Games where you go out and slaughter groups of currently existing groups have always skeeved me out.
WW2 games where you are killing Nazis aren't so bad because there really aren't any more Nazis like there were back then. There are ideological decendents, but not actual WW2 era Nazis. If those same games involved fighting the Russians or the Japanese, though, I usually quit playing.
Give me made up groups of people and I'll open up skulls all day. But anything that resembles a real group of people, no thanks. Just doesn't feel right.
Most of the Germans you're shooting in a WWII wouldn't have been Nazis. I'm not sure I see the distinction between shooting generic German soldier and generic Japanese soldier in a WWII FPS.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Multiplayer games with the Axis as one team are a dime a dozen. No, give me a single-player campaign where I invade Washington and need to make a glorious last stand against the faceless masses of Joes as I hold out until my trusty brownshirt sidekick has armed Der Große Mann and we haul ass out of there. Cut to cutscene of mushroom cloud.
And if someone did make that I'm sure there would be all sorts of arglebargle.
Some of the Taliban fighters are dudes who don't have an ideological motive and make more money holding AKs for them than they would ever make working pretty much anywhere in Afghanistan.
A whole lot of the German army were dudes who didn't necessarily agree with the Nazi ideology and were just conscripts. The true hardcore Nazi sympathisers all kissed ass up to higher ranks and cushier jobs away from the actual fronts for a big part of the war.
I mean, it's potentially in poor form, but really? It's sort of propganda. We're engaged in a "war" with the taliban right now. They are the enemy of the United States. An enemy that has an absolute hatred for quite a bit of what we treasure in our country. Do they have SOME legitimate justification for that anger? Probably, somewhere. But it's buried underneath countless ridiculous things that make quite a few people want to blow themselves up to fuck with the US.
There's so much wrong with this I'm not sure where to start
There's a lot to not like about the Taliban and there are legitimate concerns about them, these aren't any of them
Try anyway?
Because while you may disagree with the 'war' part, is there any question they are an enemy that doesn't value religious freedom and equality, which last I checked are generally thought of as good things?
To insinuate that the Taliban hate and fight against the US because of our values is preposterous and a kind of right-wing propaganda. They're a group with an entirely different culture and values that brewed out of years and years of that region's history. When the US came in and destroyed that (for a multitude of different reasons, of which freedom-sharing and democracy-expansion was not among them), they understandably got upset and are now fighting to restore their power position in the country and their culture essentially.
Is the culture backwards and harmful? Some aspects of it, and I don't even begin to make apologies for what the fundamentalist arm of the Taliban has done, but to make them up to be some kind of massive organized enemy force waging a total war on the US where the result is either them or us is the worst kind of historical white-washing and rhetoric pandering there is.
Some of the Taliban fighters are dudes who don't have an ideological motive and make more money holding AKs for them than they would ever make working pretty much anywhere in Afghanistan.
This much is true too. Hell, lots of Taliban fighters think the US has forcefields and x-ray goggles. They don't even know how Americans live or probably where it's located. They just see an interloping force that's imposing its will and fighting against that, as you or I would if the roles were reversed.
Games where you go out and slaughter groups of currently existing groups have always skeeved me out.
WW2 games where you are killing Nazis aren't so bad because there really aren't any more Nazis like there were back then. There are ideological decendents, but not actual WW2 era Nazis. If those same games involved fighting the Russians or the Japanese, though, I usually quit playing.
Give me made up groups of people and I'll open up skulls all day. But anything that resembles a real group of people, no thanks. Just doesn't feel right.
Most of the Germans you're shooting in a WWII wouldn't have been Nazis. I'm not sure I see the distinction between shooting generic German soldier and generic Japanese soldier in a WWII FPS.
Mostly it's easy to see Nazis in a videogame as being distinct from the Germans of today. It is less so with the Japanese because they weren't referred to by their ideology but instead by their country.
Basically, if I'm playing a murder simulator I don't want it to feel like a modern day training sim.
Just like to point out that the comic example isn't really indicative of the situation here. I think a majority of the problems people have with EA taking this direction is that you can play as the Taliban and can shoot American soldiers at a time when real Taliban are actually doing just this.
It'd be like having a comic front page image of Hitler kicking the teeth out of a British soldier while the Blitz was going on.
Again, I don't see any real difference between that and playing Nazis.
And again, it's a timing issue.
I don't see that as a legitimate concern.
You don't see timing as a legitimate issue?
Make a joke about Abraham Lincoln getting shot by Booth. People will laugh.
Make a joke about September 11th. The vast majority of people will not laugh and will also think you are an asshole for joking about it.
Timing, whether you personally believe so or not, is actually quite a big issue.
People are dumb and I don't really care about their opinions.
Fair enough. You're entitled to that opinion. That still doesn't mean that timing isn't an issue.
To be clear, I personally wouldn't mind a game that showed both sides of the war. To me, it's just a video game. Shooting an American soldier in a video game is obviously not the same as killing one in real ife.
However, I also don't have friends or family that are currently serving in the armed forces. Nor has anyone in my family died from serving. People that are more sensitive to the subject will be bothered by that type of subject material.
Remember when Modern Warfare 2 first came out and there was a minor uproar about the airport level where you mow a ton of civilians down? It's like that, only on an even more personal level. It didn't bother me to play through it, but it obviously bothered some people.
ChillyWilly on
PAFC Top 10 Finisher in Seasons 1 and 3. 2nd in Seasons 4 and 5. Final 4 in Season 6.
Just like to point out that the comic example isn't really indicative of the situation here. I think a majority of the problems people have with EA taking this direction is that you can play as the Taliban and can shoot American soldiers at a time when real Taliban are actually doing just this.
It'd be like having a comic front page image of Hitler kicking the teeth out of a British soldier while the Blitz was going on.
Again, I don't see any real difference between that and playing Nazis.
And again, it's a timing issue.
I don't see that as a legitimate concern.
You don't see timing as a legitimate issue?
Make a joke about Abraham Lincoln getting shot by Booth. People will laugh.
Make a joke about September 11th. The vast majority of people will not laugh and will also think you are an asshole for joking about it.
Timing, whether you personally believe so or not, is actually quite a big issue.
NEVAR FORGET!
I don't think it's wise to antagonize people over current events. I'm sure I could mod up a flight sim to reenact 9/11 though, but that wold make me a jackass.
However, I also don't have friends or family that are currently serving in the armed forces. Nor has anyone in my family died from serving. People that are more sensitive to the subject will be bothered by that type of subject material.
