PvP

[Diceman]

Hey all;

Scott Kurtz, author of PvP, posted this on his website:

War. What is it good for?
Today's Penny-Arcade touches nicely on something I've had a problem with: Games that depict real wars, specifically WW2. Real people died in that conflict and it seems wrong to me to try to boil those experiences into a level of an xbox game.

I know a lot of people who are really into WW2. They study it at length despite the fact that they aren't being required to do so by some educational institution. Are games like battlefield 1942 a part of that culture?

I'm sure these game companies will express that they are trying to deliver a real experience here that immerses the player into what was a very real and difficult conflict. That this is interactive entertainment and serves as both a game and a learning experience. yeah...uh....bull****. Right?

I mean I don't see kids playing Day of Defeat or Brothers in Arms and saying "Wow. This is really teaching me about history." Is it reinforcing the impact of war, or is it trivializing it? I'm not sure I have any answers, but I certainly think that it warrants some serious pondering.

What do you guys think?

[leejo]

I think it's like reality tv: it doesn't matter what you think. The stuff is profitable.

I don't see the games we're playing as disrespectful to the veterans. My grandfather and some of his buddies saw Band of Brothers and were blown away.

People have been making WWII movies since it was going on, and there hasn't been any complaint. This new medium that places the viewer inside the action, along with several of his or her buddies, will take some getting used to and there will be bumps along the way, but it's here, it's growing, and it isn't going away.

Someone could make a game, and probably will, about people working together to get their respective grooves back, but I'll stick to this format.

[SmokingTarpan]

I hardly think that game companies are trying to deliver an educational experience, and anyone who says "I learned about D-Day" after playing a round of BF1942 should probably be shot as preventative maintenance. However, I don't think that the games trivialize the real events whatsoever. In fact, shortly after I started up in BF1942, the History Channel happened to be doing several shows about specific WW2 battles, many of which happened to be in the game. My friends and I watched and cheered as battlefields came up that we had played in the game, and learned the actual history behind it all.

I worry about the way things are going in this country nowadays. Too many people put too many things under the microscope, and the end result is that every act, thought and item in existence will offend someone somewhere, quite possibly leading to a lawsuit. Hell, just look at the fanatic Jack Thompson; he would likely find some way to say that Pong is offensive and incites children to riot.

Now, I'm not advocating things like games where you play a Klan member and try to kill black people, but I do think that we need to relax a fair deal.