sentences for his genocide of the n00bs. 50,000 headshots goes a long way.

 

[RvLeshrac]

It's like this, I think the Red Cross is trying to hold out until the last second on board a sinking ship. While this goes much deeper than the intent of this article reality is like this:

In a REAL war, the biggest bastards win. There are no good guys, or bad guys, only a winner and a loser. If your considering morality in any way, shape, or form, then it's not a real war. If one side is playing by rules of engagement and the other isn't they had best be sure to have them outgunned to a massive degree or they are going to lose... period. It's been so long since powerful nations like the US have been in a real war that we've lost sight of this for a long time, but I think we're starting to regain our understanding of this through both the media (like video games) and observation of world events. Video games showing what a real war is like if your going to win through the brutality involved are basically under criticism for putting reality before political principle.

This was covered in the book "Starship Troopers" and at the very beginning of the movie version to some extent. Personally I prefer to use my own examples in pointing fingers towards Chivalry and Bushido both of which were codes of military conduct and honorable battle. They were great until in the case of Chivalry the side that should have lost decided they didn't want to lose and be conquered and decided to massacre the opposing force with long bows when they took the "field of honor". The Samurai aristocracy got taken down by revolting peasants, in part due to their codes of engagement. A lot of early Japanese martial arts could be summarized as "how to fight dirty against a guy with a sword using modified farm tools".

Right now the world is heading towards one big doozy of a war, indeed if the world ends on 12/21/12 it will probably be due to a war. This was is over economics and trade, not quite the massive battle against an evil empire people like to think of when it comes to war. To put it simply things are coming to a head with China, China has been running a robber economy where it has been violating patents from the first world to produce knockoff goods in sweatshops which it then resells for a fraction of the price. This has lead to China becoming a huge economic power. Rather than increasing the standard of living for it's people however it's been building up it's military and becoming increasingly belligerant. The US cut a deal with China to "borrow" money (to offset what it was losing in taxes) in exchange for not taking direct action hoping that the success in China would have filtered down and changed it's social order. Without going into more details, with the economic state of the US, the issue with it's credit score, and how this affects a lot of nations who have been being similarly screwed (even if a lot of the people there are cheering for the US taking a few lumps, the US isn't the only country losing quadrillions to parent and copyright violations) it's to the point where either China knocks it off and pays repairations, or the rest of the globe eventually collapses and China basically takes over. The thing is though that since China innovates very little (which is not to say nothing at all) that if it DOES knock it off it's going to wind up dropping itself back down into an entirely impoverished hellhole. We're at kind of an impasse, and China has been building up a substantial military to fight with.

I think a lot of people see this coming, some have been talking about the inevitability of an East Vs. West war for decades now as it's creeped closer and closer and the west decided to morally blindfold itself. I think The Red Cross, and various "peace at any price" movements are becoming increasingly freaked out over increasingly trivial things like games as a reaction to it. Especially seeing as anyone with half a brain knows this is going to be about who controls the world, and cultural/societal elimination, as opposed to these glorified police actions we've been calling wars after WW II ended.

Or in short, I think The Red Cross realizes it's moral relevence is slipping and is involved in a bit of QQing as the sad state of reality slips in, and we're seeing that to an extent in media like war games that have beein getting into a "this is how it is" including the brutality, torture, and collateral damage, as opposed to being presented in the antiseptic fashion of a 4-color comic book where the good guys manage to save the day while remaining untouched paragons of left wing virtue.

Good idea, we should just torture and murder people in a time of war, and throw our entire society out the window.

Seriously, WTF. The reason you adhere to the provisions of the Geneva Convention is so that, hopefully, your enemy doesn't torture, murder, and rape your MIAs and POWs in a similar fashion.

The point of a war is supposed to be that "we" are better than "them." If you're murdering and torturing anyone -civilians or soldiers- en masse, how are you different from a Hitler or Stalin?

 

[RvLeshrac]

Battlefield Update: Now you can't shoot the class with the defib.

Geneva states that anyone armed is fair game. If the "medic" picks up a weapon, they've forfeited all privileges granted to them under the articles. There's a huge difference between a Combat Medic and a Medic.

 

[Therumancer]

Good idea, we should just torture and murder people in a time of war, and throw our entire society out the window.

