Is it okay to enjoy wargames?
December 26, 2022 2:34 PM Subscribe
No, you should not enjoy so I'll buy your war junk for .60¢ on the dollar. I haven't played in years but blowing the fuck outta Natzis is ok, imo. Spending oodles of money on it is not in my budget. though I bought advanced Squad Leader years ago which is expensive.
from Article:
"For me, I don’t like designing (or playing!) games that put the player in the role of performing immoral or unethical actions."
The whole historical recreation moral mist is funny. How the heck is one going to learn even a small battle on a board with chits and orange peels. Perhaps advanced A.I. in the future could ferret out a good learning simulation of say, Operation Market Garden.
posted by clavdivs at 2:48 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
from Article:
"For me, I don’t like designing (or playing!) games that put the player in the role of performing immoral or unethical actions."
The whole historical recreation moral mist is funny. How the heck is one going to learn even a small battle on a board with chits and orange peels. Perhaps advanced A.I. in the future could ferret out a good learning simulation of say, Operation Market Garden.
posted by clavdivs at 2:48 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
This touches on a lot of the same themes that No Pun Included's video essay on Colonialism in Board Games. It includes some of Efka's experiences as a Lithuanian and his work towards an MRes in post colonial literature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQuFSxs9VXA
posted by persona at 4:00 PM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by persona at 4:00 PM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
Most LARPs have a “decompression” phase at the end where you leave character and process your decisions and actions. This lets the people playing villains or less-than-admirable characters a chance to separate themselves from in-game decisions. A lot of TTRPGs provide safety tools for helping players provide a safe way to deal with troubling topics.
I wish war games did the same sort of thing. Years ago I owned a game called Mosby’s Raiders, where you play out a very asymmetrical campaign by Confederate guerrillas during the American Civil War. And it was really interesting to play from both sides, but I got depressed playing the Confederates. If there’d been a way to process that, it would have felt better.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:08 PM on December 26, 2022 [27 favorites]
I wish war games did the same sort of thing. Years ago I owned a game called Mosby’s Raiders, where you play out a very asymmetrical campaign by Confederate guerrillas during the American Civil War. And it was really interesting to play from both sides, but I got depressed playing the Confederates. If there’d been a way to process that, it would have felt better.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:08 PM on December 26, 2022 [27 favorites]
I think Volko Ruhnke asked a very good question. Why raise this point about games*, as opposed to other media?
One answer is that a player takes a more active role in a historical situation, embodying a party in a way one usually doesn't while watching a tv show or listening to a podcast. So one response to this would be to only simulate non-evil sides in a battle, and automating the villains.
*The post is only about tabletop wargames. We should easily extend the coverage to include tabletop role playing games which cover war, as well as the much larger space of computer wargames.
posted by doctornemo at 4:16 PM on December 26, 2022
One answer is that a player takes a more active role in a historical situation, embodying a party in a way one usually doesn't while watching a tv show or listening to a podcast. So one response to this would be to only simulate non-evil sides in a battle, and automating the villains.
*The post is only about tabletop wargames. We should easily extend the coverage to include tabletop role playing games which cover war, as well as the much larger space of computer wargames.
posted by doctornemo at 4:16 PM on December 26, 2022
Look if tabletop games have a claim to be a form of literature—and I think they absolutely do—then the question isn’t whether they’re there for enjoyment per se, or for a human purpose beyond that, that can be participated in at many levels of which enjoyment is only one. Lots of people read (and enjoy!) novels with wildly unethical, even evil, characters and protagonists. And a mark of literature with depth is that the reader can even identify with them despite everything. When a theatre group puts on Othello: well, someone’s got to play Iago.
I once heard from a person who wrote plans and procedures for the defence force, who was given the advice: remember that the people who’ll be putting your procedures into practice are people with names, who you might have had a beer with.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:34 PM on December 26, 2022 [15 favorites]
Some people can feel very uncomfortable when it comes to taking named people into a battle, knowing they may die, and knowing that that person may well have gone into combat and diedNow that is interesting to me because it’s a sign that someone’s actually engaging with the stakes of the literate part of the game not just the game!
I once heard from a person who wrote plans and procedures for the defence force, who was given the advice: remember that the people who’ll be putting your procedures into practice are people with names, who you might have had a beer with.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:34 PM on December 26, 2022 [15 favorites]
Further: one of the most affecting pieces of art I have participated in, any art, hands down, is the computer game DEFCON, which is a cartoonishly abstract sim of nuclear war, but you inevitably, by the end of a round, have to reckon with what you have done. It’s chilling.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:38 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:38 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
"remember that the people who’ll be putting your procedures into practice are people with names, who you might have had a beer with."
Indeed. Hence the educational role of games.
posted by doctornemo at 4:58 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Indeed. Hence the educational role of games.
posted by doctornemo at 4:58 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Enjoy your wargames for the same reasons you enjoy a good book or film set during a war.
Another “indeed.” I do appreciate hearing designers’ thinking about this, though, and how they work through the decisions.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:52 PM on December 26, 2022
Another “indeed.” I do appreciate hearing designers’ thinking about this, though, and how they work through the decisions.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:52 PM on December 26, 2022
The problem with a game vs fiction (eg a novel or film) is that, in a game you take an active role. If you are playing the Nazis, say, in a WWII simulation, you are, at least in theory, play to perpetuate a murderous ideology. Consuming fiction gives you more distance.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:32 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:32 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
I had very similar thoughts when playing Company of Heroes. The game incentivizes you to treat the members of your squad as expendable resources.
I had a real hard time making any headway when I was concerned with bringing all my men (who are npcs) back to base safely after engaging the enemy.
If you just let your squad members get killed and replenish their ranks with reinforcements, then you can take more chances and capture more ground.
Also they allow people to play as Nazis.
posted by ishmael at 6:39 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
I had a real hard time making any headway when I was concerned with bringing all my men (who are npcs) back to base safely after engaging the enemy.
If you just let your squad members get killed and replenish their ranks with reinforcements, then you can take more chances and capture more ground.
Also they allow people to play as Nazis.
posted by ishmael at 6:39 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Further further: I had another conversation with a friend of mine who no longer gets invited to her other friends’ board game nights. She plays to win them.
The basic distinction she draws is that some people gather around and ‘play’ cooperatively in order to share an experience, bringing the mentality of a drama group (or an RPG), others being the mentality of sport and play to get the most points within the rules. Both are totally legitimate ways to ‘play’ though they work very badly together, they’re just different human engagement with a piece of literary-game fiction.
And they’re very different ethical standpoints for engaging with the past. If you’re simply playing to win a campaign on points, well, someone’s got to draw the grey straw and be General Robert E. Lee. Someone has to roll the dice for Guderian’s drive to Moscow. But that’s quite different to the kind of ‘play’ that involves empathetic role playing with those same forces…
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:55 PM on December 26, 2022 [9 favorites]
The basic distinction she draws is that some people gather around and ‘play’ cooperatively in order to share an experience, bringing the mentality of a drama group (or an RPG), others being the mentality of sport and play to get the most points within the rules. Both are totally legitimate ways to ‘play’ though they work very badly together, they’re just different human engagement with a piece of literary-game fiction.