Remember when Modern Warfare 2 first came out and there was a minor uproar about the airport level where you mow a ton of civilians down? It's like that, only on an even more personal level. It didn't bother me to play through it, but it obviously bothered some people.
Then they shouldn't play it.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Being a huge captain america fan, seeing that cover come up in a comic forum has just made me realize a good third person ww2 cap video game could be amazing!
However the discussion is about the taliban. I think it's just fine to make them the enemy in a video game, in fact it may be an important cultural thing, as kids who were too young to really conceptualize 9/11 or the following wars may ask some questions presented by it. I know I sure as hell didn't watch the news at 10-12 years old, but I did play video games, and any time I recognized some word or name from outside my game as something connected to it, I wanted to know all about it.
jeddy lee on
Backlog Challenge: 0%
0/8
PS2
FF X replay
PS3
God of War 1&2 HD
Rachet and Clank Future
MGS 4
Prince of Persia
Multiplayer games with the Axis as one team are a dime a dozen. No, give me a single-player campaign where I invade Washington and need to make a glorious last stand against the faceless masses of Joes as I hold out until my trusty brownshirt sidekick has armed Der Große Mann and we haul ass out of there. Cut to cutscene of mushroom cloud.
Being a huge captain america fan, seeing that cover come up in a comic forum has just made me realize a good third person ww2 cap video game could be amazing!
However the discussion is about the taliban. I think it's just fine to make them the enemy in a video game, in fact it may be an important cultural thing, as kids who were too young to really conceptualize 9/11 or the following wars may ask some questions presented by it. I know I sure as hell didn't watch the news at 10-12 years old, but I did play video games, and any time I recognized some word or name from outside my game as something connected to it, I wanted to know all about it.
Issue isn't them being the enemy, its that you can actually play as the Taliban.
I mean, it's potentially in poor form, but really? It's sort of propganda. We're engaged in a "war" with the taliban right now. They are the enemy of the United States. An enemy that has an absolute hatred for quite a bit of what we treasure in our country. Do they have SOME legitimate justification for that anger? Probably, somewhere. But it's buried underneath countless ridiculous things that make quite a few people want to blow themselves up to fuck with the US.
There's so much wrong with this I'm not sure where to start
There's a lot to not like about the Taliban and there are legitimate concerns about them, these aren't any of them
Try anyway?
Because while you may disagree with the 'war' part, is there any question they are an enemy that doesn't value religious freedom and equality, which last I checked are generally thought of as good things?
To insinuate that the Taliban hate and fight against the US because of our values is preposterous and a kind of right-wing propaganda. They're a group with an entirely different culture and values that brewed out of years and years of that region's history. When the US came in and destroyed that (for a multitude of different reasons, of which freedom-sharing and democracy-expansion was not among them), they understandably got upset and are now fighting to restore their power position in the country and their culture essentially.
Is the culture backwards and harmful? Some aspects of it, and I don't even begin to make apologies for what the fundamentalist arm of the Taliban has done, but to make them up to be some kind of massive organized enemy force waging a total war on the US where the result is either them or us is the worst kind of historical white-washing and rhetoric pandering there is.
Some of the Taliban fighters are dudes who don't have an ideological motive and make more money holding AKs for them than they would ever make working pretty much anywhere in Afghanistan.
This much is true too. Hell, lots of Taliban fighters think the US has forcefields and x-ray goggles. They don't even know how Americans live or probably where it's located. They just see an interloping force that's imposing its will and fighting against that, as you or I would if the roles were reversed.
I never said they were some organized force or hell bent on our destruction (neither did sniper Guy)
But the post you criticized labeled them as an enemy (they are) and additionally a group that hates us for a number of reasons (they are).
To say that they were just happy to roll along and accept the US for what it is and not provide any material or ideological support to murderers is a bit naive.
Singleplayer campaigns in FPSes have never trivialized or made light of any war. There's always sections of seeing the horrors of war. Allies dying, people crying, explosions rocking against a bunker as the troops sit against the ground. I've never played an FPS based on an actual conflict with a single player campaign that made me think "Oh wow, they're really making light of all these deaths."
If they're letting you play as the Taliban in the campaign, that's a problem. Especially if it tries to be somewhat sympathetic.
I don't see how that is problematic. In fact, I wish someone would do that.
I really can't see how you could make a Taliban fighter sympathetic. I doubt any video game company would be stupid enough to try.
I'm sure we could if we tried hard enough. We've spent 150 years painting sympathetic portraits of racist, treasonous Confederates who started a fight that cost over 650,000 American lives - which is like 9/11 happening every day for a year.
I remember playing Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, a game where the final mission of the SP campaign is the conquest of Washington DC. Oh, and there was no Union campaign in the game, only the Confederates got one.
Games where you go out and slaughter groups of currently existing groups have always skeeved me out.
WW2 games where you are killing Nazis aren't so bad because there really aren't any more Nazis like there were back then. There are ideological decendents, but not actual WW2 era Nazis. If those same games involved fighting the Russians or the Japanese, though, I usually quit playing.
Give me made up groups of people and I'll open up skulls all day. But anything that resembles a real group of people, no thanks. Just doesn't feel right.
Most of the Germans you're shooting in a WWII wouldn't have been Nazis. I'm not sure I see the distinction between shooting generic German soldier and generic Japanese soldier in a WWII FPS.
If anything, I'd say there's a lot more Germans today like the WWII German soldier than there are Japanese today like the WWII Japanese soldier. Your average German soldier was just a regular soldier who happened to be on the German side.
I get pretty much zero sense that modern Japanese are fanatic Emperor-worshippers willing to charge headlong into machine gun fire, or who think they're going to fight tanks and planes with bamboo spears like it's Civ 2 or something.
Being a huge captain america fan, seeing that cover come up in a comic forum has just made me realize a good third person ww2 cap video game could be amazing!
Until then, Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich is an excellent game. And you can make your own Cap (and any other copyrighted character) and stick them in the game too.
Though I don't recall much Hitler-punching in the game.
I mean, it's potentially in poor form, but really? It's sort of propganda. We're engaged in a "war" with the taliban right now. They are the enemy of the United States. An enemy that has an absolute hatred for quite a bit of what we treasure in our country. Do they have SOME legitimate justification for that anger? Probably, somewhere. But it's buried underneath countless ridiculous things that make quite a few people want to blow themselves up to fuck with the US.
There's so much wrong with this I'm not sure where to start
There's a lot to not like about the Taliban and there are legitimate concerns about them, these aren't any of them
Try anyway?