Seriously, WTF. The reason you adhere to the provisions of the Geneva Convention is so that, hopefully, your enemy doesn't torture, murder, and rape your MIAs and POWs in a similar fashion.

The point of a war is supposed to be that "we" are better than "them." If you're murdering and torturing anyone -civilians or soldiers- en masse, how are you different from a Hitler or Stalin?

In short your not. In a real war the bigger bastard wins. Adhering to rules of combat just means that the guy who doesn't has an advantage he can exploit. It also generally means your self-imposed conditions for victory are impossible to meet.

The real differance between Hitler, Stalin, and the US and it's allies in things like World War II was that we won and got to write the history books. One of the reasons why I'm so pragmatic when it comes to war is I actually pay attention to all these claims of atrocities during the so called "good wars" that we committed and the realization that it's true, and we won because of that. I mean if you read up on what we did to groups like the Volkssturm or how The Hitler Youth fought us and "disappeared" we were just as brutal as anything the other guys did, probably more so. Because the US and it's allies won the war, you hear about how evil Hitler was for The Blitz and all the bombs he dropped on say London, but honestly we were worse and probably dropped a hundred times more bombs on them and did a lot more collateral damage. The british hero "Bomber" Harris was known to the germans as "Butcher" Harris but we won so it's "Bomber". His specialty was pretty much killing lots and lots of people, especially civilians. We hear a lot about Hitler's propaganda, but we ourselves lied about him and his people, I mean look up crap like portable Nazi bone grinders, and how Nazis allegedly made lampshades out of human skin (one of which was shown by The War Department in films, but later proven to be goat skin). We make up crap about "Ilsa, She Wolf Of the SS" and her antics, but the actual lady she was based on (Ilsa Kochs I believe her name was) was never even convicted of war crimes, despite being called a reprehensible human being.

A point to consider is that unless we've had the enemy outgunned to a ridiculous degree... like with say the invasion of Grenada, we haven't really won a serious war since World War II. We've never been actually defeated militarily, but due to our own morals and code of engagement we have generally failed to meet any kind of victory conditions after causing an ongoing stalemate where we couldn't defeat the enemy but couldn't ourselves be defeated until we basically pulled out. Of course then again I'd also argue that 'Nam, Korea, and numerous other wars were not actually wars because the goverment didn't really invoke full war powers to the extent it did during World War II (which is a whole differant discussion).

You might not LIKE it, especially if your a liberal and want to believe all that "white knights can win wars" crap, but the bottom line is a real war has no rules. There is only a winner and a loser. There is no "collateral damage" simply damage to the enemy. Civilian casualties bring an enemy closer to breaking while slowly wearing down a nation's will to fight (first it can cause anger and furor, but as time goes on it causes increasing hopelessness and despair). For example in World War II one of the things we did was bomb every single German farm and factory we could find, we killed civilians in astronomical numbers intentionally. Heck, we even killed our own people who were being forced to work in some of those facilities after being captured.

All of this leads down to one basic fact... war sucks. Don't get the impression I'm some kind of naive glory hound. I just happen to think sometimes it's nessicary, and that we cause more problems by attempting to avoid it, or sanitize it to the point where it's meaningless and winds up not accomplishing anything. I do not suggest war as easily as it might seem, it's just that we discuss BIG issues, where diplomacy has already happened, and the bottom line is that if your going to get someone to stop something or change what they are doing your going to have to force them to do it, or put them into a postion where they can't do it anymore. You always try and resolve it other ways first, but in many cases you wind up with mutally exclusive positions, both of which might very well hold equal moral weight without one side being clearly wrong.... that's when wars happen, and trying to avoid them causes the problem to fester and become worse, the longer it goes on the worse the war when it happens.

 

[Buizel91]

Yes, I see... teabagging will be an international offense. Finally someone got my letters.

OMFG I FUCKING LOVE YOU! xD

*Ahem*

OT: Yeh good luck Red Cross...seriosuly no one is going to listen to this...

Plus aren't these guys just a charity? Can Charity's actually do this or have i just been living under a rock for all my life?

 

[Toy Master Typhus]

Good idea, we should just torture and murder people in a time of war, and throw our entire society out the window.

Seriously, WTF. The reason you adhere to the provisions of the Geneva Convention is so that, hopefully, your enemy doesn't torture, murder, and rape your MIAs and POWs in a similar fashion.

