The Red Cross Wants Games to Respect The "Rules of War"

[Neverhoodian]

Spoiler

So I assume movies and TV shows that depict war will be held to the same standard? No? Then shut the hell up.

Here's an idea, Red Cross: how about you stop wringing your hands over a bunch of pixels and focus more on REAL WARS where REAL PEOPLE suffer and die?

I'm all for game developers utilizing the Geneva Convention in games, but they shouldn't be shoehorned down that route. I doubt Spec Ops: The Line would have had such a lasting impact on players if it was forced to adhere to the rules of war.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Meanwhile in real wars being conducted this very moment those laws are broken all the time where real people are tortured and killed, but hey as long as games stay pristine that's cool right...

 

[Milanezi]

I always thought the most barbaric aspect about war was trying to apply rules to them. Rather than trying to show you can kill people more humanly if you follow a UN charter or some treaty, show the impact of loss and death of any conflict creates.

Then again if the next Call Of Duty game consisted of the player loading up the first map, stepping on a IED within 5 minutes and losing both legs and an arm, then spending the rest of the game in a veterans hospital where eventually you're discharged and forgotten about by an uncaring government and left to spiral into drugs and drink to cope with PTSD which eventually ends in your suicide, might be realistic but I doubt it will sell. Games are not real and never will be and I think 99% of players know this regardless how shiny the graphics are.

I shouldn't say that, being a lawyer who studied part of this subject (since Brazil isn't a big war figure AT ALL, we don't really cover this in depth), but I do get your point. Can't say I agree with you, I don't, but at the same time, I do, I couldn't explain if I tried...

It's a good intention. The idea is "war might not only be inevitable, at times it might be the only viable option", thus it's officially considered an "instrument of International Law", an extreme last resort instrument, but and instrument nonetheless. The laws that apply to war itself, are meant to keep the suffering to a minimal, chemical weapons are prohibited because they will surely kill, might cause unnecessary suffering before death, and are pretty unstable. In the same line, one can't use exploding bullets, simply because they shatter inside the victim and, if the victim survives, then extraction of the pieces is nearly impossible, which will cause a lot of suffering through one's life (if not death later on). Basically, it's a "let's try to keep the bloodshed to a minimum". Of course it's pretty easy for all these to fall apart, and in the heat of the moment, I don't really know if I could blame a soldier for certain "crimes of war"...

 

[Muspelheim]

That'd be a very interesting game mechanic. There's the possibility of a few more avenues of choice and consequence.

Yes, it's fiction, but if you are aiming at realism (which is -not- a bad thing, but it does make things rather more difficult), you might as well include it. If we're going to play proper soldiers, we might as well act the part, too.

A game doesn't have to equal throwing all responsibility out of the window. That's one way, but not the only way.

 

[rednightmare]

I like the idea of putting this kind of realism in, but I don't think the Red Cross should have input into the development (unless they mean consulting, which I feel wouldn't be a bad idea).

You want a realistic shooter? You don't get to cherry pick the parts if you want to do it well. This goes for you as well movies!

 

[RJ 17]

But what about the Nazi Zombies! How are we going to deal with them if we have to abide by Geneva Convention rules?! I NEED MORE CLAMS FOR THE CHOWDAH' HERE!

Oh, and I bet the Red Cross loved the bit in Modern Warfare 2 when Price launches a nuke from a Russian sub at America. :3

In the end I'm with those that say "Start bitching about all the horrendous war crimes committed in movies before you start worrying your pretty little heads about games."

 

[Kittyhawk]

They seem to forget the part where they are still games and have an audience who consumes them. Games need to be fun and entertaining to sell. Besides that, only a few games are set in the real world.

Put too much bs gears of real life in there, and the fun can easily take a hike to other better games. Seems written by someone who obviously doesn't play games again.

 

[Elomin Sha]

One rule is that you cannot shoot a paratrooper until their feet have touched the ground and they can't shoot at you from the air until that have touched the ground. If they get stuck in a tree or a steeple it's a strange stalemate.

 

[Nielas]

Not true. There is actually combat doctrine which says soldiers are not allowed to fire upon armed enemies unless they have first been fired upon. This is the sort of thing you never see in videogames, and the sort of thing the Red Cross is talking about. Unloading a load of magazines into an armed group who hadn't actually fired upon you is not allowed under current military law, unless it is explicitly clear that it was in direct self-defence. There has to be an actual threat of attack, it's not just enough to say "Well they have guns!" Plenty of people in Afghanistan and Iraq have guns, and not all of them are Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

Snipers are generally only allowed to take out people who are unecuivocably seen as a threat. They're not allowed to just shoot anyone in the combat arena who has a gun. Targets have to be marked and approved as an actual direct threat to the lives of military personnel.

I think you are talking about rules of engagement in insurgency situations where it is hard to tell enemy combatants from armed civilians. In a general war situation it is fully permitted for one side to fire on an enemy without giving them any warning or a chance to fire first.

I think you are too focused on irregular combat in places like Afghanistan or Iraq and not considering conventional combat situations where the same ambiguity is not present.