And they’re very different ethical standpoints for engaging with the past. If you’re simply playing to win a campaign on points, well, someone’s got to draw the grey straw and be General Robert E. Lee. Someone has to roll the dice for Guderian’s drive to Moscow. But that’s quite different to the kind of ‘play’ that involves empathetic role playing with those same forces…
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:55 PM on December 26, 2022 [9 favorites]
Don't kill anybody in the course of playing your boardgame and I think you're ethically more or less okay. There are plenty of actual awful things in the actual world, let's not lose our goddamn minds.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:58 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:58 PM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
The problem with a game vs fiction (eg a novel or film) is that, in a game you take an active role. If you are playing the Nazis, say, in a WWII simulation, you are, at least in theory, play to perpetuate a murderous ideology.
On the other hand, sometimes it gives the assholes a lanyard and ID badge to wear so you can avoid them more easily for the rest of your life.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:59 PM on December 26, 2022 [7 favorites]
On the other hand, sometimes it gives the assholes a lanyard and ID badge to wear so you can avoid them more easily for the rest of your life.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:59 PM on December 26, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think the games mimic and then create even more audience for TV/movies that glorify violence:
Grand Theft Auto / The Sopranos
Call of Duty / Zero Dark Thirty
Football / The Longest Yard
Chess / The Queen's Gambit
I mean it's everywhere and we need to dial it down on all fronts simultaneously.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:10 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
Grand Theft Auto / The Sopranos
Call of Duty / Zero Dark Thirty
Football / The Longest Yard
Chess / The Queen's Gambit
I mean it's everywhere and we need to dial it down on all fronts simultaneously.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:10 PM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don’t think the sopranos glorifies violence in the same way that GTA does but I see what you are saying hypnogogue
posted by capnsue at 8:15 PM on December 26, 2022
posted by capnsue at 8:15 PM on December 26, 2022
Battleship / Battleship
Dodgeball / Balls of Fury
RPGs / Vin Diesel's The Last Witch Hunter
Magic The Gathering/ Harry Potter
posted by sagc at 9:08 PM on December 26, 2022
Dodgeball / Balls of Fury
RPGs / Vin Diesel's The Last Witch Hunter
Magic The Gathering/ Harry Potter
posted by sagc at 9:08 PM on December 26, 2022
you are, at least in theory, play to perpetuate a murderous ideology.
This is more or less the same argument as "playing violent video games makes people (kids) more prone to violence." I do not buy this argument. I have murdered untold thousands in various video games, D&D games, board games, etc. In real life I haven't murdered anyone. I've played Axis powers in Axis vs Allies without in fact becoming a fascist. I'm not saying there do not exist people for whom play-acting may function as a gateway to real life behaviors, but I do not believe it's a simple 2 step causal chain.
posted by axiom at 10:20 PM on December 26, 2022 [17 favorites]
This is more or less the same argument as "playing violent video games makes people (kids) more prone to violence." I do not buy this argument. I have murdered untold thousands in various video games, D&D games, board games, etc. In real life I haven't murdered anyone. I've played Axis powers in Axis vs Allies without in fact becoming a fascist. I'm not saying there do not exist people for whom play-acting may function as a gateway to real life behaviors, but I do not believe it's a simple 2 step causal chain.
posted by axiom at 10:20 PM on December 26, 2022 [17 favorites]
I'm not saying there do not exist people for whom play-acting may function as a gateway to real life behaviors, but I do not believe it's a simple 2 step causal chain.
I agree, it's not a pat causal chain, but another data point in a constellation that normalizes things like Nazis, or the confederacy, or wiping out whole squadrons of soldiers.
They become anodyne in culture, like 16th century pirates. You can dress up as them for Halloween, or play as them in a video game.
They're small-scale little pushes into slowly accepting violence as set dressing. I think it's good to question some of the reactionary aspects of our culture.
I emphathize with the author of the article. I played a lot of these games-grew up with them, but I'm also clumsily starting to come to terms with how much all these little odes to violence inform my own point of view. I think I enjoy violence a little more than I should.
posted by ishmael at 12:01 AM on December 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
I agree, it's not a pat causal chain, but another data point in a constellation that normalizes things like Nazis, or the confederacy, or wiping out whole squadrons of soldiers.
They become anodyne in culture, like 16th century pirates. You can dress up as them for Halloween, or play as them in a video game.
They're small-scale little pushes into slowly accepting violence as set dressing. I think it's good to question some of the reactionary aspects of our culture.
I emphathize with the author of the article. I played a lot of these games-grew up with them, but I'm also clumsily starting to come to terms with how much all these little odes to violence inform my own point of view. I think I enjoy violence a little more than I should.
posted by ishmael at 12:01 AM on December 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
The most extreme form of this I've seen would have to be a political simulator like Crusader Kings.
So, this simulates the brutal calculus of politics in the middle ages. I never understood why there was so much incest and family murder until I played the game - it was simply the rational least-worst thing to do back then due to how power gets transferred between generations and the conflict it engendered. I'm talking about stuff like, killing your wife if she can't bear children so you can marry another. Or marrying into another family and getting her killed so you can inherit her lands and titles.
By default most laws of succession starts with a form of Partition where your holdings get divided among your children. This means a once unified empire starts to fragment into smaller pieces, especially when there is conflict about which child got the better land...
So to keep the peace in the kingdom, you have to get rid of your excess children. Send them into battle you deliberately lose so they get killed. Give them a holding surrounded by enemies who then kill them. But you can't do it too early, because you need insurance in case your "preferred" heir dies before you do, so you need to prepare at least one backup. This is the middle ages, anything can happen, they could die of TB or an infected wound.
Eventually culture / technology evolves to the point you get to Primogeniture / Ultimogeniture where the elder / youngest inherits everything.
Before that point you can get into systems where voting is involved (eg feudal elective), and this opens up a lot of possibilities, because you can manipulate the voters. Bribing, using hooks (basically applying leverage on them via secrets, threats, etc) or simply killing and replacing them with a voter more aligned with your goals.
I've seen the comment that you could see someone killing a few hundred people in a battle royale like Fortnite or RTS game like Starcraft, but that is nothing compared to watching someone play Crusader Kings, it might make you question if they were secretly psychopath...
posted by xdvesper at 2:42 AM on December 27, 2022 [14 favorites]
So, this simulates the brutal calculus of politics in the middle ages. I never understood why there was so much incest and family murder until I played the game - it was simply the rational least-worst thing to do back then due to how power gets transferred between generations and the conflict it engendered. I'm talking about stuff like, killing your wife if she can't bear children so you can marry another. Or marrying into another family and getting her killed so you can inherit her lands and titles.
By default most laws of succession starts with a form of Partition where your holdings get divided among your children. This means a once unified empire starts to fragment into smaller pieces, especially when there is conflict about which child got the better land...
So to keep the peace in the kingdom, you have to get rid of your excess children. Send them into battle you deliberately lose so they get killed. Give them a holding surrounded by enemies who then kill them. But you can't do it too early, because you need insurance in case your "preferred" heir dies before you do, so you need to prepare at least one backup. This is the middle ages, anything can happen, they could die of TB or an infected wound.
