I don't live in the US or Europe, so we surely have some cultural differences.

Historic war-themed games - is it considered politically correct to allow the player to play with the "bad guys", ie the Vietcong, the Axis, and so on? I understand several games allow this, but I just wanted to know your opinions first-hand.

Of course, it would be of very bad taste to let you fly planes into the WTC, or be an Iraqi sniper. But although Vietnam and WWII (not to mention WWI) are "historic" (ie not contemporary), you do have war veterans.

How do you deal with this, both from a social point of view and in the particular case of games?

If it is tasteful, i think its ok. Most ppl would be a bit wary of using tragic events to the free world (wtc) or current wars where there are victims on the free side (50 soldiers or whatever in iraq), but they wouldnt care if the places weere inverted, and you played a us commander killing iraqui soldiers, so honestly, I dont give a damn about ppls sensitivity levels. You are bound to 'hurt' someone and are, so who the hell cares if american or british may find themselves 'hurt' by a game playing as an iraqi sniper ?? in all honesty, screw them, if it was a US/UK/whatever sniper they would glorify him/her.

Do what you want.

I wouldn't go as far as saying "screw them". I do care, and not only in a business sense. If I can avoid doing something that will hurt somebody, I'll try to.

About the Iraqis and WTC, I mentioned them as examples of what I am NOT going to do. What I'm not sure about is the other part of the question, playing Vietcongs or Nazis for example.

I think its always going to be dodgy when the war was recent enough that there are still people around who fought in it or knew people who died in it. (Unless it's abstracted enough and bears no real likeness to the actual war/conflict.

As one example, there are plenty of games where you control Roman forces... to many, the romans were the bad guys, conquering most of europe. Im also sure that there are decent WW1 strategy games which allow you to play either side, and plenty of games dealing with various wars before that time.

As for anything more recent that WW1.. then you have more chance of upsetting someone, but I guess the largest part, is how tastefully you do the game and don't add too much of a political bias, representing one side in an unfair or unjust way.

One no-go for instance would be a game where you play Hitler and have to keep the concentration camps at full capacity etc. I doubt that would go down too well with the large majority of people.

Whilst blowing up some gung-ho Americana might sound fun (especially given how every other country loves them so much!) From all the recently posted figures, they do have the greatest sales percentage - so you don't want to alienate or disuade themif you can help it.

-Z-

EA doesn't appear to have any problems with games that let you play either side of major wars: in Battlefield 1942, you can play any of the five major armies, and in Battlefield Vietnam, you can play the US or the NVA. If you're worried about not alienating the US audience, I think as long as you stay away from conflicts since Vietnam you'd be okay.

Personally, even though my father was (sort of) in WWII (drafted right as the war ended, so he didn't see any combat), I don't have any problems with WWII games that let you play on the side of the Nazis or the Japanese. In fact, I think it's kind of interesting to see the war through a different set of eyes. "History is written by the victors" means you often know very little about the losers, which makes them all the more interesting.

Heh, I worked with a german guy who loved to play the games Commandoes, and Commandoes2. I asked him what he though of playing british guys killing germans. He said, "oh they are east (or west i dont rmember now) germans so it's ok". I was rather amused :)

Before there were even computer games there were board games that let you play as the Nazis. Every one likes to play as the bad guy every once and a while. Also, bad guys are often label as such because they lost and the winners came into power and labeled them bad guys. A lot of people enjoy replaying war/battles as the loser to see if they can do something that the real leaders were not able to do at that time.

i don't think you need to stay away for recent wars. The latest Command and Conquer game lets you play as terrorists. This game came out right before the war in Iraq and there is even a mission in single player mode where the US is attacking the terrorists in Bagdad.

If you stick to the tactics & equipment, I wouldn't care what side I played. Design it from the General's perspective not the politicians. I would NOT want to play as Hitler but, Rommel was an excellent tactician and I would have no problem playing him.

I used to play a chit based game called Advanced Squad Leader for hours on end. The horrendous events of WWII did not interfere with this type of strategic reenactment.

I agree with what's been said here. I'm from the US and I can say that people here don't have any sensibilities against playing the Vietcong etc..

I think it all depends on how much emotion is tied to the thing being depicted. Hitler and the slaughter of the Jews is obviously an emotionally evocative topic. So I'd stray from anything related to that. Heck, even making a game where you play on the side of the Allies and you come upon slaughtered Jews - even that might be a bit much. But like was said earlier, if you stick to the tactics and the battle itself, you should be just fine. If you can abstract it a bit, even better. By that I mean, if you can play some nameless general making the decisions, this is probably better than playing a specific real-life character.

But again, leave the politics out of it and stick to the "clean" parts of the history and you should be able to avoid offending anyone. That goes even for recent wars. Heck, I can see myself playing a Gulf War II strategy game where I play an Iraqi general and have to round up the Fedayeen and make the best use of my tattered forces to oust the incoming Americans. As long as it stayed cold and calculated, just the raw tactics etc. without name-calling or anything like that, I wouldn't feel bad playing it.

