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Extra Credits: Stop Normalizing Nazis - Socially Conscious Game Design
- Thread starter vestan
- Start date
Who the fuck wants to play as a Nazi? I remember the first I played a multiplayer shooter (Call of Duty?) and one of the teams had be a Nazi. That blew my mind because it's not like you're roleplaying as some abstract or cartoonish form of evil. You straight up playing as a Nazi and trying to win.
Most people can tell the difference between a game and real life...
Naz-err, I mean "The Alt-Right"
Aside from that: A lot of WW2 games, CoD in particular, usually take the route of "Nazis were German but not all German/Axis soldiers were Nazis" to justify it. There are some issues with that being used for stealth propaganda by modern nazi-esque groups, but it is also a largely true sentiment.
I agree with this strongly. Its happening the same with Memes, memes are "normalizing" a lot of tragic moments in history. Heck, people even Memed the Notre Dame fire like 1 day after the incident... I was baffled by how quickly people would normalize a disaster. =/
It's not a true sentiment at all. The Wehrmacht participated in plenty of atrocities against civilians.
Well, Siege it's like a "situation simulation" or a virtual training for the OPs, more or less.
Okay then don't buy the game because once you do, you're literally monetarily opting into a 50/50 chance of putting on the costume of an ideology you find abhorrent.
There are just a lot of things wrong with this video and while I understand the sentiment, its presentation is really bad. I'll go into this a little more in a bit.
I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think that Red Orchestra, Day of Defeat or Bad Company 2 normalized Nazis. I can get behind the spirit and motivation but we had these games before The War on Terror and Charlottesville. I feel like this current climate calls for developers to allow players to opt out of the other side or to do the Ace Combat thing and create fictional universes. Maybe stick to fighting Italians and the Japanese for WW2 games or finally tackle Vietnam and make both sides the bad guys.
I have always been more into the sci-fi and silly stuff anyway, like Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress Classic, TF2 and Overwatch but I feel like they are asking too much of developers on this one.
I have always been more into the sci-fi and silly stuff anyway, like Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress Classic, TF2 and Overwatch but I feel like they are asking too much of developers on this one.
the only thing in old games like day of defeat, some of the nazi weapons were better lol. and yeah you needed 2 sides to even play the game : /
Putting the nazis out of the question, since not many games gives the option to play the game as them, his terrorist argument is just dumb
I've played Counter Strike for many years. I have a lot of friends that play the game to this day. It's a community that I've known for a long time
Everyone that I know couldnt care less about which side to play besides weapon prefferences.
Playing as a terrorist never made me normalize terrorists
This argument is so, so dumb
I've played Counter Strike for many years. I have a lot of friends that play the game to this day. It's a community that I've known for a long time
Everyone that I know couldnt care less about which side to play besides weapon prefferences.
Playing as a terrorist never made me normalize terrorists
This argument is so, so dumb
Return to castle wolfenstein and BF 1942 had that available (I think ? not so sure about the later), I won't say as far as these weren't problematic at the time but too much fun was had without worrying about ideology. D Day map on Rtcw was absolutely legendary
While I can appreciate what they're trying to do with this video, and I support the idea of stomping out extremist ideologies, I have several issues with the way this video presents the problem, both in that I disagree with several aspects of it and several of the solutions presented in the video are just....well they're bad solutions.
First and foremost, I find it disingenuous to assert that randomly being assigned to wear either the white or black hat in a multiplayer match makes you "embody" that character. I am no more a Nazi playing a match of BFV than I am an Emperor when I play a match of Civilization. People (for the most part) can tell games from reality and I find the idea that a person playing as an unnamed German soldier in a multiplayer match will adopt Nazi idealism to be tenuous at best.
The video hand-waves (quite condescendingly I might add) that not all German Soldier's were Nazi's and further asserts that unless a box comes up and informs you that you were pressed into service against your will, you're a propagator of the Third Reich and subscribe to their ideology. Does that mean when I play as an American solider in a modern game I am a supporter of their long history of Manifest Destiny, or that I'm okay with drone-strikes against unnamed civilians? If I play a British Soldier in WW2, does that mean I am a supporter the slaughter of people in India?