Eventually culture / technology evolves to the point you get to Primogeniture / Ultimogeniture where the elder / youngest inherits everything.
Before that point you can get into systems where voting is involved (eg feudal elective), and this opens up a lot of possibilities, because you can manipulate the voters. Bribing, using hooks (basically applying leverage on them via secrets, threats, etc) or simply killing and replacing them with a voter more aligned with your goals.
I've seen the comment that you could see someone killing a few hundred people in a battle royale like Fortnite or RTS game like Starcraft, but that is nothing compared to watching someone play Crusader Kings, it might make you question if they were secretly psychopath...
posted by xdvesper at 2:42 AM on December 27, 2022 [14 favorites]
Much like team sports I see these games as just another means of militarizing our population. Does anyone else remember when the Marines were using Doom as a means to desensitize and train? To help them overcome any resistance to pulling the trigger?
posted by drstrangelove at 3:50 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by drstrangelove at 3:50 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Much like team sports I see these games as just another means of militarizing our population.Presumably all competition is militarization, then?
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 4:49 AM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
> you are, at least in theory, play to perpetuate a murderous ideology.
This is more or less the same argument as "playing violent video games makes people (kids) more prone to violence."
It really isn’t. Because your example is “playing a game leads to real life action” whereas my point was “playing a game impacts your historical perception.” It should be impossible to play a game about the US Civil War without thinking about slavery, for example, but hardly any games lead you to that, so you either ignore it (which reinforces the idea that that war wasn’t about slavery) or it kind of sneaks up on you, neither of which are happy outcomes. There are some games that are designed to help you think about colonialism and imperialism in an 18th and 19th C context; I’m not sure if anyone has done a game about the economics of Nazi Germany or Caribbean Slavery & Agriculture*, but it would be a tough sell, I imagine.
* I know about the Ravensburger games, but they don’t address the constant death toll.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:17 AM on December 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is more or less the same argument as "playing violent video games makes people (kids) more prone to violence."
It really isn’t. Because your example is “playing a game leads to real life action” whereas my point was “playing a game impacts your historical perception.” It should be impossible to play a game about the US Civil War without thinking about slavery, for example, but hardly any games lead you to that, so you either ignore it (which reinforces the idea that that war wasn’t about slavery) or it kind of sneaks up on you, neither of which are happy outcomes. There are some games that are designed to help you think about colonialism and imperialism in an 18th and 19th C context; I’m not sure if anyone has done a game about the economics of Nazi Germany or Caribbean Slavery & Agriculture*, but it would be a tough sell, I imagine.
* I know about the Ravensburger games, but they don’t address the constant death toll.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:17 AM on December 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
It should be impossible to play a game about the US Civil War without thinking about slavery, for example, but hardly any games lead you to that, so you either ignore it (which reinforces the idea that that war wasn’t about slavery) or it kind of sneaks up on you, neither of which are happy outcomes.
Exactly right, exactly right.
I don't believe anti-war movies or other media are 100% successful. Sometimes the tragedy and spectacle of a world-changing effort is attractive in and of itself.
But movies like the recent iteration like "All Quiet On the Western Front" come pretty close to conveying the consequences and frustrating pointlessness of war.
posted by ishmael at 5:43 AM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Exactly right, exactly right.
I don't believe anti-war movies or other media are 100% successful. Sometimes the tragedy and spectacle of a world-changing effort is attractive in and of itself.
But movies like the recent iteration like "All Quiet On the Western Front" come pretty close to conveying the consequences and frustrating pointlessness of war.
posted by ishmael at 5:43 AM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have murdered untold thousands in various video games, D&D games, board games, etc. In real life I haven't murdered anyone. I've played Axis powers in Axis vs Allies without in fact becoming a fascist.
Likewise. I have also played Monopoly many times without becoming a ruthless landlord.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:56 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Likewise. I have also played Monopoly many times without becoming a ruthless landlord.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:56 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
But movies like the recent iteration like "All Quiet On the Western Front" come pretty close to conveying the consequences and frustrating pointlessness of war.
So, you're saying that the only way to win is not to play? In a thread titled "Is it okay to enjoy WarGames"?
posted by The Bellman at 5:57 AM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
So, you're saying that the only way to win is not to play? In a thread titled "Is it okay to enjoy WarGames"?
posted by The Bellman at 5:57 AM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Presumably all competition is militarization, then?
I've had similar thoughts. Don't want to make too much of a derail on this point, but there is an overemphasis on competition in our culture as well.
I think that competition can be good, supplemental exercise to test yourself.
But I don't think competition is good when it eclipses every other concern. The need to win draws out a ruthlessness that is a key component of committing violence.
posted by ishmael at 6:01 AM on December 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
I've had similar thoughts. Don't want to make too much of a derail on this point, but there is an overemphasis on competition in our culture as well.
I think that competition can be good, supplemental exercise to test yourself.
But I don't think competition is good when it eclipses every other concern. The need to win draws out a ruthlessness that is a key component of committing violence.
posted by ishmael at 6:01 AM on December 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
Likewise. I have also played Monopoly many times without becoming a ruthless landlord.
So, you're saying that the only way to win is not to play? In a thread titled "Is it okay to enjoy WarGames"?
I still play these games, but I am becoming more uncomfortable at how much I enjoy them. Or at least playing characters like nazis.
My mom's husband is a war vet, and has a bit of cruelty so baked into his character, it's hard for him to see when he's being cruel. Don't want trigger anyone with anecdotes, but things like animal cruelty (outside of dogs) don't register with him.
I want to be sure to check myself, to consider how much cruelty I have accepted as normal.
posted by ishmael at 6:12 AM on December 27, 2022
So, you're saying that the only way to win is not to play? In a thread titled "Is it okay to enjoy WarGames"?
I still play these games, but I am becoming more uncomfortable at how much I enjoy them. Or at least playing characters like nazis.
My mom's husband is a war vet, and has a bit of cruelty so baked into his character, it's hard for him to see when he's being cruel. Don't want trigger anyone with anecdotes, but things like animal cruelty (outside of dogs) don't register with him.
I want to be sure to check myself, to consider how much cruelty I have accepted as normal.
posted by ishmael at 6:12 AM on December 27, 2022
I've had similar thoughts. Don't want to make too much of a derail on this point, but there is an overemphasis on competition in our culture as well.I think I get where you’re coming from. Perhaps at the professional level - especially football where fan-on-fan violence is too common - the competition does get warlike. But the simple pleasure of beating your roommates in a pickup game strike me as inherent to human nature, along with the simple pleasure of striving and losing … this time.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 8:15 AM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think every wargame is an argument for (or at least is created from) a certain perspective on the historical space where it ostensibly occurs. GenjiandProust's comment about what gets left out really resonates with me, because I think about that question often with games, whether a wargame or a boardgame or an RPG. Games about colonialism, slavery, noncombatant experiences, etc. in war are all wargames! And they're also patently not wargames in the traditional sense of those games that focus on how tactical/operational/strategic conflict plays out, with a focus on winners winning and losers losing. In those types of games, the atrocities are still happening, but they generally happen off-board, and without discussion of what's going on -- a town is "converted" from Soviet to Nazi, Saxons replace the Romano-British on the 5th turn, etc.