Because while you may disagree with the 'war' part, is there any question they are an enemy that doesn't value religious freedom and equality, which last I checked are generally thought of as good things?
To insinuate that the Taliban hate and fight against the US because of our values is preposterous and a kind of right-wing propaganda. They're a group with an entirely different culture and values that brewed out of years and years of that region's history. When the US came in and destroyed that (for a multitude of different reasons, of which freedom-sharing and democracy-expansion was not among them), they understandably got upset and are now fighting to restore their power position in the country and their culture essentially.
Is the culture backwards and harmful? Some aspects of it, and I don't even begin to make apologies for what the fundamentalist arm of the Taliban has done, but to make them up to be some kind of massive organized enemy force waging a total war on the US where the result is either them or us is the worst kind of historical white-washing and rhetoric pandering there is.
Some of the Taliban fighters are dudes who don't have an ideological motive and make more money holding AKs for them than they would ever make working pretty much anywhere in Afghanistan.
This much is true too. Hell, lots of Taliban fighters think the US has forcefields and x-ray goggles. They don't even know how Americans live or probably where it's located. They just see an interloping force that's imposing its will and fighting against that, as you or I would if the roles were reversed.
I never said they were some organized force or hell bent on our destruction (neither did sniper Guy)
I'm referring to this bit
We're engaged in a "war" with the taliban right now. They are the enemy of the United States. An enemy that has an absolute hatred for quite a bit of what we treasure in our country.
Which is some pretty heavy total war imagery. I don't see it as being a big step from "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here!"
But the post you criticized labeled them as an enemy (they are) and additionally a group that hates us for a number of reasons (they are).
Agreed, but the reasons stated
An enemy that has an absolute hatred for quite a bit of what we treasure in our country.
Are not correct.
To say that they were just happy to roll along and accept the US for what it is and not provide any material or ideological support to murderers is a bit naive.
Taliban were isolationist, they were content to rule what they had and live on that. It's just that some of their views on America (in a lot of cases, justifiable) lined up with what al-quaeda had so when they needed a base, then the Taliban didn't exactly push them out. Nor would I say they opened their arms completely but that's a different matter.
I'm sure we could if we tried hard enough. We've spent 150 years painting sympathetic portraits of racist, treasonous Confederates who started a fight that cost over 650,000 American lives - which is like 9/11 happening every day for a year.
I remember playing Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, a game where the final mission of the SP campaign is the conquest of Washington DC. Oh, and there was no Union campaign in the game, only the Confederates got one.
I see a distinction between a FPS and a strategy game. Maybe it's the level of abstraction. It's one thing to wipe out a British tank brigade while playing the Germans in a WWII strategy game. It's another to play a German soldier in a FPS and shoot American paratroopers. The former doesn't bother me while the latter does. Heck, anyone who plays the Civilization games has committed genocide at one time or another and used nuclear weapons against cities.
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
I think I'd actually love that gameplay. Mmm, Transport Tycoon.
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
I think I'd actually love that gameplay. Mmm, Transport Tycoon.
But yeah, I'd never actually play it.
In the Total War games you could kill a segment of the population for make the rest easier to deal with.
The thing about sim games is that they're always sort of sarcastic. To the extent they're "realistic," it's never a vicarious realism, it's a logistics realism.
FPS games, on the other hand, typically pride themselves on being realistic in this sense—good enemy AI, cover systems, particle effects, motion blur, it feels like you're really there! Except instead of being really there, you are shooting at increasingly realistic fascimiles of human beings acting in increasingly realistic ways, in order to get achievements on Xbox Live.
I'm sure we could if we tried hard enough. We've spent 150 years painting sympathetic portraits of racist, treasonous Confederates who started a fight that cost over 650,000 American lives - which is like 9/11 happening every day for a year.
I remember playing Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, a game where the final mission of the SP campaign is the conquest of Washington DC. Oh, and there was no Union campaign in the game, only the Confederates got one.
I see a distinction between a FPS and a strategy game. Maybe it's the level of abstraction. It's one thing to wipe out a British tank brigade while playing the Germans in a WWII strategy game. It's another to play a German soldier in a FPS and shoot American paratroopers. The former doesn't bother me while the latter does. Heck, anyone who plays the Civilization games has committed genocide at one time or another and used nuclear weapons against cities.
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
I'm sure we'd have Civil War FPS games if they didn't involve 45-second reloads.
Anyways, my main point was we could make the Taliban sympathetic if we wanted to. Heck, we already did in the 80s, when Osama and friends were shooting down Russian Hinds. It's just a matter of deciding which anti-American people we feel like lionizing. Lee was a slave-owning traitor, and we name universities after him.
I'm sure we could if we tried hard enough. We've spent 150 years painting sympathetic portraits of racist, treasonous Confederates who started a fight that cost over 650,000 American lives - which is like 9/11 happening every day for a year.
I remember playing Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, a game where the final mission of the SP campaign is the conquest of Washington DC. Oh, and there was no Union campaign in the game, only the Confederates got one.
I see a distinction between a FPS and a strategy game. Maybe it's the level of abstraction. It's one thing to wipe out a British tank brigade while playing the Germans in a WWII strategy game. It's another to play a German soldier in a FPS and shoot American paratroopers. The former doesn't bother me while the latter does. Heck, anyone who plays the Civilization games has committed genocide at one time or another and used nuclear weapons against cities.
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
I'm sure we'd have Civil War FPS games if they didn't involve 45-second reloads.
Anyways, my main point was we could make the Taliban sympathetic if we wanted to. Heck, we already did in the 80s, when Osama and friends were shooting down Russian Hinds. It's just a matter of deciding which anti-American people we feel like lionizing. Lee was a slave-owning traitor, and we name universities after him.
Wasn't there some recent time travel game with Civil War action?
Also, I think there was another straight up Civil War shooter that came out not too long ago. Could be mistaken though...
The fact that someone thinks a videogame actually shows the horrors of war means that said videogame has succeeded in trivializing the horrors of war.
Have you played the first Modern Warfare?
Unless your position is that it's impossible in principle to do, and we should give up on any attempt at a fictional representation of the horrors of war in any medium, I think your offhand dismissal here is kind of silly.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Just like to point out that the comic example isn't really indicative of the situation here. I think a majority of the problems people have with EA taking this direction is that you can play as the Taliban and can shoot American soldiers at a time when real Taliban are actually doing just this.
