Do we really want them?

[Badger73]

Putting the whole issue of just why we tend to like this kind of stuff aside for a minute, I would have to say that at 48 I have a much better grasp of it than I used to growing up.

My father was 40 when I was born and I remember being slightly sad and a little puzzled that he didn't show any interest in my wargaming hobby. I also knew that he served in WW2 from 1942 to 1946 in the US Navy as an Aviation Ordinanceman 2nd class aboard the carriers Randolph and Bon Homme Richard. Among his keepsakes, I have a silk aviator's map of the seas around Japan- there in ink around the edge are all the names of VBF-16 men who were killed.

I had time to reflect on all this recently, as my father lost his fight with Parkinson's on December 22, 2012. He was 89 and had a good life with five children, and lots of grandchildren. Although I did talk with him at times about his experiences in the war, I could tell that, like most vets who have seen what war can do to humans, he was still haunted by the loss of friends in their prime. Worse still is just how vividly vets remember the traumatic events that will stay with them their whole life. I can only imagine how much worse it was for the ground forces at "the sharp edge".

From the WW1 era, the Kohima Epitaph- I imagine many of you know it as well:

When you go home,

Tell them of us and say,

For your tomorrow

We gave our today.

You begin to understand how so many vets felt a sense of guilt that they managed to make it through the war and their belief that the "real" heroes are the ones who never made it home.

As Ron Perlman voiced, "War... war never changes."

Perhaps our addiction to this pursuit is through some need to relate at any level, no matter how shallow, of what it must have been like. Could we have dealt with it? It amounts to a challenge for me most times, but I freely admit that I have difficulty defending my "hobby" to others who don't share it. Somehow it makes me feel guilty for the enjoyment I derive out of it, you know?

@Gromit, exceptionally fine post! Thank you. Good food for thought on sentiments I share.

[Aragorn2002]

I want flame throwers AND human torches.

I'm also not keen on this kind of morality. It is a game. Nothing more, nothing less. And getting shrapnel into your face or a bullet in your stomach is as horrible as burning alive. Well, more or less, what I'm trying to say is stop thinking and kill them all.

[Lt Belenko]

Putting the whole issue of just why we tend to like this kind of stuff aside for a minute, I would have to say that at 48 I have a much better grasp of it than I used to growing up.

My father was 40 when I was born and I remember being slightly sad and a little puzzled that he didn't show any interest in my wargaming hobby. I also knew that he served in WW2 from 1942 to 1946 in the US Navy as an Aviation Ordinanceman 2nd class aboard the carriers Randolph and Bon Homme Richard. Among his keepsakes, I have a silk aviator's map of the seas around Japan- there in ink around the edge are all the names of VBF-16 men who were killed.

I had time to reflect on all this recently, as my father lost his fight with Parkinson's on December 22, 2012. He was 89 and had a good life with five children, and lots of grandchildren. Although I did talk with him at times about his experiences in the war, I could tell that, like most vets who have seen what war can do to humans, he was still haunted by the loss of friends in their prime. Worse still is just how vividly vets remember the traumatic events that will stay with them their whole life. I can only imagine how much worse it was for the ground forces at "the sharp edge".

From the WW1 era, the Kohima Epitaph- I imagine many of you know it as well:

When you go home,

Tell them of us and say,

For your tomorrow

We gave our today.

You begin to understand how so many vets felt a sense of guilt that they managed to make it through the war and their belief that the "real" heroes are the ones who never made it home.

As Ron Perlman voiced, "War... war never changes."

Perhaps our addiction to this pursuit is through some need to relate at any level, no matter how shallow, of what it must have been like. Could we have dealt with it? It amounts to a challenge for me most times, but I freely admit that I have difficulty defending my "hobby" to others who don't share it. Somehow it makes me feel guilty for the enjoyment I derive out of it, you know?

Indeed a great post.

Small world.

My father was 39 when I was born. He was aviation ordnance in WWII also. Aboard the Yorktown CV 10 (not the one sunk at Midway, which was CV 5). It's now a museum in South Carolina. Among his (now my) keepsakes was a newspaper article from the Scranton PA paper April 42. It's a 1/2 page photo over 100 men going off to war. The back of the page is the box scores of baseball.

He went to many of the Yorktown's reunions from the early 1970's till he got too old to travel around 2000. He passed on 2006 at age 88. He hated flying as a result of watching many planes fail to come home.

[Rocky Balboa]

ha! I wanna see em writhing around on the ground on fire =D

Flame weapons and and there effects on the battle field is definitely missing. That said, how far BF should go in depicting every detail of it depends on many factors. How far is necessary? In keeping with Cmx2 as a tactical simulation, I think the flame effects should be limited to what impacts the commanders ability to control the battle field. This means the ability to have buildings and dry foliage catch fire, the ability to have smoke from fires obscure the battle field, Having the AI react to the terror effect that such weapons cause, and of course simulating the destruction on men, vehicles, and equipment that these weapons produce.

IMO seeing humans on fire is not necessary to simulate the tactical nature of combat any more than seeing limbs being dismembered or bodies laying in pools of blood. Perhaps this is where BF should draw the line. Of course the bottom line its up to BF to determine how far they want to take it but I think the tactical effects should be their first priority.

Does anyone think their animation resources could be better used in other areas than depicting men doing the stop drop and roll? .... just my .02

[WPO_Jones]

Flame weapons and and there effects on the battle field is definitely missing. That said, how far BF should go in depicting every detail of it depends on many factors. How far is necessary? In keeping with Cmx2 as a tactical simulation, I think the flame effects should be limited to what impacts the commanders ability to control the battle field. This means the ability to have buildings and dry foliage catch fire, the ability to have smoke from fires obscure the battle field, Having the AI react to the terror effect that such weapons cause, and of course simulating the destruction on men, vehicles, and equipment that these weapons produce.

IMO seeing humans on fire is not necessary to simulate the tactical nature of combat any more than seeing limbs being dismembered or bodies laying in pools of blood. Perhaps this is where BF should draw the line. Of course the bottom line its up to BF to determine how far they want to take it but I think the tactical effects should be their first priority.

Does anyone think their animation resources could be better used in other areas than depicting men doing the stop drop and roll? .... just my .02

100% agree with this and I think BF has already shown they know where the line based on their current depictions of weapon effects in the game.

[poesel]

+1 what Rocky said. The way death is depicted in CM is just right. No need for further detail.

[Waffen_PL]

C'mon this is WAR game. We are playing a WAR. There is no point to beautify it. I want to see burning soldiers. I want to see blood and guts. :cool: This is WAR! Do you want to watch a war movie without dirt bodies, burned corpses and ripped off legs? ??? No you don't

[Michael Emrys]

+1 what Rocky said. The way death is depicted in CM is just right. No need for further detail.

+1.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

C'mon this is WAR game. We are playing a WAR. There is no point to beautify it. I want to see burning soldiers. I want to see blood and guts. :cool: This is WAR! Do you want to watch a war movie without dirt bodies, burned corpses and ripped off legs? ??? No you don't

Eeeeewwwwwwww. Creepy.

Michael

[Broadsword56]

Eeeeewwwwwwww. Creepy.

Michael

Yes, and that raises another argument for not making CM -- even with flames added -- any more graphically violent than it already is:

If you make a game more creepy, you attract more players who are creeps.

Then the user base becomes creepier, as well as the climate on this forum. The saner users get turned off and drift away, until all that's left are the bottom-dwellers. Eventually the game company might find itself compelled to cater more and more to the creeps just to stay in business.

[Waffen_PL]

LOL. Yeah I'm so creepy. I'm sadistic just like people from graviteam cause they made burning people in their game. How creepy. And the climate on this forum becomes creepier because this game is too bloody and this attract creeps like me lol.

But wait a minute. You are playing war game. You are killing virtual people and having fun, so maybe you are creepy too? So maybe your virtual soldiers should fire with paint? Or blood should be green?

Do you thing that let say Saving Private Ryan should be censored? People should die there in a theater way without a spot of blood just like in old movies? Don't you think that Spielberg made an awful movie for sick creeps?

[Rake]

Putting the whole issue of just why we tend to like this kind of stuff aside for a minute, I would have to say that at 48 I have a much better grasp of it than I used to growing up.

My father was 40 when I was born and I remember being slightly sad and a little puzzled that he didn't show any interest in my wargaming hobby. I also knew that he served in WW2 from 1942 to 1946 in the US Navy as an Aviation Ordinanceman 2nd class aboard the carriers Randolph and Bon Homme Richard. Among his keepsakes, I have a silk aviator's map of the seas around Japan- there in ink around the edge are all the names of VBF-16 men who were killed.

I had time to reflect on all this recently, as my father lost his fight with Parkinson's on December 22, 2012. He was 89 and had a good life with five children, and lots of grandchildren. Although I did talk with him at times about his experiences in the war, I could tell that, like most vets who have seen what war can do to humans, he was still haunted by the loss of friends in their prime. Worse still is just how vividly vets remember the traumatic events that will stay with them their whole life. I can only imagine how much worse it was for the ground forces at "the sharp edge".