Which type of game you wish to play depends on the experience you wish to have (or wish to have your students or players have). I don't think playing "traditional" wargames negates a love of life or of sympathy for non-combatants or the vanquished. People who don't value life or mercy seem to get there just fine on a regular basis without wargames. Many, many unpleasant things seem to be ineradicable parts of humanity, and finding ways to engage with them productively is no bad thing.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:38 AM on December 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
Which type of game you wish to play depends on the experience you wish to have (or wish to have your students or players have). I don't think playing "traditional" wargames negates a love of life or of sympathy for non-combatants or the vanquished. People who don't value life or mercy seem to get there just fine on a regular basis without wargames. Many, many unpleasant things seem to be ineradicable parts of humanity, and finding ways to engage with them productively is no bad thing.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:38 AM on December 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
Also, I want to rec Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming. It's a long, edited collection of academic articles on wargaming that goes in depth on some issues that may interest participants on this thread.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:43 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:43 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Don't kill anybody in the course of playing your boardgame and I think you're ethically more or less okay. There are plenty of actual awful things in the actual world, let's not lose our goddamn minds.
Sing Or Swim
Yeah, discussions like this are always fairly ridiculous and only reinforce the conservative "leftists are woke killjoys who don't want you to have any fun" line.
All of the "bbbbut how can you kill all these people and participate in these awful historical ideologies" comments above really are premised on games somehow normalizing or helping to internally gloss over or whitewash their content, and I just fundamentally question that premise.
Does playing these games have any of the effects commenters worry about above? Is there any evidence for this belief? Not personal anecdotes, or conjecture, or what you strongly feel must be the case, but real, actual research and evidence on this topic?
Otherwise axiom is right, this is just "playing violent video games makes people (kids) more prone to violence" rehash #8425438375. It's weird how both the left and right converge on hysteria about stuff like this and porn, but from totally different angles.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:43 AM on December 27, 2022 [7 favorites]
Sing Or Swim
Yeah, discussions like this are always fairly ridiculous and only reinforce the conservative "leftists are woke killjoys who don't want you to have any fun" line.
All of the "bbbbut how can you kill all these people and participate in these awful historical ideologies" comments above really are premised on games somehow normalizing or helping to internally gloss over or whitewash their content, and I just fundamentally question that premise.
Does playing these games have any of the effects commenters worry about above? Is there any evidence for this belief? Not personal anecdotes, or conjecture, or what you strongly feel must be the case, but real, actual research and evidence on this topic?
Otherwise axiom is right, this is just "playing violent video games makes people (kids) more prone to violence" rehash #8425438375. It's weird how both the left and right converge on hysteria about stuff like this and porn, but from totally different angles.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:43 AM on December 27, 2022 [7 favorites]
Many, many unpleasant things seem to be ineradicable parts of humanity, and finding ways to engage with them productively is no bad thing.
Yep yep. I think GenjiProust's point is really salient here. If you acknowledge the thing you are depicting in game form (confederacy=slavery, etc.), that is engaging productively.
Denuding or removing the unsavory parts from nazis or other extremists helps normalize them.
posted by ishmael at 8:44 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yep yep. I think GenjiProust's point is really salient here. If you acknowledge the thing you are depicting in game form (confederacy=slavery, etc.), that is engaging productively.
Denuding or removing the unsavory parts from nazis or other extremists helps normalize them.
posted by ishmael at 8:44 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's weird how both the left and right converge on hysteria about stuff like this and porn
I'd actually prefer our culture to be inverted- normalize sex and make it less of a taboo, make violence much more of a taboo.
PG13 and Rated R are stigmatizing the wrong things.
posted by ishmael at 8:50 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'd actually prefer our culture to be inverted- normalize sex and make it less of a taboo, make violence much more of a taboo.
PG13 and Rated R are stigmatizing the wrong things.
posted by ishmael at 8:50 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
All of the "bbbbut how can you kill all these people and participate in these awful historical ideologies" comments above really are premised on games somehow normalizing or helping to internally gloss over or whitewash their content, and I just fundamentally question that premise.
The US has a bad habit of aw-shucksing extremists.
It's been a slow process to actually come to terms of the horror such ideologies have wrought. In the latest example, West Point has finally decided to remove Confederate memorials and tributes.
posted by ishmael at 8:58 AM on December 27, 2022
The US has a bad habit of aw-shucksing extremists.
It's been a slow process to actually come to terms of the horror such ideologies have wrought. In the latest example, West Point has finally decided to remove Confederate memorials and tributes.
posted by ishmael at 8:58 AM on December 27, 2022
In the latest example, West Point has finally decided to remove Confederate memorials and tributes.
Confederate memorials and tributes are real. Games are not real. You are once again conflating reality with fiction.
Look, I was born and raised Jewish. I can read Hebrew, I was bar mitzvahed. I no longer practice, but that means little to Nazis. Trust me when I say I have a vested interested in Nazis and Nazism not spreading or becoming normalized for the very selfish reason of not wanting me and my family to be killed.
But I've played games like the aforementioned Axis & Allies for fun without any problem. To me, the fundamental problem with your and other commenter's way of thinking is that when I play those games, I'm not playing as the Nazis, I am playing a board game where one side is the Axis powers. It's no different than choosing to play black or white in chess. It's just a board game, I am not actually re-enacting or playing out WWII, I am playing a board game. It's as Fiasco da Gama writes above:
If you’re simply playing to win a campaign on points, well, someone’s got to draw the grey straw and be General Robert E. Lee. Someone has to roll the dice for Guderian’s drive to Moscow.
It brings to mind the episodes of the excellent You're Wrong About podcast on the 80s heavy metal hysteria. They looked at surveys done at the time of teens who listened to heavy metal, which found that of course they understood that the imagery and lyrics of these bands weren't real and weren't mean to be taken seriously as inducements to actually worship Satan or kill people or whatever, it was just about a vibe (as today's kids would say) they liked. But the crusaders of the time just couldn't wrap their heads around this concept that people can engage with something in that way and that it must be about education and indoctrination.
So to me the fact that these are just games and not real is so obviously self-evident that it's difficult for me to even take the linked article and the comments here otherwise in good faith. That's why I'd like to see some actual evidence on the effects of these games on people's beliefs and actions, because it just feels like the same old pearl-clutching.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:11 AM on December 27, 2022 [14 favorites]
Confederate memorials and tributes are real. Games are not real. You are once again conflating reality with fiction.
Look, I was born and raised Jewish. I can read Hebrew, I was bar mitzvahed. I no longer practice, but that means little to Nazis. Trust me when I say I have a vested interested in Nazis and Nazism not spreading or becoming normalized for the very selfish reason of not wanting me and my family to be killed.
But I've played games like the aforementioned Axis & Allies for fun without any problem. To me, the fundamental problem with your and other commenter's way of thinking is that when I play those games, I'm not playing as the Nazis, I am playing a board game where one side is the Axis powers. It's no different than choosing to play black or white in chess. It's just a board game, I am not actually re-enacting or playing out WWII, I am playing a board game. It's as Fiasco da Gama writes above:
If you’re simply playing to win a campaign on points, well, someone’s got to draw the grey straw and be General Robert E. Lee. Someone has to roll the dice for Guderian’s drive to Moscow.