It'd be like having a comic front page image of Hitler kicking the teeth out of a British soldier while the Blitz was going on.
Again, I don't see any real difference between that and playing Nazis.
And again, it's a timing issue.
I don't see that as a legitimate concern.
You don't see timing as a legitimate issue?
Make a joke about Abraham Lincoln getting shot by Booth. People will laugh.
Make a joke about September 11th. The vast majority of people will not laugh and will also think you are an asshole for joking about it.
Timing, whether you personally believe so or not, is actually quite a big issue.
Well, actually, the only September 11th joke I've heard was sorta funny. And people usually laugh.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
9/11
9/11 who?
You said you'd never forget!
Mostly a play on words though.
And no, it's not a legitimate issue.
OH NO WE MADE SOME PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE. How DARE we take their precious senses out of their comfort zone.
The fact that someone thinks a videogame actually shows the horrors of war means that said videogame has succeeded in trivializing the horrors of war.
Have you played the first Modern Warfare?
Unless your position is that it's impossible in principle to do, and we should give up on any attempt at a fictional representation of the horrors of war in any medium, I think your offhand dismissal here is kind of silly.
Yeah, was going to mention that scene.
For some reason the random youtube wanker added Lux Aeterna at the end for no good reason, which really ruins the impact.
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
I think I'd actually love that gameplay. Mmm, Transport Tycoon.
I actually feel like many FPS games do a good job of showing how war is horrible.
My problem would lie in things like cartoonifying Nazis and making them into a comic book parody of evil - it's dangerous because it dissociates their evil acts from the very real social, economic, political causes.
I also think that every war game should strive to make the enemy as sympathetic as possible; a game that makes you experience what's so deeply wrong with, say, an extremist zealot military force, while also criticizing the imperialism of the "good guys", maybe.
Just like to point out that the comic example isn't really indicative of the situation here. I think a majority of the problems people have with EA taking this direction is that you can play as the Taliban and can shoot American soldiers at a time when real Taliban are actually doing just this.
It'd be like having a comic front page image of Hitler kicking the teeth out of a British soldier while the Blitz was going on.
Again, I don't see any real difference between that and playing Nazis.
And again, it's a timing issue.
I don't see that as a legitimate concern.
You don't see timing as a legitimate issue?
Make a joke about Abraham Lincoln getting shot by Booth. People will laugh.
Make a joke about September 11th. The vast majority of people will not laugh and will also think you are an asshole for joking about it.
Timing, whether you personally believe so or not, is actually quite a big issue.
Well, actually, the only September 11th joke I've heard was sorta funny. And people usually laugh.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
9/11
9/11 who?
You said you'd never forget!
Mostly a play on words though.
And no, it's not a legitimate issue.
OH NO WE MADE SOME PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE. How DARE we take their precious senses out of their comfort zone.
Gilbert Gottfried told a 9/11 joke at Hugh Hefner's roast. Don't read what's in the spoiler below if 9/11 is completely off limits for you. It was something like:
"I'm trying to get a direct flight back to Los Angeles after this, and I'm a little nervous because apparently there's a connection at the Empire State Building.
The crowd immediately turned on him, someone shouted "too soon".
If you're offended by a joke, or consider it disrespectful, that's a matter of taste.
Gilbert did something that I consider a brilliant move. He told "The Aristocrats". A joke I don't even consider funny. And he MADE it funny because of the way he told it. It was in incredibly bad taste. He pushed the envelope as far as he could... and the audience loved that.
I might consider Medal of Honor to be disrespectful to soldiers... I might even be thin-skinned enough to consider Hogan's Heroes to be disrespectful to PoW's. I know and am friends with many guys who are vets. It's a button for me sometimes. Heck, when I see a guy in uniform, I thank him for serving (people look at me funny sometimes for doing that). But I recognize that however I think about Medal of Honor, it is still a matter of taste. A joke about religion that's offensive... still a matter of taste (there's a lot of catholic jokes out there f'rexample).
But even bad taste is protected by the Bill O' Rights, a document that is not only a part of the government in my country, and like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, can also considered to be a statement of human rights.
The fact that someone thinks a videogame actually shows the horrors of war means that said videogame has succeeded in trivializing the horrors of war.
Have you played the first Modern Warfare?
Unless your position is that it's impossible in principle to do, and we should give up on any attempt at a fictional representation of the horrors of war in any medium, I think your offhand dismissal here is kind of silly.
Are you referring to Call of Duty 4? I have not.
I've heard tell of its sober portrayal of warfare. Then I look at the achievements. Apparently if you kill 2 enemies by blowing up a car you get points!
I also heard there's some kind of reward for following UN conventions? When I first heard about that, I thought it was cool. Then I thought about it some more and realized that tacking on a special, optional, trivial reward onto your game for players who don't act like psychopaths is probably part of the problem.
I do think it's possible to portray warfare in a mature way in videogames. I would love to see a game that did so. However, the action FPS formula is just about the worst way to do so that I can think of. The point of an action game, the way the gameplay is always structured, is to make the player feel awesome or powerful. You can be "good" at an action game, in the sense that you can elegantly kill lots and lots of enemies without taking damage.
I love good action games, but I don't see how you can use this structure to make a thoughtful game about warfare. (I don't love FPS games, they always make me motion sick, which is partly why I haven't tried Call of Duty).
I also think that every war game should strive to make the enemy as sympathetic as possible; a game that makes you experience what's so deeply wrong with, say, an extremist zealot military force, while also criticizing the imperialism of the "good guys", maybe.
But any action game that does this would be undermined by the fact that the gameplay itself rewards you for killing shitloads of enemies in an awesome, psychopathic fashion.
The fact that someone thinks a videogame actually shows the horrors of war means that said videogame has succeeded in trivializing the horrors of war.
Have you played the first Modern Warfare?
Unless your position is that it's impossible in principle to do, and we should give up on any attempt at a fictional representation of the horrors of war in any medium, I think your offhand dismissal here is kind of silly.
Are you referring to Call of Duty 4? I have not.
I've heard tell of its sober portrayal of warfare. Then I look at the achievements. Apparently if you kill 2 enemies by blowing up a car you get points!
I also heard there's some kind of reward for following UN conventions? When I first heard about that, I thought it was cool. Then I thought about it some more and realized that tacking on a special, optional, trivial reward onto your game for players who don't act like psychopaths is probably part of the problem.