The point of a war is supposed to be that "we" are better than "them." If you're murdering and torturing anyone -civilians or soldiers- en masse, how are you different from a Hitler or Stalin?

In short your not. In a real war the bigger bastard wins. Adhering to rules of combat just means that the guy who doesn't has an advantage he can exploit. It also generally means your self-imposed conditions for victory are impossible to meet.

The real differance between Hitler, Stalin, and the US and it's allies in things like World War II was that we won and got to write the history books. One of the reasons why I'm so pragmatic when it comes to war is I actually pay attention to all these claims of atrocities during the so called "good wars" that we committed and the realization that it's true, and we won because of that. I mean if you read up on what we did to groups like the Volkssturm or how The Hitler Youth fought us and "disappeared" we were just as brutal as anything the other guys did, probably more so. Because the US and it's allies won the war, you hear about how evil Hitler was for The Blitz and all the bombs he dropped on say London, but honestly we were worse and probably dropped a hundred times more bombs on them and did a lot more collateral damage. The british hero "Bomber" Harris was known to the germans as "Butcher" Harris but we won so it's "Bomber". His specialty was pretty much killing lots and lots of people, especially civilians. We hear a lot about Hitler's propaganda, but we ourselves lied about him and his people, I mean look up crap like portable Nazi bone grinders, and how Nazis allegedly made lampshades out of human skin (one of which was shown by The War Department in films, but later proven to be goat skin). We make up crap about "Ilsa, She Wolf Of the SS" and her antics, but the actual lady she was based on (Ilsa Kochs I believe her name was) was never even convicted of war crimes, despite being called a reprehensible human being.

A point to consider is that unless we've had the enemy outgunned to a ridiculous degree... like with say the invasion of Grenada, we haven't really won a serious war since World War II. We've never been actually defeated militarily, but due to our own morals and code of engagement we have generally failed to meet any kind of victory conditions after causing an ongoing stalemate where we couldn't defeat the enemy but couldn't ourselves be defeated until we basically pulled out. Of course then again I'd also argue that 'Nam, Korea, and numerous other wars were not actually wars because the goverment didn't really invoke full war powers to the extent it did during World War II (which is a whole differant discussion).

You might not LIKE it, especially if your a liberal and want to believe all that "white knights can win wars" crap, but the bottom line is a real war has no rules. There is only a winner and a loser. There is no "collateral damage" simply damage to the enemy. Civilian casualties bring an enemy closer to breaking while slowly wearing down a nation's will to fight (first it can cause anger and furor, but as time goes on it causes increasing hopelessness and despair). For example in World War II one of the things we did was bomb every single German farm and factory we could find, we killed civilians in astronomical numbers intentionally. Heck, we even killed our own people who were being forced to work in some of those facilities after being captured.

All of this leads down to one basic fact... war sucks. Don't get the impression I'm some kind of naive glory hound. I just happen to think sometimes it's nessicary, and that we cause more problems by attempting to avoid it, or sanitize it to the point where it's meaningless and winds up not accomplishing anything. I do not suggest war as easily as it might seem, it's just that we discuss BIG issues, where diplomacy has already happened, and the bottom line is that if your going to get someone to stop something or change what they are doing your going to have to force them to do it, or put them into a postion where they can't do it anymore. You always try and resolve it other ways first, but in many cases you wind up with mutally exclusive positions, both of which might very well hold equal moral weight without one side being clearly wrong.... that's when wars happen, and trying to avoid them causes the problem to fester and become worse, the longer it goes on the worse the war when it happens.

A tip of my hat to you Therumancer for being able to write blocks of texts that I can stand to read.

He is right however, war isn't fought by being great or good, it is survival of the sickest, and frankly in the ENTIRE history of the world no war was ever won by being good or following rules of war. In most of the middle-east conflicts there have rarely been any actual combat compared to most wars. Most of it comes down to people making home made IED/Landmines, throwing them into the ground and waiting for some poor bastard to step on it, or they have been fought between tribes of insurgents who would show up to places that NATO forces have been and bully them, i.e. shooting up kids, and robing them of food. Let's not forget all the beheading tapes put out by insurgents.

I suppose that part that annoys me the most about this is the fact the none of them(Red Cross) to my knowledge have ever made a public announcement saying that what insurgents are doing is bad, or even try to convince them to stop. After all most, next to all of their tactics are against IHL.