It brings to mind the episodes of the excellent You're Wrong About podcast on the 80s heavy metal hysteria. They looked at surveys done at the time of teens who listened to heavy metal, which found that of course they understood that the imagery and lyrics of these bands weren't real and weren't mean to be taken seriously as inducements to actually worship Satan or kill people or whatever, it was just about a vibe (as today's kids would say) they liked. But the crusaders of the time just couldn't wrap their heads around this concept that people can engage with something in that way and that it must be about education and indoctrination.
So to me the fact that these are just games and not real is so obviously self-evident that it's difficult for me to even take the linked article and the comments here otherwise in good faith. That's why I'd like to see some actual evidence on the effects of these games on people's beliefs and actions, because it just feels like the same old pearl-clutching.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:11 AM on December 27, 2022 [14 favorites]
I just fundamentally question that premise.
I have never been too into this bit about wrangling with the morality of war games either - it seems like one of those individualistic, introspective approaches to politics that won’t touch the people who actually need the introspection to begin with - but I think the questions do get more interesting when framed less in terms like “is it okay to enjoy this” and more in terms like “is it possible to make a civil war game that properly addresses slavery?”
posted by atoxyl at 9:12 AM on December 27, 2022
I have never been too into this bit about wrangling with the morality of war games either - it seems like one of those individualistic, introspective approaches to politics that won’t touch the people who actually need the introspection to begin with - but I think the questions do get more interesting when framed less in terms like “is it okay to enjoy this” and more in terms like “is it possible to make a civil war game that properly addresses slavery?”
posted by atoxyl at 9:12 AM on December 27, 2022
ishmael, I can see your point about denuding/removing, but it's clearly not easy to accomplish in practice. Without illustrating Nazis as actual cartoonish monsters, e.g., it's difficult to embody in play the horrors you are wanting people to notice if the action of the game has little or nothing directly to do with them. Many games get around this, at least a bit, by including, content in manuals about the broader context, but that's not the action of the game.
Much of this discussion is inherently tied to just war theory. It's not a bad body of thought to subscribe to, given the inescapability of war, but it's also one of many views. It also assumes that there are Indisputable Bad Guys, which historically is so, so much less common than the examples we go to reflexively. We do justifiably talk about the Holocaust, but it's not reasonable (in political philosophy terms, at least) to hold up the U.S. as a shining beacon of good in opposition the Nazis, in view of our long and unfortunately successful history of genocide. Making the right choice during one (major) conflict doth not a get-out-of-morality-free card provide. There are a couple-few games that address that, but, again, game designers have goals for the experience of gameplay over a finite span of time. Including everything is not viable.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:18 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Much of this discussion is inherently tied to just war theory. It's not a bad body of thought to subscribe to, given the inescapability of war, but it's also one of many views. It also assumes that there are Indisputable Bad Guys, which historically is so, so much less common than the examples we go to reflexively. We do justifiably talk about the Holocaust, but it's not reasonable (in political philosophy terms, at least) to hold up the U.S. as a shining beacon of good in opposition the Nazis, in view of our long and unfortunately successful history of genocide. Making the right choice during one (major) conflict doth not a get-out-of-morality-free card provide. There are a couple-few games that address that, but, again, game designers have goals for the experience of gameplay over a finite span of time. Including everything is not viable.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:18 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Is it specific historical ideologies represented in games which people oppose here (ex: "play to perpetuate a murderous ideology"), or is it the mass violence of war in general?
posted by doctornemo at 10:11 AM on December 27, 2022
posted by doctornemo at 10:11 AM on December 27, 2022
To the extent that video games are art I don't think it's much different than playing a villain in a movie or play. Some games are definitely shitty art that do a bad job of portraying stuff but that's not a problem with the media.
I've been gaming since the '80s and I think I have an advantage in that games started as very abstracted from reality for me and clearly separated from reality. The Atari 2600 wasn't really built to tell immersive stories.
But still, as games have advanced and gotten more sophisticated and allowed players the choice to be a "bad guy" or just have no morals at all I've always made the most moral choices I can within the context of the game. Like, I feel bad for hundreds of guards I've murdered in Assassin's Creed games. They probably have nothing to do with the politics of the regime and are just normal people trying to get by. But I still murder them in spectacular fashion.
I've only recently realized that's not at all true. That's just some colored pixels that have no emotions. So I started being evil in some video games and....I kinda like it. I can be gleefully cruel, brutally violent, and vicious and it hurts nothing and no one! It's really cathartic.
Even then, I did this campaign in Warhammer: Total War as the orcs. I rampaged all over the south of the map and then methodically moved north. The orc faction doesn't do well in the cold and distances are large. I had one huge army, 1,000 units or something, clash with a force of northmen and chased them clear across the whole north of the map fighting battles the whole way bleeding troops like Napoleon marching across the Russian winter. I got very familiar with the units in the enemy army and my own. I saw them enough I could have given them names. In the end it came down to a couple of handfuls of troops on each side. I came out on top in the end by the skin of my teeth and marched the few survivors back losing a couple more along the way. I had some real sympathy for the units on both sides in that epic bit of gaming.
I also used to play the Battlefield series of games that attempt to capture the feel of engaging in a modern, combined arms conflict. It's primarily multiplayer so it feels like a sport to me. As shooters have gotten more realistic I've become ever more in favor of gun control. I had a group I regularly played with including a former combat medic that had served in Afghanistan. He had come to have a much more leftist view of the military but he still liked playing military combat shooters. They're unlike the real thing enough that it didn't trigger his PTSD. The exception was that the sound design in Battlefield 3 and 4 was so good that the sounds were a trigger. The game had a variety of effects to make the sounds less realistic (I believe for that purpose). He used one of those and was fine.
posted by VTX at 10:27 AM on December 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
I've been gaming since the '80s and I think I have an advantage in that games started as very abstracted from reality for me and clearly separated from reality. The Atari 2600 wasn't really built to tell immersive stories.
But still, as games have advanced and gotten more sophisticated and allowed players the choice to be a "bad guy" or just have no morals at all I've always made the most moral choices I can within the context of the game. Like, I feel bad for hundreds of guards I've murdered in Assassin's Creed games. They probably have nothing to do with the politics of the regime and are just normal people trying to get by. But I still murder them in spectacular fashion.
I've only recently realized that's not at all true. That's just some colored pixels that have no emotions. So I started being evil in some video games and....I kinda like it. I can be gleefully cruel, brutally violent, and vicious and it hurts nothing and no one! It's really cathartic.
Even then, I did this campaign in Warhammer: Total War as the orcs. I rampaged all over the south of the map and then methodically moved north. The orc faction doesn't do well in the cold and distances are large. I had one huge army, 1,000 units or something, clash with a force of northmen and chased them clear across the whole north of the map fighting battles the whole way bleeding troops like Napoleon marching across the Russian winter. I got very familiar with the units in the enemy army and my own. I saw them enough I could have given them names. In the end it came down to a couple of handfuls of troops on each side. I came out on top in the end by the skin of my teeth and marched the few survivors back losing a couple more along the way. I had some real sympathy for the units on both sides in that epic bit of gaming.
