Should historic games have like world war two games avoid harsh subjects?

[FruitBird]

Should a game focused on a historic event like world war 2 and such include such atrocities as the Holocaust?
Should a video game, an interactive experience, seek to educate people about events we may not want to confront? Games like spec ops the line were very confronting, but that wasn't a historic event.
I personally think such games should exist. Games are part of the popular media now, and society is heavily influenced by this.
Censoring disturbing content in a historic sense I see as damaging. These things can't be forgotten. But they are harsh truths, which people don't really want to confront.
Do people want to play a truly historic game, possibly a WW11 shooter with a chapter involving freeing a concentration camp. Can a game like this be made?
SHOULD a game like this be made?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Um...absolutely? As long as they take is seriously. I mean a game where a grizzled, handsome white male rides in on a flaming motorcycle, punches out Heinrich Himmler and then bangs Eva Braun and her twin sister while singing the American National Anthem should probably not be made.

But Amnesia A Machine for Pigs has the Machine reference the holocaust, the Vietnam war, 9/11, Argon Forrest, the Somme, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Absently, yes, but it still asks Mandus how far is he willing to go to prevent the 20th century. And that's not an easy question to answer. Kill all of London or let WW1 happen...

As an educational force? Maybe, maybe not. Games are somewhat happy, for lack of a better term. You couldn't make a Holocaust game from the perspective of a Jew without a little creative engineering. I mean, not to be offensive, but you could die at any moment and the game ends. They didn't get a second chance when the SS came to clear out ghettos; why would you?
But a horror game, about say...a Soviet conscript, getting left behind after the Reds retreat from a village and you slowly stumble upon a death camp and have to face the very real, very human not at all supernatural horror of the Holocaust. And you have to leave, having saved absolutely no one with only a small hope of reporting the camp to your XO...
I'd play that game with as many Black Russians as it'd take to not remember!

 

[FruitBird]

Oh christ I just noticed the typo in the title.
Me fail english? That's unpossible!

 

[Johnny Impact]

Games can tackle any subject. It might not always be a good idea (didn't someone make a rape simulator?).

At their best, games are art. Art is meant to affect people. It doesn't have to affect them positively in the short term to affect them positively in the long term. Put another way, I've seen paintings of nightmares that were rather unnerving at the time, but I feel enriched for having seen them. Same with books and films that vividly depict Depression-era slums or the horrors of war. CoD: Modern Warfare is largely a cartoon glorification of combat, but that one scene with the dying soldier made me go "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."

I detest the notion that no one should ever be shocked/offended or have their sensibilities questioned/defied/shattered. If it can't stand a little turbulence, it wasn't really sense, was it?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

As per usual, no subject is taboo, though there is a good way and a bad way of illustrating it.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Wait they don't make those anymore.

Seriously though. I don't think they should. I mean they should of course reference it for accuracy sake. But i dont see the interest of watching people get gassed for the sake of it. Not that i find it offensive or anything but, especially for things that have actually happened it is a touchy subject.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Call of Duty has tried to depict the horrors of the Russian war machine in WWII. I suspect that recognising audiences aren't perhaps ready to play as Nazis, they can have you play as Communists, who were in some aspects far worse than Nazis.

 

[Recusant]

Ultimately, I fail to see how horrifically murdering conscripts who are fundamentally no different from you is distinct from murdering civilians who are fundamentally no different from you. Bullets don't care who's one the receiving end, and they're some of the less unpleasant ways you can be killed. A realistic depiction of a human being being killed by a flamethrower would probably put you off from ever using one in a game again. Zyklon B was a mercy in comparison. We treat murder as a common, everyday, less-than-noteworthy occurrence in nearly every game we play (as a community, I mean); why should we make an exception for a particular range of deaths simply because the victims weren't holding guns at the time they died?

If an individual game treats violence as the horrible thing that it really is, it shouldn't undermine its own message by having you cheerfully gun down enemy soldiers. There's definitely room for both kinds of games, but I have yet to see (and have a hard time imaging) one that overlaps them and doesn't suffer hideously for it.

 

[Ronald Nand]

YES, games should explore dark and depressing topics like the horrors of WW2, but that doesn't mean every game about WW2 has to cover them, their is room for both, we can have our pure escapism games and we can have games that go into disturbing events like the horrors of Auschwitz.

 

[veloper]

Anything goes, but most gamers are looking for fun and fantasy in their spare time, not a documentary with gameplay attached, so Concentration Camp: the game may not sell.

 

[freaper]

If developers and publishers wanted to make an accurate representation of concentration camps, or WWI gas attacks they would have already done so, there's enough discouraging material in history to make games around.

 

[Kingjackl]

It's funny I should see this thread having just this second finished Valiant Hearts for the first time.

In light of that, my answer to the topic question is "f*** no"! Art should be allowed to tackle harsh subjects, and games are no exception. Valiant Hearts is a strong example of a game which uses its gameplay to depict the terrible realities of war, and does it in a way that really affects you. Depicting things like trench warfare, mustard gas, etc. are all a big part of that.

 

[Kingjackl]

It's funny I should see this thread having just this second finished Valiant Hearts for the first time.

In light of that, my answer to the topic question is "f*** no"! Art should be allowed to tackle harsh subjects, and games are no exception. Valiant Hearts is a strong example of a game which uses its gameplay to depict the terrible realities of war, and does it in a way that really affects you. Depicting things like trench warfare, mustard gas, etc. are all a big part of that.

That ending was definitely something I haven't seen done before in a game.

It's the second game ever to make me cry upon completion. That's my endorsement of it's ability to tackle serious issues in a meaningful way.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Um...absolutely? As long as they take is seriously. I mean a game where a grizzled, handsome white male rides in on a flaming motorcycle, punches out Heinrich Himmler and then bangs Eva Braun and her twin sister while singing the American National Anthem should probably not be made.

I have two comments on this:
1. That kinda sounds like how the majority Hollywood films depict WW2.
2. I'd totally play that game. It sounds like "Saints Row does WW2". X-D


On a rather more serious note:

You couldn't make a Holocaust game from the perspective of a Jew without a little creative engineering. I mean, not to be offensive, but you could die at any moment and the game ends. They didn't get a second chance when the SS came to clear out ghettos; why would you?

I don't know about that. I think you could get a lot from a relatively short thing along those lines. I know its popular to criticise stuff like Gone Home and Dear Esther but something like that where you're just working your way through the story with no particularly deep "gameplay" other than just walking around. A more hands-on visual novel if you will. That could work.

You could even do it Stanley Parable-like. In fact that might work even better. But if you defy the narrative enough then you just...die. With a little text epilogue perhaps giving more details. And at the very end you could have two endings, one where you are executed and the other where you are liberated; I'm not sure how you'd set it up though because I'm not sure giving the game a "win condition" helps the narrative.

I'm pretty sure you could make quite a compassionate, informative and thought-provoking game out of that honestly.

The main problem I see with it is that its very much an "artistic" project, its not something that would really sell well but it'd still have to be pretty high quality to really give the right impact. So it'd be simultaneously costly and difficult to do (you'd have to animate characters realistically and all of that, unlike the games I mentioned to compare it to which don't have other characters) and not have a particularly good payoff.

 

[madster11]

A game where a grizzled, handsome white male rides in on a flaming motorcycle, punches out Heinrich Himmler and then bangs Eva Braun and her twin sister while singing the American National Anthem

So are you alright with being in the credits or do you want your name kept out of it?