Red Cross Investigating Virtual War Crimes
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
This only applies to video games trying to depict our world, right? Because banelings never seem to keen on diplomacy when they roll into my base.
Soon code, pixels and polygons will have more rights than some people.
Shout-outs to focusing on the important.
Surely the virtual world is precisely where you want people breaking things such as the Geneva Convention and general rules of decency rather than for real...
Shout-outs to focusing on the important.
No they aren't. I can say that quite categorically. IHL [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_humanitarian_law#Basic_rules_of_IHL] apply to real people.
Surely the virtual world is precisely where you want people breaking things such as the Geneva Convention and general rules of decency rather than for real...
You know, Oceania in 1984 acted quite poorly regarding the Geneva Convention. Perhaps we should dig up George Orwell and lecture his dust about that! I remember that a Hunger Games movie is coming out, too, and the government certainly violated human rights in the books, so the movie shouldn't be allowed to play to begin with. Think of all of the juicy examples of entertainment violating the law - what the hell is wrong with people?!? Cripes granny/pappy, get a grip on your realities before condemning everyone else to being virtual Hitlers. What is the point in arguing over human rights in fiction that is obviously not real? You don't actually bring up a discussion on fair economics when playing Monopoly and you don't get a lecture on maritime laws for playing Battleship. Unless the invasion of the United States by goddamned Korea didn't wake anyone up, video games are not training for life-or-death combat in real life situations, nor do they ever claim to be. It would be a different story if that were the case, as would it be if Candyland ever claimed that there was really a gumdrop forest (or whatever).Use_Imagination_here said:
And with a couple of San Andreas and Oblivion plays under my belt, as well as the conquering of several nomadic peoples in Age of Empires, I am also a mass serial killer and medieval, genocidal tyrant! Is my sentence subject to negotiation? I did save humanity a couple of times as well...soulfire130 said:
For the sake of fairness, I would be interested in what their thoughts would be on this:
How many Purple Hearts would be awarded for virtual video game injuries? Hehehe...
Can we knock off the BS hyperbole already?
All the red cross is asking for is for developers to consider the Geneva convention when making a "realistic" or "modern" FPS or other "Military-themed" video game set in the real world AFTER 1864.
Most of these games have limitations on what a character can do in-game (i.e. Kill civilians = lose) and most servers have limits on what a PLAYER can do before getting kicked/banned (i.e. griefing, using cheats/bots).
Using the Geneva Convention as a BASIS for a game's Code of Conduct rather than making one up out of thin air just seems like good sense to me...
...seeing as how its the "ideal" that all signatory nations have agreed to abide by should they ever war with one another. Rebels, terrorists, mercenaries and aliens aren't covered by the Conventions so we can still torture, rape, murder and teabag them all we want.
All the red cross is asking for is for developers to consider the Geneva convention when making a "realistic" or "modern" FPS or other "Military-themed" video game set in the real world AFTER 1864.
Most of these games have limitations on what a character can do in-game (i.e. Kill civilians = lose) and most servers have limits on what a PLAYER can do before getting kicked/banned (i.e. griefing, using cheats/bots).
Using the Geneva Convention as a BASIS for a game's Code of Conduct rather than making one up out of thin air just seems like good sense to me...
...seeing as how its the "ideal" that all signatory nations have agreed to abide by should they ever war with one another. Rebels, terrorists, mercenaries and aliens aren't covered by the Conventions so we can still torture, rape, murder and teabag them all we want.
I'm not sure they understand what games are about.
Just like every other Republicunt politician and their yappy poodles.
Just like every other Republicunt politician and their yappy poodles.
brazuca said:
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.brazuca said:
Indeedie. This did make me think of the recent Rooster Teeth video (the Red vs Blue guys)...Xiado said:
http://roosterteeth.com/archive/?id=3873&v=more
But seriously, I don't really see what the Red Cross are trying to achieve with this; are they trying to raise the profile of war crimes/the rules of warfare? If so, this ain't gonna do it, and they'll seem silly in the process.
If its for some imagined link between gaming behaviour and real behaviour, I think they need to look at the actual research.
I'm not saying Michael Bayish VG is going to teach geography and world politics, but tell me how much character development there is in any of the MW trilogy. In fact I knew more of Makarov and Sheppard then I knew of the characters I was controlling. *Spoiler the end of MW3 where Sandman dies to protect the Russian president was pretty much a shot to my intelligence. WTF! Why should I care or find it heroic after killing all those people and not even knowing his name?! Even the McTavish was not impacting becausing instead of talking of what was going on russian evil soldeirs were killing an entire village*.rob_simple said:
You wanna know what?! The more realistic the game tries to be the less it's writing is realistic.Trick question how many games where war is actually explained with some complex context?! It's milirary porn fetish, most of the time. It's becoming sadder ever year. Games refuse to improve their writing quality in order to pretend that non reflexive art is fun.
I disagree. Games are media, and war crimes are an interesting thing to explore. Nobody has the right to censor art and media other than the artist.
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.brazuca said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Page or two back i said the same thing. If a company will agree to it why doesnt the red cross make their own game and they can play it all they want. While the rest of us slip into lala land and play our games how we wish without the intrusion of others into what would otherwise be our own lives. Furthermore i would like to address the fact that many commentators are saying that "all" war games are unrealistic. Whiles its true that there is a drop off in realistic war gaming i would content that there is no such thing as a realistic war game because war is ever evolving and the lines of what can and cant be crossed are debated everyday. However, close renditions of these games used to exist I'm too lazy to look up an example but i do remember Syphon Filter followed a James Bond style gameplay in which you couldn't do certain things cause other countries would come kick your ass, hence the story would continue. If you have omnipotent god mode all the time most stories would end in 5 seconds now wouldn't they? In other words, its already built into the games and the dipwads at the red cross are too stupid to see that imaginative liberties are taken from both sides in order to weave stories together. (not that i would admit war games have story anymore, they exist for multiplayer)Thomas Hardy said:
Seriously?! Okay out of my mind. Halo... Starship Troopers. CoD, any James Bond movie. Duke Nukem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEs7xMFcp-w&list=UUo_IB5145EVNcf8hw1Kku7w&feature=plcp Game Theory made it before. Donkey Kong? King Kong? Even tough it expanded and made the character more interesting later on. That just a few that came out of my mind like a simple click.CapitalistPig said:
Granted, ill give you some of those, but starship troopers? Duke nukem? Donkey Kong?? and now your using movies? I don't understand the point or correlation you are trying to make. I was talking about how plot structure and story of a game lives happily between the world of reality and fantasy by borrowing aspects of both. Thus an argument to say that "rules of engagement" aren't followed is an inherently flawed argument because most rules are followed and the ones that aren't are creative liberties taken in order to "pump up" the story. Furthermore, rules of engagement themselves are flawed because they are altered all the time. While some some liberties are not 100% necessary or relevant to my case (yea some games go too far) i dare say it isn't a case for total war gaming censorship. If people want to mow down Nazi Zombies then they can. truly this isn't a case for human rights but just a shallow attempt at censorship. Now if you want to talk about having A video game genre in which all rules of engagement are followed i will say again, they have all the right to make the game (not that it would sell) but you can't tell game developers what they can and cant make. All parties involved are using each other for the ultimate goal of ending violent video games which once again is stupid because violence is the most pervasive form of entertainment throughout human history. That's like trying not to breathe, but that's another list of arguments all together.brazuca said: