Are video games pushing reality and real conflicts a bit too much?

[daranz]

Originally Posted by ArmedDrunk&Angry

R O F L
Who else would I be speaking for ?

My buddy served with the NY NG in Iraq and is now NYPD and he loves to teamkill and act like a myg0t.........so what does that prove ?

POLICE BRUTALITY!

[LeggyStarlitz]

The only way you could realistically make the PR experience "truly real" would be to strap a 100 pound rucksack to your back and take a run through your respected hoods all the while screaming racial slurs at the top of your lungs.

If you survive that, then maybe you'll have a much more virtual experience.

[[R-COM]Outlawz]

Originally Posted by ArmedDrunk&Angry

My buddy served with the NY NG in Iraq and is now NYPD and he loves to teamkill and act like a myg0t.........so what does that prove ?

Sometimes its better to rely on yourself than the cops

[Jonny]

This mod is better than the news and movies, IMHO, you get to see what both sides have to fight and how difficult it actually is to win with few casualties. In the news you hear '3 British soldiers have been killed in a roadside bomb attack' but not 'The homes of 25 people have been broken into and forcefully searched, while the inhabitants, many of them children, were held at gunpoint'

The kind of experience you get from playing this mod will undoughtedly give you more respect for the rest of the worlds population and could even help prevent wars in the future, if the right people play and start to understand what it is like for your soldiers on the front lines.

This is much better than a 'They question us, so we invade' type policy.

The sooner all wars are virtual, the better. Realistic war games are only the first step in this. Hopefully a change in foreign policy in all nations will follow.

[[T]BludShoT]

I think it's fine to have these kinds of games. I think where it's bad is when it's too sanitized, like vanilla BF2. Wars games should be bloody and horrible with severed limbs and gurgling blood filling lungs. That way people would have a greater respect for the seriously brutal realities of war.

When I played BF2 I was like "wheee this is so cool", and I could totally see some kid thinking wow war is so cool!

But I was just playing insmod the other night and it made me say "wow, I'm so glad I'm not in Iraq!" - because of the blood in hl2 engine, and just the brutality of the guns and killing in Insurgency mod.

It sounds twisted, but I think it's a good thing.

Same with like racing games where your car doesn't get damaged much. If the cars and accidents were as fatal and damaging as real life, then the (kid) player might not end up driving like an idiot in real life too.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

There are studies showing people who play racing games get in accidents more often.

[[R-MOD]Wasteland]

Originally Posted by [T]BludShoT

But I was just playing insmod the other night and it made me say "wow, I'm so glad I'm not in Iraq!" - because of the blood in hl2 engine, and just the brutality of the guns and killing in Insurgency mod.

Same thing happened to me. I was thinking "wow, so this is why house to house fighting sucks". It gave me an appreciation of how f#cked up the whole endeavor was.

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]matt.b

This isn't Hilary Clinton's or the German Christian Democrat's knee-jerk 'ban violent videogames' nonsense, but an ethical question worth some thought.

As I said earlier,

You've correctly linked reality based games to current conflicts, but you have yet to establish an ethical argument showing the simulation of modern conflict to be amoral.

Unless your full point is that it's hurtful to those who've lost loved ones in these conflicts.

But we play WWII games. And if I ever bring up WWII with my grandfather, he breaks down crying. And this is a proud man who would never show emotion in public in any other circumstance. Yes he's in his 80s, but I don't see how that grants him less ethical worth. If anything, I'd say he deserves *more* ethical consideration for fighting the Nazis and helping to liberate Italy and Holland. How would he feel about WWII games? I don't know, because I'd never tell him about them. Something cannot be wrong merely because it upsets some people. The action itself has to be morally wrong. Otherwise, since some people find interracial relationships physically disgusting, these would be wrong. I think the best course of action (if a convincing argument cannot be made as to why war games are wrong) is to simply continue playing them, but not force them into the awareness of people who would be upset by them.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

Interracial relationships are disgusting, who would want to date a dolphin or an orangutan ?
I did hear there is a bestiality brothel in Denmark though.

[[R-MOD]Wasteland]

Err, I didn't say interspecies.... though Nussbaum and others have presented some fascinating contributions to the field of ethics when discussing our disgust reaction to things like bestiality, and how a workable Offense Principal works into the Harm Principle.

[[R-DEV]KingofCamelot]

Originally Posted by Jonny

The sooner all wars are virtual, the better. Realistic war games are only the first step in this. Hopefully a change in foreign policy in all nations will follow.

Er, that kind of defeats the point of war now doesn't it? It all boils down to the fact that when you get large disagreements or threats, it comes down to physical confrontation. Thinking that virtual wars could replace real wars is like saying that diplomacy works every time. So long as one nation has the physical force to be able to force its will on to another they won't settle for accepting a loss just because they lost the argument.