It is as you say Red Cross and imo most charities that work in war torn areas are losing relevance. Some just plainly don't help. For instance there have been recordings of people in Somalia and other African countries stealing food from Charity trucks and forcing civilians into their side for food. But we can't stop it because like most countries in that region, they don't want us there and it turns into U.S. versus Africa or U.S. versus Islam.

If we are going to war, we need to legitimately go to war not throw lives on the line to be shot at or blown up for target practice. We need to bring back morale destroying tactics.

 

[TheDooD]

snip

I'll have to say that was one of the most in depth things I've read in a nice min

+50 interwebs to you

 

[tsb247]

lol.

That last portion in the clip from the article is from ArmA 2. That's probably the only real, "War simulator," I have ever seen. I think it's funny how they note that there are no points for blowing up medic tents.

 

[kouriichi]

Oh yeah. Red Cross does more then health care!

You know, i bet theyre doing this for publicity. They see PETA trying to be the Big Bad Wolf, and they want a piece of the pie.

But do they really think the Geneva Convention really does any good? In the case of an all out war, when it comes to winning or losing, its just a piece of paper. Prisoners are still tortured, chemical weapons are still being made ready to use, and civilians are just numbers on a statistical chart at a board meeting.

How about we take more measures in REAL life, and THEN worry about video games?

 

[tzimize]

*PROMOTED: CAPTAIN*
Unlocks White Flag and complicated dialogue.

*PROMOTED MAJOR*
Unlocks tedious tribunal proceedings determining whether or not that noob tube kill was sanctioned by the UN


...................Yeah, the rip roaring fun of future shooters people.

Hahahahahahahah!

Oh world, you so silly.

 

[xqxm]

Call of Duty: Nüremburg Tribunal

 

[brazuca]

Exceptions that prove the rule.

Sorry to break it to you, but if the rule has exceptions, it just might not be 100% true. Just something to think about...

MGS okay, but CoD 4?! Perhaps you died to much and kept only reading the quotes.

Okay, lets put on our smarty game-analysis caps, shall we?

The game portrays the American protagonists as treating war as a game and acting gung-ho. They do stupidly heroic stuff and act like they are the star of their own action movie. What do they get for it? A nuclear explosion that kills most of the American cast in an extremely horrific way. Now, let us take a look at the British SAS characters. These characters are portrayed as decidedly less noble than their American counterparts. They sneak around in the underbrush and kill innocents for the sake of the mission. Yet, they are the ones who survive in the end. This makes it seem to me that the game is saying that, in order to be successful in war (or indeed, survive war), you essentially have to let go of your morals. Considering how letting go of traditional morals is viewed in our culture, it essentially seems to be saying that you need to be (or become) a sort of inhuman sociopath.

Also, consider the imagery of the game. Never are the war zones colorful. They are always portrayed as bleak and gray. They are filled with ruined houses and streets. The few nice-looking places that are not torn apart are soon torn apart by gun-fire and explosions. The entire game conveys bleak and depressing theme through the visuals. Does that say or give the impression of "gung-ho war funtimes" to you? Because it sure didn't come of that way to me.

While it might not immediately give the impression of being anti-war, if you look beneath the surface, it certainly seems to be giving off those messages.

Okay... I'll give that. You are rightin the second part. The imagery evokes anti war. I don't think the bomb was detonated for other reason then the spectecle, and in an obvious pun about Iraq. Coming back to the Red Cross thing, what I was defending them is that showing the rules of engagement (even if the will break later) makes the game more deep about conflict.

Reafirming, yeah the imagery you are spot on it, never saw it in this way. Much mor as consequence of destruction of the military fetish porn that MW2 and MW3 became.

 

[Akimoto]

My god! How many novelists have violated the IHL?

And Shindler's List should be banned!

And anime, RPG, novels (oops, ninja'd), movies, songs, flash games... next thing you know they'll want to police our very thoughts.

 

[Spaec]

Shoo, Red Cross. Art is art and as a rumination on life must be free to examine moral shades of grey of all kinds.
Art should, however, be aware of this and use it to drive home some sort of point with some measure of sensibility and not mere sensationalism to appease Marketing (looking at you, Codblops-glass-mouth-punching and MW2-civilian-down-mowing).