I do think it's possible to portray warfare in a mature way in videogames. I would love to see a game that did so. However, the action FPS formula is just about the worst way to do so that I can think of. The point of an action game, the way the gameplay is always structured, is to make the player feel awesome or powerful. You can be "good" at an action game, in the sense that you can elegantly kill lots and lots of enemies without taking damage.
I love good action games, but I don't see how you can use this structure to make a thoughtful game about warfare. (I don't love FPS games, they always make me motion sick, which is partly why I haven't tried Call of Duty).
First of all, I don't see what your claim about achievements has to do with anything. Maybe the Xbox version is different, but in the PC version it's not like your playing along in the SP campaign and suddenly you get pop ups telling you about some achievement you unlocked for stabbing a guy and then throwing him off a building.
As to gameplay, I think you might just no understand modern shooter mechanics. The days of health bars and wading through fire are pretty much behind us. Modern shooters require either a frantic twitch fest to just shoot everyone before they shoot you, or a slow tactical approach to make sure you can shoot them without them shooting you.
EDIT: And as a final note, I do not think that struggling uselessly only to die from internal bleeding and radiation poisoning is intended to make the player feel "awesome and powerful".
I also think that every war game should strive to make the enemy as sympathetic as possible; a game that makes you experience what's so deeply wrong with, say, an extremist zealot military force, while also criticizing the imperialism of the "good guys", maybe.
But any action game that does this would be undermined by the fact that the gameplay itself rewards you for killing shitloads of enemies in an awesome, psychopathic fashion.
So does the military, AFAIK.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I also think that every war game should strive to make the enemy as sympathetic as possible; a game that makes you experience what's so deeply wrong with, say, an extremist zealot military force, while also criticizing the imperialism of the "good guys", maybe.
But any action game that does this would be undermined by the fact that the gameplay itself rewards you for killing shitloads of enemies in an awesome, psychopathic fashion.
I actually don't think it would. Games do not make us think of enemies in the game as people; they make us think of them as obstacles, because that's what they are. They don't move, act or sound like real people, or even look like real people; they look like plastic dolls. Instead of associating this dispassionate violence with real people, then, it does the opposite; it dissociates violence from real human targets.
At worst, a game could present you with such enemies, and at other times emphasize the horror of war and the wrongness of the entire endeavour, and fail to reinforce the latter with the former. I don't think it would undermine it.
Most wargames show war as horrible but still glorify and heroicize the protagonists, though; I have yet to see a political, intelligent commentary - with the notable exception of that cod4 scene, which was excellent and could only have been done in a video game, since it's about how such technology turns war into a video game.
The fact that someone thinks a videogame actually shows the horrors of war means that said videogame has succeeded in trivializing the horrors of war.
Have you played the first Modern Warfare?
Unless your position is that it's impossible in principle to do, and we should give up on any attempt at a fictional representation of the horrors of war in any medium, I think your offhand dismissal here is kind of silly.
Are you referring to Call of Duty 4? I have not.
I've heard tell of its sober portrayal of warfare. Then I look at the achievements. Apparently if you kill 2 enemies by blowing up a car you get points!
It may be a fairly accurate portrayal of modern warfare, but I wouldn't call it very sobering. The AC-130 level is the most accurate of the COD4 levels, according to what I've seen of actual gunship footage, but it's hardly "sobering". It's mostly about raining death from above while yelling "Yippie ky yay!"
Maybe it's sobering in revealing how dehumanized modern warfare has become, but not in terms of shoving the horrors of war in the player's face.
The reason a lot of military like MW and MW2 is exactly the same as the reason I like it, because it's not like their/my everyday life. COD4 has no roadside bombs that take out your buddy's leg at the knee, leaving him to bleed out. There's no part where you kill a kid because you thought he had a gun, only to find out it was a stick. Heck, practically every person in the game is more robot than human, I don't recall hearing a single yelp of pain when anyone gets shot. They just crumple silently, lest their screams throw off your aim or something. And of course like all good Marines, when your squadmate gets hit you leave him in the middle of the street to rot.
If a game accurately portrayed the horrors of war, very few people would want to play it over and over like they do a good FPS. Because if done well it wouldn't be a lot of fun, and you wouldn't be all that eager to play it.
I mean, how often do you plop down in front of the TV with a tub of popcorn and a beer, maybe on a Saturday night with a few friends over, and fire up Schindler's List?
I do think it's possible to portray warfare in a mature way in videogames. I would love to see a game that did so. However, the action FPS formula is just about the worst way to do so that I can think of. The point of an action game, the way the gameplay is always structured, is to make the player feel awesome or powerful. You can be "good" at an action game, in the sense that you can elegantly kill lots and lots of enemies without taking damage.
I love good action games, but I don't see how you can use this structure to make a thoughtful game about warfare. (I don't love FPS games, they always make me motion sick, which is partly why I haven't tried Call of Duty).
Anytime you can experience any kind of interactive portrayal of warfare it is going to be an empowerment fantasy. IL-2 Sturmovik with every simulation setting dialed to its most trying position, played from within a perfect period reconstruction of a P-51 Mustang, is an empowerment fantasy. How is a flight simulator empowering, much less fantastically so? Well, when you crash the simulated P-51 you don't die. That is pretty fucking empowering, and quite fantastic.
It's unclear to me exactly how any game about combat would be structured such that killing enemies and avoiding injury aren't major concerns of the player. It's quite reasonable for it to bother you that the conventions encourage translating a body count into a point count, but if you're going to simulate war then you're going to provide the player with encouragement to kill his enemies. If requiring players to "elegantly kill lots and lots of enemies without taking damage" is incompatible with "a thoughtful game about warfare," then perhaps the only thoughtful game about warfare is the alternate edition of Battlefield:Vietnam where you cut your toes off and move to Canada to grow pot.
EDIT: There is one place where you have a point, and that's in the "lots and lots of enemies." I would love to see a war game that manages to keep suspense and the sense of danger while directing the player to accomplish tasks other than "shoot guys until there aren't any more guys." I'm imagining a game inspired by Hurt Locker where you spend the vast majority of your time driving around in a humvee or using a remote-controlled robot or stumbling about in an EOD suit, but at all times face the possibility of being ambushed. Ideally you could complete the whole thing without actually drawing a weapon more than once or twice, but nonetheless spend the entire time feeling the threat of being shot at. This game would definitely have rather a lot less mass-market appeal than MW2, I'll admit.
If you're playing a terrorist planting IEDs to destroy relief convoys, strapping on a suicide vest to blow up a bus, using a car bomb against a shopping center, or guiding a Tomahawk into a wedding, I think that's distasteful.