While I agree that historical accuracy often runs counter to artistic liberties, I don't think that allowing a player to use an STG-44 in a multiplayer match set in a conflict that took place in 1942 is on par with completely removing the opposing force for that battle from the equation. A game can still be "historical" without being a 1/1 simulation of what warfare is actually like.
Furthermore, their ways of "fixing" this problem range from asinine to downright idiotic. Did they seriously suggest that in a situation where people are forced to consciously choose which faction to fight for people who chose the less popular faction (i.e. the bad faction) should be subjected to artificially extended matchmaking times?
I love Extra-Credits, I love Extra-History even more so, but this is a seriously busted ass take.
First and foremost, I find it disingenuous to assert that randomly being assigned to wear either the white or black hat in a multiplayer match makes you "embody" that character. I am no more a Nazi playing a match of BFV than I am an Emperor when I play a match of Civilization. People (for the most part) can tell games from reality and I find the idea that a person playing as an unnamed German soldier in a multiplayer match will adopt Nazi idealism to be tenuous at best.
The video hand-waves (quite condescendingly I might add) that not all German Soldier's were Nazi's and further asserts that unless a box comes up and informs you that you were pressed into service against your will, you're a propagator of the Third Reich and subscribe to their ideology. Does that mean when I play as an American solider in a modern game I am a supporter of their long history of Manifest Destiny, or that I'm okay with drone-strikes against unnamed civilians? If I play a British Soldier in WW2, does that mean I am a supporter the slaughter of people in India?
While I agree that historical accuracy often runs counter to artistic liberties, I don't think that allowing a player to use an STG-44 in a multiplayer match set in a conflict that took place in 1942 is on par with completely removing the opposing force for that battle from the equation. A game can still be "historical" without being a 1/1 simulation of what warfare is actually like.
Furthermore, their ways of "fixing" this problem range from asinine to downright idiotic. Did they seriously suggest that in a situation where people are forced to consciously choose which faction to fight for people who chose the less popular faction (i.e. the bad faction) should be subjected to artificially extended matchmaking times?
I love Extra-Credits, I love Extra-History even more so, but this is a seriously busted ass take.
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I was playing some Call of Duty WII multiplayer recently, and in hindsight the game probably should have gone with the America's Army approach, where you always see your team as the Allies. That way the Nazis are always the enemy and you don't have to do the dance of "Well these players are just playing as German soliders, so actually..."
Call of Duty in particular would work just fine with this approach because the setting is mostly wallpaper for the same red vs blue multiplayer game. Everything is picking from the same grab bag of weapons, spawn points in maps get flipped within the first 30 seconds, really only War mode cares about which side you are ostensibly on. Pretty much all the cosmetics are only for the Allies team anyways. In fact it would make team recognition much better since you would always shoot at the Nazi. When on the Axis team, the opponents could be wearing one of a hundred different costumes, it got real annoying.
Call of Duty in particular would work just fine with this approach because the setting is mostly wallpaper for the same red vs blue multiplayer game. Everything is picking from the same grab bag of weapons, spawn points in maps get flipped within the first 30 seconds, really only War mode cares about which side you are ostensibly on. Pretty much all the cosmetics are only for the Allies team anyways. In fact it would make team recognition much better since you would always shoot at the Nazi. When on the Axis team, the opponents could be wearing one of a hundred different costumes, it got real annoying.
What do you even mean by this? Explain what 'normalization' means in the context of the Notre Dame fire. People were reacting to a current event, specifically because it wasn't 'normal'. You can't just claim 'normalization' in every situation and act as if you are actually making some kind of argument. Normalization IS a real phenomenon and CAN be a problem, but it is overused and also you have to be able to assign some sort of harm as a result of that normalization. What harm is caused by some random person 'memeing' about the Notre Dame fire?
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If you thought the British were cool people in WW2 boy have I got news for you lol.
Churchill happily sat through the Indian famine doing fuck all during WW2 and said its their own fault for "breeding like rabbits".
Churchill happily sat through the Indian famine doing fuck all during WW2 and said its their own fault for "breeding like rabbits".
My memory of the period is hazy, but did people have complaints against Counter Strike post 9/11? (the original mod was released about a year before 9/11)
I don't agree with this video at all.
If playing as the Nazi side in a WW2 shooter makes you think Nazi's aren't that bad, you're a pretty shitty person anyway.