Just be sure that the game is about tackling a puzzle or challenge rather than living out some kind of role-play where the player actually puts themselves into the ideological position of the side he's playing.

so what?

I'm both an Israeli and jewish.
when C&C came out, no one cared about germany, everyone
just chose the side they identified with.

in Medal of Honor it was the same. i even remember seeing
the later Mods sold here (israel) where you could play Natzi
soliders.

matter of perspective.

its all about if its tastful.

Well, it is quite amusing to see the differences between american and european guys!

Living in the most conservative part of Europe I would advise you to stay well away from the current political issues. Even from the WWs. In Europe everything is politics. Well, it has been for few thousands years now.

Of course the shareware market consits mainly of the american one which I think much more liberal and richer than the european one.

Be careful with the word "Liberal". In Denmark Liberal means something completely different than in USA.

When danes say Liberal what they really mean is "Libertarian" (don't know about the spelling).

In USA Liberal is a tree huggin' hippie I'm told :)




No, lets not talk politics here BTW.

Originally posted by BarrySlisk
When danes say Liberal what they really mean is "Libertarian" (don't know about the spelling).

In USA Liberal is a tree huggin' hippie I'm told :)

No, lets not talk politics here BTW.

Ohh, quick little story. My roommate is a pretty hardcore libertarian, but if I ever want to get under his skin I say it "LIBERAL-tarian." He always goes into a rant about how they're totally different, even though I know that. Funny stuff.

Anyway, as far as offending people goes, it tough to say. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be offended by a game that allows them to grow weed, or by a game that allows them to kill innocent people. I'm guess it depends on your audience, sometimes offending a few people isn't such a bad thing.

P.S., Sirrus. I want to make a shirt that says "Weapon Studios Taught Me How To Smoke Weed" then have a big potleaf with the Dopefarmer.com url under it. Maybe I'm the only one that would find that funny.

Maybe I'm the only one that would find that funny.

I'm pretty sure you'll find yourself in the minority...


Regarding controversial content:
I've been interested in the potential of games as a story telling medium. Right now, some games tell stories like big action movies like Spiderman or Total Recall. Some tell stories like Lord of the Rings.

These stories (and games) are about actions (and what you can do). I'm interested in the idea of games telling stories about characters and feelings and ideas. Can a game tell a story like Chasing Amy or Anthem(the book) or Schindler's List?

Some games affect me emotionally, but I think by accident. I played Soldier of Fortune about 9 months ago, and was affected by the plot (terrorists steal nuclear bombs then plot to fly a plane into the UN building in NY. The game was released about a year before 9/11), but I was also affected by the "realistic" (more so than I was used to) portrayal of hostage situations and combat situations. Usually you sneak up on your enemies and use a sniper rifle to kill them. This means you get a real good look at their face as they go about their own business for 1-5 seconds before pulling the trigger.

I was disturbed by it. And the demonic imagery of ID games, I've always linked to Nazi attrocities.


I'd like to see a game from the perspective of a german, maybe a Nazi where you have to deal with the real horror of the situation. Terrible things happened, but to me, the horror is that these things weren't caused by millions of monsters - they were caused by a few monsters and millions of otherwise rational, humane people.


I think story telling using interactive mediums will continue to evolve to get you more emotionally involved...

I prefer to sidestep the whole issue, remind myself I'm writing a game, and do something completely divorced from reality to explore some particular game system mechanics instead of delving into emotional quandaries. If I ever write my RTS game, it'll be using robots instead of people as soldiers, which completely absolves me of any moral responsibility.

Cas :)

I agree with mg_mchenry about wanting to see something from a Nazi's perspective. We always see these movies from essentially our own perspectives, but we never try to look through someone else's eyes and see what they saw on the other side. A long time ago, I came across this interesting real-life account of a German deserter in WWI, definitely a good read and worth checking out if you want a real look at the horrors of war from the "bad guy's" side of things:

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/memoir/Deserter/GermanTC.htm

Just be careful of some of the misguided political perspectives in the story.

Anyway, as for contraversy, I was thinking, if you make something that you know alot of people secretly want to play or do, but nobody will admit it, I think you'd be very successful despite everybody and their dog writing you hate letters and trying to get your game banned. It's like they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. And the more of a stink you raise with your game, the more everybody will hear about it -- free advertising! But just make sure it's a game people will secretly WANT to play. I mean, you could pick something that's genuinely offensive to alot of people and truly nobody will want to play it. But if you pick something contraversial, it usually is contraversial because there are a number of people who stand on each side of the fence.

Just something to consider.

I think you're right. That would explain the success of Dope Wars, for example, or Sim Gangster, or those games that allow you to do "not allowed" actions.

I think you're right. There is a demand for games that allow people to do things they think would be fun, but would never do in real life because it is illegal and/or immoral.