If you're in a My Lai Battlefield:Vietnam map and you're executing civilians, I think that's distasteful.
If you're in a WWII game and you're participating in the Rape of Nanking or dropping bombs someone's house in Dresden, I think that's distasteful.
If you're just playing some random soldier and your rifle happens to be a relic of the Soviet bloc and you're shooting at American soldiers... I'm honestly not bothered. I don't even care if you could extrapolate at some point that that soldier you're shooting at looks just like I did.
However, I also don't have friends or family that are currently serving in the armed forces. Nor has anyone in my family died from serving. People that are more sensitive to the subject will be bothered by that type of subject material.
Remember when Modern Warfare 2 first came out and there was a minor uproar about the airport level where you mow a ton of civilians down? It's like that, only on an even more personal level. It didn't bother me to play through it, but it obviously bothered some people.
Then they shouldn't play it.
This brings up an interesting side question--how reasonable was it for the actual Russia--the real-life country of the Russian Federation and its federal subjects, not the mystical land from which magical paratroopers land in Colorado or come pouring out of cargo vessels--to deliberately stop the sale of MW2 in that country, in large part because of these scene. Note, Russia did nothing to stop, for example, World in Conflict or Arma 2 from being sold in their country, and from what I can tell, both did respectably enough (Arma 2 I know commands a pretty healthy following in Russia). So it's not a case of "no games are allowed where we (Russians or CIS nationalities in general) are bad guys."
Now, it isn't like in GTA, where you can barge into a fake airport and shoot a bunch of fake Americans in a fake knock-off of New York City or Miami if you so desire (but are in no way obligated to). You go to a location that is modeled after a real airport, located in a reproduction of a real city, and (unless you skip it) slaughter a large number of unarmed people. And, importantly, this is...pretty much an intricate part of the plot.
Put it in other terms--you could not, realistically, market a major video game in America where a bunch of Americans dress up as Russians and massacre a crowd of people at Ronald Reagan International as a pretext to the war that is the whole plot of the game.
I don't think you could. A higher enjoyment of freedom of speech aside, I don't think a developer would allow you to program it or a producer allow the game to be produced, and I don't think publicly-aware people, when they found out, would let you get anywhere near selling it in any sort of retail market.
However, I also don't have friends or family that are currently serving in the armed forces. Nor has anyone in my family died from serving. People that are more sensitive to the subject will be bothered by that type of subject material.
Remember when Modern Warfare 2 first came out and there was a minor uproar about the airport level where you mow a ton of civilians down? It's like that, only on an even more personal level. It didn't bother me to play through it, but it obviously bothered some people.
Then they shouldn't play it.
This brings up an interesting side question--how reasonable was it for the actual Russia--the real-life country of the Russian Federation and its federal subjects, not the mystical land from which magical paratroopers land in Colorado or come pouring out of cargo vessels--to deliberately stop the sale of MW2 in that country, in large part because of these scene. Note, Russia did nothing to stop, for example, World in Conflict from being sold in their country, and from what I can tell, it did respectably enough.
Now, it isn't like in GTAIV, where you can barge into a fake airport and shoot a bunch of fake Americans in a fake knock-off of New York City or Miami if you so desire (but are in no way obligated to). You go to a location that is modeled after a real airport, located in a reproduction of a real city, and (unless you skip it) slaughter a large number of unarmed people. And, importantly, this is...pretty much an intriciate part of the plot.
Put it in other terms--you could not, realistically, market a major video game in America where a bunch of Americans dress up as Russians and massacre a crowd of people at Ronald Reagan International as a pretext to the war that is the whole plot of the game.
I don't think you could. A higher enjoyment of free speech aside, I don't think a developer would allow you to program it or a producer allow the game to be produced, and I don't think publicly-aware people, when they found out, would let you get anywhere near selling it in any sort of retail market.
Is that right or wrong?
I don't consider it inherently wrong. I think the idea of shooting up an airport full of civilians is poor taste, and I wouldn't buy a game like that. And a video game not being made of it? Well, I think that's a matter of what's good or bad business, not right or wrong.
No, you probably couldn't pull it off in a game. It would be bad business because it's still in poor taste in my (and i would assume many other people's) opinion... and quite possibly including people involved in the development and marketing of the game.
Posts
Rigorous Scholarship
And if someone did make that I'm sure there would be all sorts of arglebargle.
But not from me.
A whole lot of the German army were dudes who didn't necessarily agree with the Nazi ideology and were just conscripts. The true hardcore Nazi sympathisers all kissed ass up to higher ranks and cushier jobs away from the actual fronts for a big part of the war.
To insinuate that the Taliban hate and fight against the US because of our values is preposterous and a kind of right-wing propaganda. They're a group with an entirely different culture and values that brewed out of years and years of that region's history. When the US came in and destroyed that (for a multitude of different reasons, of which freedom-sharing and democracy-expansion was not among them), they understandably got upset and are now fighting to restore their power position in the country and their culture essentially.
Is the culture backwards and harmful? Some aspects of it, and I don't even begin to make apologies for what the fundamentalist arm of the Taliban has done, but to make them up to be some kind of massive organized enemy force waging a total war on the US where the result is either them or us is the worst kind of historical white-washing and rhetoric pandering there is.
This much is true too. Hell, lots of Taliban fighters think the US has forcefields and x-ray goggles. They don't even know how Americans live or probably where it's located. They just see an interloping force that's imposing its will and fighting against that, as you or I would if the roles were reversed.
Basically, if I'm playing a murder simulator I don't want it to feel like a modern day training sim.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Fair enough. You're entitled to that opinion. That still doesn't mean that timing isn't an issue.
To be clear, I personally wouldn't mind a game that showed both sides of the war. To me, it's just a video game. Shooting an American soldier in a video game is obviously not the same as killing one in real ife.
However, I also don't have friends or family that are currently serving in the armed forces. Nor has anyone in my family died from serving. People that are more sensitive to the subject will be bothered by that type of subject material.
Remember when Modern Warfare 2 first came out and there was a minor uproar about the airport level where you mow a ton of civilians down? It's like that, only on an even more personal level. It didn't bother me to play through it, but it obviously bothered some people.
NEVAR FORGET!
I don't think it's wise to antagonize people over current events. I'm sure I could mod up a flight sim to reenact 9/11 though, but that wold make me a jackass.
Then they shouldn't play it.