From the WW1 era, the Kohima Epitaph- I imagine many of you know it as well:

When you go home,

Tell them of us and say,

For your tomorrow

We gave our today.

You begin to understand how so many vets felt a sense of guilt that they managed to make it through the war and their belief that the "real" heroes are the ones who never made it home.

As Ron Perlman voiced, "War... war never changes."

Perhaps our addiction to this pursuit is through some need to relate at any level, no matter how shallow, of what it must have been like. Could we have dealt with it? It amounts to a challenge for me most times, but I freely admit that I have difficulty defending my "hobby" to others who don't share it. Somehow it makes me feel guilty for the enjoyment I derive out of it, you know?

One of the best posts I've read on this site.

I was reading this thread last night and thinking of posting similar thoughts. Thank you for saving me the time; I could not have expressed it as well. My own father missed WWII, but was just in time for the Korean "conflict". He shared little about his time in Korea, but the best advice he ever gave me was during the draft... he told me to enlist in the Navy before I was drafted. Thankfully, the draft ended just before I was eligible, but I still followed his advice.

As for the other matter, I believe pixeltruppen die by fire now just as they should when flame makes it into the game...jmo

[Wodin]

LOL. Yeah I'm so creepy. I'm sadistic just like people from graviteam cause they made burning people in their game. How creepy. And the climate on this forum becomes creepier because this game is too bloody and this attract creeps like me lol.

But wait a minute. You are playing war game. You are killing virtual people and having fun, so maybe you are creepy too? So maybe your virtual soldiers should fire with paint? Or blood should be green?

Do you thing that let say Saving Private Ryan should be censored? People should die there in a theater way without a spot of blood just like in old movies? Don't you think that Spielberg made an awful movie for sick creeps?

I agree..lets not try and sanitise War. It's horrible and messy. Also we are dealing with animations here not real soldiers and if your not able to make that distinction you have some issues that need looking into.

As mentioned graviteam game is abit more gruesome but it has a great following of sane players who love it.

[womble]

C'mon this is WAR game. We are playing a WAR. There is no point to beautify it. I want to see burning soldiers. I want to see blood and guts. :cool: This is WAR! Do you want to watch a war movie without dirt bodies, burned corpses and ripped off legs? ??? No you don't

"...I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL."

"You're our guy."

[para]

I agree..lets not try and sanitise War. It's horrible and messy. Also we are dealing with animations here not real soldiers and if your not able to make that distinction you have some issues that need looking into.

As mentioned graviteam game is abit more gruesome but it has a great following of sane players who love it.

The flaming crews are hilarious

[Waffen_PL]

You're creepy

I love them too

[Apocal]

LOL. Yeah I'm so creepy. I'm sadistic just like people from graviteam cause they made burning people in their game. How creepy. And the climate on this forum becomes creepier because this game is too bloody and this attract creeps like me lol.

But wait a minute. You are playing war game. You are killing virtual people and having fun, so maybe you are creepy too? So maybe your virtual soldiers should fire with paint? Or blood should be green?

Do you thing that let say Saving Private Ryan should be censored? People should die there in a theater way without a spot of blood just like in old movies? Don't you think that Spielberg made an awful movie for sick creeps?

You actually raise two relevant issues with your otherwise off-putting posting in this thread:

1) Is the issue of how war in general and WW2 in specific is perceived in Russia. They bore the brunt of the fighting and had several times over their share of the brutality and it is reflected in their art, literature, computer games, etc. about the war. The typical western view of WW2 comes much closer to something resembling honorable struggle between otherwise decent men, therefore realistic depictions of brutality by and against the Germans are considered more... indecent? I can't think of the right term for it, but taken as a whole, Brit and American players (or viewers, in the case of TV) don't like seeing the nastiness, regardless of how realistic it was. Russians (in general) don't mind it nearly as much because they were involved in what was considered an existential conflict dating back to the Germans launching a Crusade into Russia to forcibly convert or slaughter the population.

The only western comparison of the era that I can think of would be the conduct of the Pacific war. Awful behavior was a prime complaint about "The Pacific" versus "Band of Brothers", audiences wanted a story of brotherhood in conflict and instead got several hours of fanatical racism and brutality on both sides. Interestingly enough, the original catalyst for one of the books that "The Pacific" was based on was the author's (a USMC vet) utter disgust at seeing a whimsical musical made out of the Pacific theater. The more things change...

