I wonder if there will be a bonus level where you intricately make dinner with your family and then the screen goes black as a Hellfire from a drone blows you all to pieces. This whole idea is so weird, it's going to have the perspective of the individuals caught in a fetishized, choreographed, simulated war which only exists in the realm of video games, which really just tries to milk empathy towards NPCs in a video game, not real people. If you are under the impression that video games do not promote violence, why would they promote empathy for those caught in the crossfire? Of course, that's implying some underlying motivation or whatever, but still. It is just a variation on a theme, but a stupid one.
If that's DLC instead of core content I am going to be so pissed. As opposed to the weird perspective of individuals caught in a fetishized, choreographed, simulated war which only exists in the realm of video games, which really just tries to milk contention towards NPCs in a video game? What's your point? Video games are a medium; whether they promote violence or empathy or alpacas is up to the artists' intentions and the audience's interpretations. The absolutist position that "video games do not promote violence" was simply political contrarianism from the time of Jack Thompson, and it's blatantly false if you consider videogames to have any artistic value at all. And there are motivations behind everything people do. Especially art. It seems to be a pretty dramatic variation from what's become standard, which is interesting to me, as I'm pretty bored with most of what comes out of "the industry" these days.I wonder if there will be a bonus level where you intricately make dinner with your family and then the screen goes black as a Hellfire from a drone blows you all to pieces.
This whole idea is so weird, it's going to have the perspective of the individuals caught in a fetishized, choreographed, simulated war which only exists in the realm of video games, which really just tries to milk empathy towards NPCs in a video game, not real people.
If you are under the impression that video games do not promote violence, why would they promote empathy for those caught in the crossfire? Of course, that's implying some underlying motivation or whatever, but still.
It is just a variation on a theme, but a stupid one.
Don't get me wrong now, the whole thing is weird, but for military-based games, it makes sense to be a soldier/aggressor, there's good guys and bad guys, missions, urgency, decisions to make, action and all that jazz, you're a soldier. Or a super-soldier, typically. The whole nature of being caught in a conflict as a civilian, however, is that you're subject to the whims, upon threat of death and violence and rape, by so many things outside of your control, so what exactly do you do with the controller? You don't really get to have any agency other than "try not to die or have a number of horrible things happen to you." Like, unless you literally just randomly die or get picked up and accused of being a traitor and tortured/killed, it wouldn't really be accurate. Since they are, in fact, NPC's in relation to the soldiers in a traditional shoot-em-up, I can safely assume that they'll participate in whatever behavior and activities that best suit the game, instead of what would best suit some clairvoyance into the reality of being a citizen in a warzone. Definitely not an absolutist, by any means, but I am curious as to how that may make someone of that opinion feel. I would love to see video games propelled to statuses where they are more recognized as art, but I've just seen too few examples of them living up to their ability to transmit a message or concept better. Probably just due to my limited experience, though. I haven't sat down and played one in several years now, but post-modern video games sound tight. Honestly, I'd just have to wait and see what they produce, but it just seems ripe for taking someone's terrifying account of living in a warzone, ramp up what they've been through to make it playable or engaging enough to sell, thereby removing the actual terror of living in a war zone, a lot of which is due to how little control you retain over your life and the lives of your loved ones around you.As opposed to the weird perspective of individuals caught in a fetishized, choreographed, simulated war which only exists in the realm of video games, which really just tries to milk contention towards NPCs in a video game?
The absolutist position that "videogames don't promote violence" was simply political contrarianism from the time of Jack Thompson, and it's blatantly false if you consider videogames to have any artistic value at all.