I also used to play the Battlefield series of games that attempt to capture the feel of engaging in a modern, combined arms conflict. It's primarily multiplayer so it feels like a sport to me. As shooters have gotten more realistic I've become ever more in favor of gun control. I had a group I regularly played with including a former combat medic that had served in Afghanistan. He had come to have a much more leftist view of the military but he still liked playing military combat shooters. They're unlike the real thing enough that it didn't trigger his PTSD. The exception was that the sound design in Battlefield 3 and 4 was so good that the sounds were a trigger. The game had a variety of effects to make the sounds less realistic (I believe for that purpose). He used one of those and was fine.
posted by VTX at 10:27 AM on December 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
You are once again conflating reality with fiction.
I'm actually coming at this topic from a slightly different angle.
I love violence. Like a lot. I'm just parsing where that comes from, coming to grips with that, and how to navigate that moving forward.
posted by ishmael at 10:44 AM on December 27, 2022
I'm actually coming at this topic from a slightly different angle.
I love violence. Like a lot. I'm just parsing where that comes from, coming to grips with that, and how to navigate that moving forward.
posted by ishmael at 10:44 AM on December 27, 2022
If you’re simply playing to win a campaign on points, well, someone’s got to draw the grey straw and be General Robert E. Lee. Someone has to roll the dice for Guderian’s drive to Moscow.
I suppose I'm grappling with the idea of making nazis and the confederacy "fun".
Like, if I made a school shooter game, and made the character of the school shooter as a neutral "fun" character, how would that sit with me? This is what I'm trying to figure out.
posted by ishmael at 10:54 AM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
I suppose I'm grappling with the idea of making nazis and the confederacy "fun".
Like, if I made a school shooter game, and made the character of the school shooter as a neutral "fun" character, how would that sit with me? This is what I'm trying to figure out.
posted by ishmael at 10:54 AM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
“is it possible to make a civil war game that properly addresses slavery?”
Really enjoying my current run as USA in Victoria 3. If you can isolate the Southern Planters and ban slavery early you are really well placed to dominate.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:46 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Really enjoying my current run as USA in Victoria 3. If you can isolate the Southern Planters and ban slavery early you are really well placed to dominate.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:46 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
The problem with making a Civil War game about slavery is that the overall strategy and tactics of the war had next to nothing to do with slavery. It was the *cause* of the war, but not really part of it, especially as far as the battles were concerned. Same thing for the Eastern Front in WWII: the extermination/displacement of Jews all happened behind the lines, and it wasn't as if the Soviets really cared all that much. I mean, you could make a game where you were the chief of the Einsatzgruppen and had to make your quota of... well, you can see where that would go.
I play wargames because I like to hang out with my nerd friends and see if I can fuck up their strategy. I'm not roleplaying the Nazis or whatever when I do it.
Side note: the odd thing about Crusader Kings 3 is how effective a strategy Lawful Good is.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:11 PM on December 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
I play wargames because I like to hang out with my nerd friends and see if I can fuck up their strategy. I'm not roleplaying the Nazis or whatever when I do it.
Side note: the odd thing about Crusader Kings 3 is how effective a strategy Lawful Good is.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:11 PM on December 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
Nazi crimes against humanity were part and parcel of the Nazi way of war. The crimes weren't all hidden behind the lines, especially on the Eastern Front. It's probably also good to note that the Afrika Korps had an Einsatz group assigned to it too.
Anyway, put me in the "I dunno" camp, good points made from all sides. I do remember playing The Russian Campaign when I was twelve or so and one of my Nazi-side playing opponents started up about how much he hated the Nazis and grabbed up the Hitler unit, popped it between his front teeth and made a big show of biting into it. I suppose the dent is still there.
posted by house-goblin at 1:48 PM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
Anyway, put me in the "I dunno" camp, good points made from all sides. I do remember playing The Russian Campaign when I was twelve or so and one of my Nazi-side playing opponents started up about how much he hated the Nazis and grabbed up the Hitler unit, popped it between his front teeth and made a big show of biting into it. I suppose the dent is still there.
posted by house-goblin at 1:48 PM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
"To the extent that video games are art I don't think it's much different than playing a villain in a movie or play." Another good comparison, which brings us back to Volko Ruhnke's point.
posted by doctornemo at 2:17 PM on December 27, 2022
posted by doctornemo at 2:17 PM on December 27, 2022
Further further further I’d recommend Bret Devereaux, a professional historian and gamer, who has a blog which regularly reviews military games in extraordinary detail, outside their instrumental-teaching role and their game-play role, as actual games as literature. It’s a remarkable blog.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:32 PM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:32 PM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
In RISE AND DECLINE OF THE THIRD REICH, big Avalon Hill wargame, Auschwitz gives you victory points - that is, if you hold it and keep it secret (German) or take it and reveal its horrors (Allies) then it counts. Other than that abstraction, the nature of the regimes involved does not count for much.
I like to play as Germany: if I win, yay! I won! If I lose, yay! The Nazis lost! Not that I play it often since it takes 12 hours...
posted by Comfy Shoes at 3:22 PM on December 27, 2022
I like to play as Germany: if I win, yay! I won! If I lose, yay! The Nazis lost! Not that I play it often since it takes 12 hours...
posted by Comfy Shoes at 3:22 PM on December 27, 2022
"In RISE AND DECLINE OF THE THIRD REICH, big Avalon Hill wargame, Auschwitz gives you victory points - that is, if you hold it and keep it secret (German) or take it and reveal its horrors (Allies) then it counts."
There's a good chance my memory is failing, but I don't remember that at all. Since I'm pretty sure the game went through at least a bit of evolution, is it maybe a later addition? Mechanically speaking, I guess it does sort of "surface" the Nazi "way of war."
I should also note that the "Hitler Unit Biting" friend I mentioned previously, told me (years later) that he'd been involved in getting some amendments/additions added to the Third Reich rules booklet.
posted by house-goblin at 3:58 PM on December 27, 2022
There's a good chance my memory is failing, but I don't remember that at all. Since I'm pretty sure the game went through at least a bit of evolution, is it maybe a later addition? Mechanically speaking, I guess it does sort of "surface" the Nazi "way of war."
I should also note that the "Hitler Unit Biting" friend I mentioned previously, told me (years later) that he'd been involved in getting some amendments/additions added to the Third Reich rules booklet.
posted by house-goblin at 3:58 PM on December 27, 2022
Ok. Would you play a school shooter board game?
posted by ishmael at 7:51 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ishmael at 7:51 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't think this comes up in the interview, but I remember hearing it on Three Moves Ahead.
In addition to being an influential game designer, Ruhnke is part of the US national defense establishment (he is now usually described as a former CIA analyst). When his war-on-terror counterinsurgency game Labyrinth came out in 2009, the US was planning and executing its ill-fated counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In addition to being popular entertainments, war games are played by war planners to predict the unpredictable. In the wonkier parts of the commercial game hobby, there seems to be some overlap between these practices. It's interesting.