His "If your not 100% historically accurate you cant have an excuse to play as Nazi's" argument is also bullcrap. Games need balance, they are games and nobody gonna play a shooter where one side dominates due to unbalanced teams and intentionally one sided map design.
If playing as the Nazi side in a WW2 shooter makes you think Nazi's aren't that bad, you're a pretty shitty person anyway.
His "If your not 100% historically accurate you cant have an excuse to play as Nazi's" argument is also bullcrap. Games need balance, they are games and nobody gonna play a shooter where one side dominates due to unbalanced teams and intentionally one sided map design.
Agreed with everything in this video except the "artificially increase queue times for Nazis" which I wish they had dedicated the five seconds of thinking that it takes to realize you cannot "increase queue times" for only one side (unless you allow Allies vs Allies matches).
Going by who's currently the democratically elected POTUS, I'm not sure any of us would like to hear the answer to that.
Going by who's currently the democratically elected POTUS, I'm not sure any of us would like to hear the answer to that.
User Banned (1 Week): Trolling about White Supremacy
One time I played a video game and my team mates had the grey uniforms on instead of the tan ones. Next thing I knew, I was goosestepping down to the tattoo parlor to put 88 on my forehead.
Isn't that exactly what he's saying? Or is your argument "don't like it, don't buy it"? Frankly I don't get what your argument is, at all.
One time I played a videogame and my teammates had these funny fur hats on and had a big red flag.
Next thing I knew I'm starving to death and my family was being forcibly relocated to Siberia.
Boy howdy, what a day.
"If playing a game with tits bouncing around makes you think of women as objects, you're a pretty shitty person anyway".
"If playing a game with lootboxes makes you spend a lot of money on them, you have a gambling problem anyway".
I'm so fucking sick of this transparent, no-true-scotsman cop out...
Sorry we don't want to limit games to the lowest common denominators of society.
Terrible strawman.
His argument is playing GTA makes you a violent person levels of nonsense.
No, he's saying that players are being forced into wearing the costumes of the ideology, and what im saying is that because they are buying the game, they are opting into the chance.
Not to mention most German soldiers were recruits, not conscripts, so they knowingly fought in a war of revanchist aggression for the Nazis and their regime.
People always had complaints against CS
But since I'm not from the US, I cant really tell the impact of 9/11 to the game's repercusion
Really? I don't think I've ever heard anything about that. But yeah, I can totally imagine the US mainstream media making a fuss about it.
"Terrible strawman"
*uses a strawman*
How is your argument any different from what I posted? Go ahead, tell me one single relevant difference that makes "games can only normalize Nazis if you're a Nazi" a valid argument but "games can only objectize women if you think women are objects" a flawed one.
Sorry I'm not a) an elitist that considers people with compulsive tendencies inferior subhuman garbage unworthy of being empathized to, or b) a cloudcuckoolander that believes portrayal of women and minorities in games don't matter because they will only affect you negatively if you're sexist or racist to begin with.
The fact is "if X is a problem, you had Y problem to begin with" is more often than not a fucking shitty argument and a lazy cop out dismissal, and a textbook no true scotsman; and frankly, should be outright bannable.
So your argument is indeed "just don't buy it". Which doesn't justify literally all and any content in games because... ?
Perhaps my wording was poor for the examples you used. For the loot boxes thing, yes I absolutely believe the people who spend crazy amounts on those would be predisposed to gambling as well. Like I am to alcoholism. I have to watch myself while drinking or around alcohol, just as I'm sure someone with a gambling addiction has to watch themselves around gambling or other things that tickle those parts of the brain. I don't think though we should coddle society as a whole around mine or anyone elses tendencies. As for the sexism thing, yeah if an anime game makes you view women like that you have a problem.
Do you think satire should be banned? Many often don't understand satire and think it is supporting the horrible beliefs it is actually criticizing.
Remember that time a ton of gamers were disappointed that Battlefront 2 wasn't about how great the space nazis are?
Someone who wants to play using the Walter P-38, the MP-40 and the Karabiner 98k
I take it you haven't played the board game Axis and Allies? (Its fun)
This is just one rung below "game violence normalizes violence". Jack Thompson was wrong in the 2000s and repackaging that argument doesn't make it right.