Well... My cousin ran supplies to NATO in Sarajevo for IFOR. Long after the violence had supposedly stopped, snipers were still taking pot shots. And, for balance, I briefly dated a Serbian. She said one of the most haunting things I've ever heard - I asked her which was worse, being carpetbombed in Sarajevo or being driven out of her country home by an angry mob with molotov cocktails. The molotovs, she said. "You don't have to take carpetbombing personally." There are a lot of Albanians down here in LA. Most of them didn't get out immediately. Girl I lived with in college was dating a Bosnian; his family had pooled their money together and gotten him out to a distant acquaintance in Seattle. He still had two sisters, a dad and a mom in Yugoslavia. They were still trying to earn money. They were still trying to support families. They had looked at the choice: "impoverished refugee" or "temporarily-inconvenienced inhabitant of a warzone" and decided on Column B... while hedging their bets on Column A for the favorite son. I'm not saying "hey! That sounds like an awesome thing to try on the PS3!" but I think it's an oversimplification to suppose that non-combatants spend months on end twiddling their thumbs in the dark.
I know! How stale. Hasn't it been done to death? Time for something different. Well, yes. And the difficulty and absurdity of doing so appears to be the entire point. Every game has environmental or non-player hazards to promote some sort of conflict. These particular hazards just happen to be something you are personally more comfortable embodying than fleeing. In my opinion that's what makes the idea interesting. I'm not sure what you're saying here. Sure, the game won't be a perfect representation of war, but then no videogame is, from any perspective. Why does their position with respect to traditional shooters matter? This is not a traditional shooter, so obviously the mechanics of the game will be different, probably something suitable for its purposes. If you want to see it as art, that's up to you, there is no gatekeeper to this sort of thing, in fact I consider it impossible for anything manmade to not be art. And the existence of subjectively bad art does not invalidate the medium: 90% of everything is shit. Yeah, that's likely. Of course you can't experience the true visceral terror of war by playing a videogame (with today's technology) but at least they're trying something different. And this has a better chance for saying something thoughtful than most wargames which essentially amount to jingoist propaganda....but for military-based games, it makes sense to be a soldier/aggressor, there's good guys and bad guys, missions, urgency, decisions to make, action and all that jazz, you're a soldier. Or a super-soldier, typically.
The whole nature of being caught in a conflict as a civilian, however, is that you're subject to the whims, upon threat of death and violence and rape, by so many things outside of your control, so what exactly do you do with the controller? You don't really get to have any agency other than "try not to die or have a number of horrible things happen to you." Like, unless you literally just randomly die or get picked up and accused of being a traitor and tortured/killed, it wouldn't really be accurate.
Since they are, in fact, NPC's in relation to the soldiers in a traditional shoot-em-up, I can safely assume that they'll participate in whatever behavior and activities that best suit the game, instead of what would best suit some clairvoyance into the reality of being a citizen in a warzone.
I would love to see video games propelled to statuses where they are more recognized as art etc etc
Honestly, I'd just have to wait and see what they produce, but it just seems ripe for taking someone's terrifying account of living in a warzone, ramp up what they've been through to make it playable or engaging enough to sell, thereby removing the actual terror of living in a war zone, a lot of which is due to how little control you retain over your life and the lives of your loved ones around you.
It definitely has a better chance, for sure, and I think that alone would be a healthy injection into the dialogue surrounding the plethora of military-based games. What I mean is that this could suffer from the same disconnect that a player could from an actual soldier in the battlefield. I refer to the civilians in the game as NPCs and not as civilians because, much as military video games are not about (nor really try to be) a 1:1 transference of the viewpoint of a soldier caught in conflict, This War of Mine seems less about trying to view (honestly or dishonestly) civilians in a similarly translated fashion as a response to the videogames that depict war. From some person in the comments of the article: Not to say that this is everyone's viewpoint or to generalize widely, I definitely know you don't see it this one-dimensionally, but if someone has experience with war only or mostly through videogames, how would you expect them to quickly identify with civilians in a videogame during war time other than as an NPC? Granted, maybe that won't make a difference at all, and people will be able to empathize, regardless, and the message will effectively get across and then awareness will rise and protests will be had and Amnesty Intl will see a spike in donations, who knows? I mean, hell, in the end, I want it to work, I'm just kind of a pessimist....this has a better chance for saying something thoughtful than most wargames which essentially amount to jingoist propaganda.
Sure, the game won't be a perfect representation of war, but then no videogame is, from any perspective. Why does their position with respect to traditional shooters matter?
I think I've said before that I'd love to see a game focused on the NPCs within games instead of, well, the main characters/players.