I haven't played Labyrinth yet. But I would like to see what it's like. Games have to be open-ended to be fun -- they have to allow some play. But they also express a point of view. For example, Twilight Struggle expresses the perspective of the winning clique of US Cold War planners, who held (or professed) the view that global communism was a vehicle for implacable expansion by the USSR, which required the creation of a permanent unfettered war machine or the world would sink beneath the tides. If the minority view defended e.g. by Kennan were true -- that a Russia battered by war had no interest or ability to pursue global expansion -- there wouldn't be much of a game to play. It would be a mostly one-sided parade of atrocities.
Anyway, this is to say that the general question of "is it okay to enjoy war games?" is one thing, the perspectives expressed by particular war games is another. More interesting to me than "can you play a war-on-terror war game?" are questions like, "how does Labyrinth make sense of the war on terror?" That's why I'd like to play it (that and I like games). With the benefit of hindsight, how do the stories it tells about the US war-on-terror campaign hold up? Were they responsible stories to tell, then? Are they responsible stories to tell now?
I'm not sure how to think about that last part. Not an analogy but: all of the World War II games we have come from the world where the allies defeated the Nazis and more-or-less culturally destroyed them. Because of this, we can ask, "Is it okay to play as the Nazis?" But we are never prompted to ask, "Is it okay to play as the Nazis the way the Nazis would have seen themselves?" If the victorious Nazis designed a WWII game that somehow slipped through the wormhole to us, would you play it? I'm not sure it would be wrong to. They're dead in our universe either way thank god. But I get a chill thinking about it. It's not wrong to experimentally try on the perspective of a mass killer, I don't think. What's wrong is to accept it. Still, there is something spooky about even entering that kind of headspace.
posted by grobstein at 11:07 PM on December 27, 2022 [10 favorites]
In addition to being an influential game designer, Ruhnke is part of the US national defense establishment (he is now usually described as a former CIA analyst). When his war-on-terror counterinsurgency game Labyrinth came out in 2009, the US was planning and executing its ill-fated counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In addition to being popular entertainments, war games are played by war planners to predict the unpredictable. In the wonkier parts of the commercial game hobby, there seems to be some overlap between these practices. It's interesting.
I haven't played Labyrinth yet. But I would like to see what it's like. Games have to be open-ended to be fun -- they have to allow some play. But they also express a point of view. For example, Twilight Struggle expresses the perspective of the winning clique of US Cold War planners, who held (or professed) the view that global communism was a vehicle for implacable expansion by the USSR, which required the creation of a permanent unfettered war machine or the world would sink beneath the tides. If the minority view defended e.g. by Kennan were true -- that a Russia battered by war had no interest or ability to pursue global expansion -- there wouldn't be much of a game to play. It would be a mostly one-sided parade of atrocities.
Anyway, this is to say that the general question of "is it okay to enjoy war games?" is one thing, the perspectives expressed by particular war games is another. More interesting to me than "can you play a war-on-terror war game?" are questions like, "how does Labyrinth make sense of the war on terror?" That's why I'd like to play it (that and I like games). With the benefit of hindsight, how do the stories it tells about the US war-on-terror campaign hold up? Were they responsible stories to tell, then? Are they responsible stories to tell now?
I'm not sure how to think about that last part. Not an analogy but: all of the World War II games we have come from the world where the allies defeated the Nazis and more-or-less culturally destroyed them. Because of this, we can ask, "Is it okay to play as the Nazis?" But we are never prompted to ask, "Is it okay to play as the Nazis the way the Nazis would have seen themselves?" If the victorious Nazis designed a WWII game that somehow slipped through the wormhole to us, would you play it? I'm not sure it would be wrong to. They're dead in our universe either way thank god. But I get a chill thinking about it. It's not wrong to experimentally try on the perspective of a mass killer, I don't think. What's wrong is to accept it. Still, there is something spooky about even entering that kind of headspace.
posted by grobstein at 11:07 PM on December 27, 2022 [10 favorites]
Another rec, for those with a deeper interest and/or who enjoy the intersection of professional and hobby wargaming: the Georgetown University Wargaming Society. They got started in 2020 and have run a bunch of (free) online events on various related topics. I've attended a half dozen, on topics from wargames in pedagogy to sand tables as media, with speakers ranging from game designers to academics to military planners. Recordings on YouTube. Some upcoming topics:
"Gaming Climate Change: Challenges and More Challenges"
"Players and Users: Wargaming as a User Experience (UX) Design Problem"
"The Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military"
For obvious reasons, the focus is rarely "is it okay to enjoy wargames?" That said, some of the talks have explored moral and ethical dimensions of war that have appeared in this thread.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:22 AM on December 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
"Gaming Climate Change: Challenges and More Challenges"
"Players and Users: Wargaming as a User Experience (UX) Design Problem"
"The Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military"
For obvious reasons, the focus is rarely "is it okay to enjoy wargames?" That said, some of the talks have explored moral and ethical dimensions of war that have appeared in this thread.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:22 AM on December 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
If the victorious Nazis designed a WWII game that somehow slipped through the wormhole to us, would you play it?
You can sort of do this. There’s a game called 4th Reich, which is a serial-numbers-filed-off simulation of the novel within Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream. It’s not a very good game, and it utterly lacks Spinrad’s sense of satire, but you could try your thought experiment….
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:18 PM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
You can sort of do this. There’s a game called 4th Reich, which is a serial-numbers-filed-off simulation of the novel within Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream. It’s not a very good game, and it utterly lacks Spinrad’s sense of satire, but you could try your thought experiment….
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:18 PM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm playing the 4th edition of the tabletop RPG Twilight 2000, a survival game in the ruins of Poland after a WWIII in an alternate history where the Soviet military coup did not fail. They are currently publishing an add-on called Urban Operations but after February they stopped marketing it. At all. Which was pretty brave from a pure commercial standpoint, I think.. The community was pretty understanding about them not wanting to market their urban destruction and despair game addon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think I saw just a couple of whiny "it's just a game!" posts on the discords and stuff.
posted by Harald74 at 12:43 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Harald74 at 12:43 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Ok. Would you play a school shooter board game?
Interestingly, no, probably I would not choose to. I also would not play, say, an Auschwitz board game, whatever form that might take. Something about the impersonality of scale in Axis and Allies removes the sort of distaste I would have for either of the two aforementioned hypothetical games. Different things are different.
Now, if someone told me they had invented and were playing a school shooter board game I would think they were doing so in very poor taste at the least, and I might wonder about their motivations. Do actual school shooters plan out their crimes ahead of time using a visual aid that, to an observer, might be indistinguishable from a board game? Certainly some must. But the board game didn't make them into a school shooter.
posted by axiom at 6:33 PM on December 31, 2022
Interestingly, no, probably I would not choose to. I also would not play, say, an Auschwitz board game, whatever form that might take. Something about the impersonality of scale in Axis and Allies removes the sort of distaste I would have for either of the two aforementioned hypothetical games. Different things are different.