However the discussion is about the taliban. I think it's just fine to make them the enemy in a video game, in fact it may be an important cultural thing, as kids who were too young to really conceptualize 9/11 or the following wars may ask some questions presented by it. I know I sure as hell didn't watch the news at 10-12 years old, but I did play video games, and any time I recognized some word or name from outside my game as something connected to it, I wanted to know all about it.
PS2
FF X replay
PS3
God of War 1&2 HD
Rachet and Clank Future
MGS 4
Prince of Persia
360
Bayonetta
Fable 3
DS
FF: 4 heroes of light
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_in_Conflict:_Soviet_Assault
??
Issue isn't them being the enemy, its that you can actually play as the Taliban.
White: 1721-3651-2720
I never said they were some organized force or hell bent on our destruction (neither did sniper Guy)
But the post you criticized labeled them as an enemy (they are) and additionally a group that hates us for a number of reasons (they are).
To say that they were just happy to roll along and accept the US for what it is and not provide any material or ideological support to murderers is a bit naive.
I'm sure we could if we tried hard enough. We've spent 150 years painting sympathetic portraits of racist, treasonous Confederates who started a fight that cost over 650,000 American lives - which is like 9/11 happening every day for a year.
I remember playing Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, a game where the final mission of the SP campaign is the conquest of Washington DC. Oh, and there was no Union campaign in the game, only the Confederates got one.
If anything, I'd say there's a lot more Germans today like the WWII German soldier than there are Japanese today like the WWII Japanese soldier. Your average German soldier was just a regular soldier who happened to be on the German side.
I get pretty much zero sense that modern Japanese are fanatic Emperor-worshippers willing to charge headlong into machine gun fire, or who think they're going to fight tanks and planes with bamboo spears like it's Civ 2 or something.
Until then, Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich is an excellent game. And you can make your own Cap (and any other copyrighted character) and stick them in the game too.
Though I don't recall much Hitler-punching in the game.
I'm referring to this bit
Which is some pretty heavy total war imagery. I don't see it as being a big step from "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here!"
Agreed, but the reasons stated
Are not correct.
Taliban were isolationist, they were content to rule what they had and live on that. It's just that some of their views on America (in a lot of cases, justifiable) lined up with what al-quaeda had so when they needed a base, then the Taliban didn't exactly push them out. Nor would I say they opened their arms completely but that's a different matter.
Now, if the strategy game was a holocaust simulator where you organized trains, made sure there were enough guards at the camps and assured the flow of nerve gas to the showers, I couldn't play a game like that regardless of the level of abstraction.
Rigorous Scholarship
I think I'd actually love that gameplay. Mmm, Transport Tycoon.
But yeah, I'd never actually play it.
In the Total War games you could kill a segment of the population for make the rest easier to deal with.
Nerve stapling.
FPS games, on the other hand, typically pride themselves on being realistic in this sense—good enemy AI, cover systems, particle effects, motion blur, it feels like you're really there! Except instead of being really there, you are shooting at increasingly realistic fascimiles of human beings acting in increasingly realistic ways, in order to get achievements on Xbox Live.
I'm sure we'd have Civil War FPS games if they didn't involve 45-second reloads.
Anyways, my main point was we could make the Taliban sympathetic if we wanted to. Heck, we already did in the 80s, when Osama and friends were shooting down Russian Hinds. It's just a matter of deciding which anti-American people we feel like lionizing. Lee was a slave-owning traitor, and we name universities after him.
Wasn't there some recent time travel game with Civil War action?
Also, I think there was another straight up Civil War shooter that came out not too long ago. Could be mistaken though...
nope:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_Channel:_Civil_War_%E2%80%93_A_Nation_Divided
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Days_in_Fallujah
They were going to be published by Konami, but ultimately they were dropped because of the controversy.
Have you played the first Modern Warfare?
Unless your position is that it's impossible in principle to do, and we should give up on any attempt at a fictional representation of the horrors of war in any medium, I think your offhand dismissal here is kind of silly.
Don't forget the Israeli cartoon contest:
Yeah, was going to mention that scene.
For some reason the random youtube wanker added Lux Aeterna at the end for no good reason, which really ruins the impact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChnIV_Y1k1M
Sim Stalag.
My problem would lie in things like cartoonifying Nazis and making them into a comic book parody of evil - it's dangerous because it dissociates their evil acts from the very real social, economic, political causes.
I also think that every war game should strive to make the enemy as sympathetic as possible; a game that makes you experience what's so deeply wrong with, say, an extremist zealot military force, while also criticizing the imperialism of the "good guys", maybe.
Gilbert Gottfried told a 9/11 joke at Hugh Hefner's roast. Don't read what's in the spoiler below if 9/11 is completely off limits for you. It was something like:
The crowd immediately turned on him, someone shouted "too soon".
If you're offended by a joke, or consider it disrespectful, that's a matter of taste.
Gilbert did something that I consider a brilliant move. He told "The Aristocrats". A joke I don't even consider funny. And he MADE it funny because of the way he told it. It was in incredibly bad taste. He pushed the envelope as far as he could... and the audience loved that.
I might consider Medal of Honor to be disrespectful to soldiers... I might even be thin-skinned enough to consider Hogan's Heroes to be disrespectful to PoW's. I know and am friends with many guys who are vets. It's a button for me sometimes. Heck, when I see a guy in uniform, I thank him for serving (people look at me funny sometimes for doing that). But I recognize that however I think about Medal of Honor, it is still a matter of taste. A joke about religion that's offensive... still a matter of taste (there's a lot of catholic jokes out there f'rexample).
But even bad taste is protected by the Bill O' Rights, a document that is not only a part of the government in my country, and like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, can also considered to be a statement of human rights.
And in my opinion, that's the way it should be.
I've heard tell of its sober portrayal of warfare. Then I look at the achievements. Apparently if you kill 2 enemies by blowing up a car you get points!
I also heard there's some kind of reward for following UN conventions? When I first heard about that, I thought it was cool. Then I thought about it some more and realized that tacking on a special, optional, trivial reward onto your game for players who don't act like psychopaths is probably part of the problem.
I do think it's possible to portray warfare in a mature way in videogames. I would love to see a game that did so. However, the action FPS formula is just about the worst way to do so that I can think of. The point of an action game, the way the gameplay is always structured, is to make the player feel awesome or powerful. You can be "good" at an action game, in the sense that you can elegantly kill lots and lots of enemies without taking damage.
I love good action games, but I don't see how you can use this structure to make a thoughtful game about warfare. (I don't love FPS games, they always make me motion sick, which is partly why I haven't tried Call of Duty).