 

[Agayek]

Puttin aside that the idea of rules of engagement in a war are silly to the point that it will get your ass handed to you by a bunch of guys in caves for a decade and change. I think that if the realistic war styled games forced players to stick to the international rules of engagement, while having them frustrated to no end by npc that don't follow said rules, I think it would make for a very compelling gameplay experience.

This does sound kind of amazing. I'd be all over a game like that.

Somebody make it happen.

 

[Petromir]

Umm, no. Even when I'm not acting as a legitimate military force in a realistic game, I tend to kill enough people who may or may not have deserved it for my actions to be considered on par with a war crime.

What? Number of casualties inflicted is rarely a defining point in whether something is a war crime or not.

While they are complex things the international ones are not actually usually all that draconian, and are designed to take into account the difficult nature of these things. I've seen plenty of seemingly daft ones, but they are often national ROI and usually designed to avert full conflict where it is not already happening.

It's usually fine inside an active warzone to shoot an armed, uniformed (or the local approximation there of in the case of a militia or similar) enemy combatent. Genrally if it isnt theres a clear reason why, (and in some cases being armed may well make them in breach of said reason). Simiarly shooting a unarmed civilian is genrally a no-no (though assuming you are using an appropriate ROI for the likelyhood of civilians and you misidentfy a civilian as an armed combatent there may well be grounds in the international rules to have it marked down as a tragic accident), armed civilians are trickier and if there is evidence they are acting in a certain manner they may forfit their protections as a civlian and indeed most of those afforded to POWs.

The major issue is that in most COD style games you play as a Special Forces unit of some flavour and are therfore much more likely to be carrying out operations where you are at least as hard up against the rules as possible if not over them.

Given the lack of surrendering, and indeed often civilians in many of the games theres often little player choice in the breaking of the rules that are left, as if they are broken it is often a parameter outside of the players control or a requirement to procede. The liniar nature of most of this genre makes the introduction of the rules as things to be followed quite tricky, there needs to be much more feredom, and the missions need to moved to ones where options make sense.

One major issue on the thing is trying to balance the risk reward factor, if the legal route is more rewarding then it also has to be harder which may be seen as punishing the player for doing the right thing. Not an easy line to tred you want the ame to balance this, but also not make it clear what all the consequenses are, to try and avoid one being seen as the easy mode. You also need to be asking players the greyer questions, do you want the safer quicker method that carriers a greater risk of penalties for things going wrong or the harder slower method that still doesnt make the penalties impossible.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

I always thought the rules of war were, "do whatever your CO tells you," and "don't die," in that order.

 

[Ayay]

So whats next ..Movies and crime shows need to follow the real rules ? Not to mention any books in a modern setting about war ? This is the so silly i can belive it can be called a story.

 

[rofltehcat]

I could see it work in the single player campaigns but not in multiplayer.

Let's say you shoot (too many) civilians/prisoners. Instead of the game simply declaring game over, you cut to your return to camp where you are apprehended, cut to a military tribunal, cut to a cell, fade out after about 2 minutes of sitting in the cell. Of course in reality the process isn't as straight forward but by just adding those cut-scenes they could try to rub in the feeling of "you did something bad and you should feel bad" a bit.

As for the multiplayer... well, obviously there could be missions to rescue hostages or something and if you shoot them, you obviously lose. But singleplayer is really a better place for the whole topic. There could even be a mission where you are under fire and have to ask command for firing permission and they will of course take their time. Those rules of engagement can really run both ways: They aren't always necessarily a good thing. Of course having rules at all is preferable to having none but when only one side tries to stick to them it gets ugly pretty fast.

 

[JPArbiter]

Question?

when you break the rules of war in a battlefield, you keep fighting and are questioned later. is the red cross advocating a "Game over" if you break the rules right there and then, akin to CoDs friendly fire rules in the campaign? cause that DOES NOT reflect reality. the battle does not stop cause one person shot another with an anti tank rifle.

this is a well intentioned suggestion, don't get me wrong, but short of having courtroom scenes or "repeat the level until you abide 100% by the rules of war" mechanic I fail to see how implimentation can work.

 

[xxcloud417xx]

"Senechaud told the BBC."

I stopped considering this a serious article after reading this line. First it's a porn ban, next it's going to be a ban on products considered immoral. The people UK needs to step up and tell these people that it's their damn decision to choose the content they consume and that they'll have to trust their people to know the difference between what's real and what's pixelated.

I would be insulted if I was British that my government thinks I'm too fucking stupid to make my own adult decisions.

 

[Bad Jim]

I think that if nearly dead soldiers could automatically heal themselves to full combat readiness in a few seconds, the Geneva convention would have to be revised. Not being allowed to shoot someone you have wounded, knowing that in ten seconds they will stand up ready to fight you again - that's just silly.

 

[Baresark]

What games are they talking about? I mean, all the games billed as realistic penalize you for shooting civilians and friendly fire. COD hits you with a failed missing if either of those things happen. They have to be talking about games like COD and BF because those are the biggest.

Also, the Red Cross's precious rules for war are a joke. When people are killing other people, there are no rules. If there are, as another poster points out, if one side does not follow the rules they beat out the side that does. This guys opinion belongs as much in videogames as those idiots from Fox News. Special pleading in case of video games is still nonsense, no matter who is spouting it.