Now, if someone told me they had invented and were playing a school shooter board game I would think they were doing so in very poor taste at the least, and I might wonder about their motivations. Do actual school shooters plan out their crimes ahead of time using a visual aid that, to an observer, might be indistinguishable from a board game? Certainly some must. But the board game didn't make them into a school shooter.
posted by axiom at 6:33 PM on December 31, 2022
But the board game didn't make them into a school shooter.
I agree 100%. Not really what I am concerned with when I posed that question.
I just noticed that there was a lot of games presenting nazis and confederates completely as neutral actors, and as house-goblin pointed out above, you really can't separate the nazis from the atrocities they committed as a part of their military campaigns.
Same with the Confederacy. They were actively rounding people up to enslave them while campaigning. The reason why Lee did so poorly at Gettysburg is because his cavalry commander, JEB Stuart, his "eyes and ears", was out raiding instead of scouting.
posted by ishmael at 6:48 PM on December 31, 2022
I agree 100%. Not really what I am concerned with when I posed that question.
I just noticed that there was a lot of games presenting nazis and confederates completely as neutral actors, and as house-goblin pointed out above, you really can't separate the nazis from the atrocities they committed as a part of their military campaigns.
Same with the Confederacy. They were actively rounding people up to enslave them while campaigning. The reason why Lee did so poorly at Gettysburg is because his cavalry commander, JEB Stuart, his "eyes and ears", was out raiding instead of scouting.
posted by ishmael at 6:48 PM on December 31, 2022
you really can't separate the nazis from the atrocities they committed as a part of their military campaigns.
Can't you? Put another way, this is like asking whether you can play as Space Marines in Warhammer 40K without a deep belief in the supremacy of the Emperor of Man and a conviction that the followers of Chaos must be eradicated. Except of course you can, much the same way as I can play Germany in Axis and Allies without having a favorable opinion of Hitler and a belief that the enemies of fascism must be destroyed. In both cases there is a backstory with non-neutral actors that is unrelated to the beliefs of the player. It's just a framework for dice-rolling and winner-determining.
It occurs to me, I would play Dead by Daylight but not a school shooter game, despite both being accurately (if vaguely) described as "pretending to murder children." The inflection point isn't just whether the background is fictional or not, because otherwise I would be unwilling to play Axis and Allies. I think the distinction is with whether the game acts as a model of trauma inflicted on real people. Dead by Daylight avoids that by modeling the murder but using fictional murderers and victims (a hypothetical school shooter game does not); Axis and Allies avoids it by modeling the strategic war fighting and resource management of World War II but completely excising the Holocaust from the game's mechanics (that is, it separates Germany from the atrocities committed as part of their military campaign). If you had to set up concentration camps when acting as Germany in A&A I don't think most people would play it.
posted by axiom at 7:36 PM on December 31, 2022
Can't you? Put another way, this is like asking whether you can play as Space Marines in Warhammer 40K without a deep belief in the supremacy of the Emperor of Man and a conviction that the followers of Chaos must be eradicated. Except of course you can, much the same way as I can play Germany in Axis and Allies without having a favorable opinion of Hitler and a belief that the enemies of fascism must be destroyed. In both cases there is a backstory with non-neutral actors that is unrelated to the beliefs of the player. It's just a framework for dice-rolling and winner-determining.
It occurs to me, I would play Dead by Daylight but not a school shooter game, despite both being accurately (if vaguely) described as "pretending to murder children." The inflection point isn't just whether the background is fictional or not, because otherwise I would be unwilling to play Axis and Allies. I think the distinction is with whether the game acts as a model of trauma inflicted on real people. Dead by Daylight avoids that by modeling the murder but using fictional murderers and victims (a hypothetical school shooter game does not); Axis and Allies avoids it by modeling the strategic war fighting and resource management of World War II but completely excising the Holocaust from the game's mechanics (that is, it separates Germany from the atrocities committed as part of their military campaign). If you had to set up concentration camps when acting as Germany in A&A I don't think most people would play it.
posted by axiom at 7:36 PM on December 31, 2022
Can't you?
That's the thing. It's getting harder for me to do. I guess there is a bit of distance when you make the forces fictional like Space Marines, but nazis? The confederacy? I honestly can't anymore.
The latest Ken Burns doc series was about the Holocaust, and in it he pointed out that a lot of the footage of genocide that we have was because of the Wehrmacht penchant for portable home-movie cameras. Like, it was woven into the very fabric of their campaigns.
posted by ishmael at 7:59 PM on December 31, 2022
That's the thing. It's getting harder for me to do. I guess there is a bit of distance when you make the forces fictional like Space Marines, but nazis? The confederacy? I honestly can't anymore.
The latest Ken Burns doc series was about the Holocaust, and in it he pointed out that a lot of the footage of genocide that we have was because of the Wehrmacht penchant for portable home-movie cameras. Like, it was woven into the very fabric of their campaigns.
posted by ishmael at 7:59 PM on December 31, 2022
Meaning, they were sending film canisters home as mementos, to show their families what they were doing.
posted by ishmael at 8:01 PM on December 31, 2022
posted by ishmael at 8:01 PM on December 31, 2022
I don't have a broader opinion on the post topic, but I will say that I've enjoyed a solo wargame based on one part of the battle of Stalingrad called Pavlov's House, and while it's always good to kill Nazis, I haven't much felt like playing heroic Russians lately because of their atrocities in Ukraine.
But I have been feeling like re-reading the new Twilight: 2000 rules.
posted by Gelatin at 7:18 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
But I have been feeling like re-reading the new Twilight: 2000 rules.
posted by Gelatin at 7:18 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
“The Problematic Pleasures of Productivity and Efficiency in Goa and Navegador,” Nancy Foasberg, Analog Game Studies, 11 January 2016
posted by ob1quixote at 4:58 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 4:58 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
But I have been feeling like re-reading the new Twilight: 2000 rules.
They are excellent. Really brings out the survival and exploration elements, and is designed to make the GM's job as easy and low-prep as possible. With the Urban Ops expansion you also have a robust framework for factions and what they call "plots" to tie in longer narrative arcs.
The crunchiest of Free League's games up til now, but not approaching the crunchiness of simulationist games of the past. I find that they pretty much hit a sweet spot.
If you play it as written, it pretty much de-romanticizes much of the WIII "experience". You'll spend a lot of time treating wounds, managing stress, scrounging for fuel, food and antibiotics, and things like weapon stats are coarse-grained enough that there is hardly any meaningful differences between, say, an M16A1, M16A2 or M4 Carbine.
posted by Harald74 at 2:10 AM on January 10, 2023
They are excellent. Really brings out the survival and exploration elements, and is designed to make the GM's job as easy and low-prep as possible. With the Urban Ops expansion you also have a robust framework for factions and what they call "plots" to tie in longer narrative arcs.
The crunchiest of Free League's games up til now, but not approaching the crunchiness of simulationist games of the past. I find that they pretty much hit a sweet spot.
If you play it as written, it pretty much de-romanticizes much of the WIII "experience". You'll spend a lot of time treating wounds, managing stress, scrounging for fuel, food and antibiotics, and things like weapon stats are coarse-grained enough that there is hardly any meaningful differences between, say, an M16A1, M16A2 or M4 Carbine.
posted by Harald74 at 2:10 AM on January 10, 2023
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