First of all, I don't see what your claim about achievements has to do with anything. Maybe the Xbox version is different, but in the PC version it's not like your playing along in the SP campaign and suddenly you get pop ups telling you about some achievement you unlocked for stabbing a guy and then throwing him off a building.
As to gameplay, I think you might just no understand modern shooter mechanics. The days of health bars and wading through fire are pretty much behind us. Modern shooters require either a frantic twitch fest to just shoot everyone before they shoot you, or a slow tactical approach to make sure you can shoot them without them shooting you.
EDIT: And as a final note, I do not think that struggling uselessly only to die from internal bleeding and radiation poisoning is intended to make the player feel "awesome and powerful".
So does the military, AFAIK.
I actually don't think it would. Games do not make us think of enemies in the game as people; they make us think of them as obstacles, because that's what they are. They don't move, act or sound like real people, or even look like real people; they look like plastic dolls. Instead of associating this dispassionate violence with real people, then, it does the opposite; it dissociates violence from real human targets.
At worst, a game could present you with such enemies, and at other times emphasize the horror of war and the wrongness of the entire endeavour, and fail to reinforce the latter with the former. I don't think it would undermine it.
Most wargames show war as horrible but still glorify and heroicize the protagonists, though; I have yet to see a political, intelligent commentary - with the notable exception of that cod4 scene, which was excellent and could only have been done in a video game, since it's about how such technology turns war into a video game.
It may be a fairly accurate portrayal of modern warfare, but I wouldn't call it very sobering. The AC-130 level is the most accurate of the COD4 levels, according to what I've seen of actual gunship footage, but it's hardly "sobering". It's mostly about raining death from above while yelling "Yippie ky yay!"
Maybe it's sobering in revealing how dehumanized modern warfare has become, but not in terms of shoving the horrors of war in the player's face.
The reason a lot of military like MW and MW2 is exactly the same as the reason I like it, because it's not like their/my everyday life. COD4 has no roadside bombs that take out your buddy's leg at the knee, leaving him to bleed out. There's no part where you kill a kid because you thought he had a gun, only to find out it was a stick. Heck, practically every person in the game is more robot than human, I don't recall hearing a single yelp of pain when anyone gets shot. They just crumple silently, lest their screams throw off your aim or something. And of course like all good Marines, when your squadmate gets hit you leave him in the middle of the street to rot.
If a game accurately portrayed the horrors of war, very few people would want to play it over and over like they do a good FPS. Because if done well it wouldn't be a lot of fun, and you wouldn't be all that eager to play it.
I mean, how often do you plop down in front of the TV with a tub of popcorn and a beer, maybe on a Saturday night with a few friends over, and fire up Schindler's List?
Anytime you can experience any kind of interactive portrayal of warfare it is going to be an empowerment fantasy. IL-2 Sturmovik with every simulation setting dialed to its most trying position, played from within a perfect period reconstruction of a P-51 Mustang, is an empowerment fantasy. How is a flight simulator empowering, much less fantastically so? Well, when you crash the simulated P-51 you don't die. That is pretty fucking empowering, and quite fantastic.
It's unclear to me exactly how any game about combat would be structured such that killing enemies and avoiding injury aren't major concerns of the player. It's quite reasonable for it to bother you that the conventions encourage translating a body count into a point count, but if you're going to simulate war then you're going to provide the player with encouragement to kill his enemies. If requiring players to "elegantly kill lots and lots of enemies without taking damage" is incompatible with "a thoughtful game about warfare," then perhaps the only thoughtful game about warfare is the alternate edition of Battlefield:Vietnam where you cut your toes off and move to Canada to grow pot.
EDIT: There is one place where you have a point, and that's in the "lots and lots of enemies." I would love to see a war game that manages to keep suspense and the sense of danger while directing the player to accomplish tasks other than "shoot guys until there aren't any more guys." I'm imagining a game inspired by Hurt Locker where you spend the vast majority of your time driving around in a humvee or using a remote-controlled robot or stumbling about in an EOD suit, but at all times face the possibility of being ambushed. Ideally you could complete the whole thing without actually drawing a weapon more than once or twice, but nonetheless spend the entire time feeling the threat of being shot at. This game would definitely have rather a lot less mass-market appeal than MW2, I'll admit.
If you're in a My Lai Battlefield:Vietnam map and you're executing civilians, I think that's distasteful.
If you're in a WWII game and you're participating in the Rape of Nanking or dropping bombs someone's house in Dresden, I think that's distasteful.
If you're just playing some random soldier and your rifle happens to be a relic of the Soviet bloc and you're shooting at American soldiers... I'm honestly not bothered. I don't even care if you could extrapolate at some point that that soldier you're shooting at looks just like I did.
This brings up an interesting side question--how reasonable was it for the actual Russia--the real-life country of the Russian Federation and its federal subjects, not the mystical land from which magical paratroopers land in Colorado or come pouring out of cargo vessels--to deliberately stop the sale of MW2 in that country, in large part because of these scene. Note, Russia did nothing to stop, for example, World in Conflict or Arma 2 from being sold in their country, and from what I can tell, both did respectably enough (Arma 2 I know commands a pretty healthy following in Russia). So it's not a case of "no games are allowed where we (Russians or CIS nationalities in general) are bad guys."
Now, it isn't like in GTA, where you can barge into a fake airport and shoot a bunch of fake Americans in a fake knock-off of New York City or Miami if you so desire (but are in no way obligated to). You go to a location that is modeled after a real airport, located in a reproduction of a real city, and (unless you skip it) slaughter a large number of unarmed people. And, importantly, this is...pretty much an intricate part of the plot.
Put it in other terms--you could not, realistically, market a major video game in America where a bunch of Americans dress up as Russians and massacre a crowd of people at Ronald Reagan International as a pretext to the war that is the whole plot of the game.
I don't think you could. A higher enjoyment of freedom of speech aside, I don't think a developer would allow you to program it or a producer allow the game to be produced, and I don't think publicly-aware people, when they found out, would let you get anywhere near selling it in any sort of retail market.
Is that right or wrong?
I don't consider it inherently wrong. I think the idea of shooting up an airport full of civilians is poor taste, and I wouldn't buy a game like that. And a video game not being made of it? Well, I think that's a matter of what's good or bad business, not right or wrong.
No, you probably couldn't pull it off in a game. It would be bad business because it's still in poor taste in my (and i would assume many other people's) opinion... and quite possibly including people involved in the development and marketing of the game.