2) Another issue, connected to the first, is the idea what you're trying to accomplish with a given medium. Saving Private Ryan was a war movie that tried very hard to show that even a good war could be pretty bad for those involved. Spielberg was deliberately trying to add moral ambiguity into the mix (the runner and "We'd do it too!", etc.) To what degree he succeeded can be debated but his aim was fairly clear: he didn't want to present war as a black or white, discrete moral event.

Battlefront is just trying to make a better wargame to explore the interesting facets of combined arms. They avoided pretty much all the nastiness possible: players are unable to shoot surrendering troops, it is hard to kill wounded enemies, civilians and civilian casualties are ignored outside of roleplaying victor conditions, etc. Totally different aim compared to Saving Private Ryan or any number of other movies about the subject.

[Sublime]

The first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is probably one of the best cinematic anti war demonstrations ever made.

[MikeyD]

Though they will get some use when introduced I wonder just how much use flamethrowers would really get after the novelty wears off. BFC has put in so many 'must have' weapons over the years that nobody ever used, or they got so badly abused that opponents demanded a moratorium on use in battles. Good-old CMBB Sturmtiger for instance. In CMBN one taboo weapon seems to be U.S. Xylophon artillery rockets. My primary recollection of flamethrowers back in CMBB was the flamethrower guy was pretty much guaranteed to die young.

[Waffen_PL]

Ok, I have no idea what is the viewing of WWII in US or western Europe(I'm not Russian). If it is such exalted so it's rather bad but I'm not saying that I want such things like killing prisoners, civilian executions or rapes or something like that. But this is a WARgame and your pixelsoldiers fire at each other and virtually die. There are dead bodies on a battlefield but this is how the real battle looks like. And now someone who plays such game says that flamethrowers would be too much and burning people would be too brutal. That really amusing. You don't have scruples to fire with 150mm cannon to opponents infantry but you don't want to flame them because you've got some strange moral problems with that? That's really strange relativism. So why you are playing wargame? I don't get it How do you think war should be represented in such game?

MikeyD - Flamethrowers was great in BB and AK IMO

[Michael Emrys]

Battlefront is just trying to make a better wargame to explore the interesting facets of combined arms. They avoided pretty much all the nastiness possible: players are unable to shoot surrendering troops, it is hard to kill wounded enemies, civilians and civilian casualties are ignored outside of roleplaying victor conditions, etc. Totally different aim compared to Saving Private Ryan or any number of other movies about the subject.

A very cogent observation that should be kept in mind as this debate develops. SPR and The Pacific were both excellent in achieving their goals. CM has different goals and that should be kept front and center in comparing it to movies.

Michael

[DavidFields]

First, I will agree that Gromit's posts is one of the best I have ever seen on this site.

And I want flamethrowers modeled in CM2, to the extent they were there.

But sometimes I need to step away from CM2, indeed now is one of them--and play something more abstract for awhile.

I was never in war, but I am a physician. And sometimes one does things which might hurt people, not because one wants to hurt people (at least, in my case), but to overall help people.

Wargames give people an idea of how to use force. For what reason they use force? That is very individual.

[Waffen_PL]

A very cogent observation that should be kept in mind as this debate develops. SPR and The Pacific were both excellent in achieving their goals. CM has different goals and that should be kept front and center in comparing it to movies.

And i have explained my point and you didn't answer questions. Why killing virtual soldiers with granades or mortars is good and why doing this with flamthrowers is not? Why dead bodies lying all over the battlefield is ok but burning bodies are too brutal? Don't you see contrary. How war should be represented in such game? Maybe this should be a game about paintball not WWII?

Battlefront is just trying to make a better wargame to explore the interesting facets of combined arms. They avoided pretty much all the nastiness possible: players are unable to shoot surrendering troops, it is hard to kill wounded enemies, civilians and civilian casualties are ignored outside of roleplaying victor conditions, etc. Totally different aim compared to Saving Private Ryan or any number of other movies about the subject.

none of this "nastiness" i was talking about...

SPR and The Pacific were both excellent in achieving their goals.

PS. Saving Private Ryan is very poor movie btw, maybe except Omaha landing but never mind ;P

[Broadsword56]

BFC's focus, rightly, has been on the realistic tactical challenge of combined arms warfare. I see it as the PC incarnation of the classic hex-and-counter board wargames, ASL, etc. I think it's great that we have a game family that occupies this particular niche.

On the PC, there's a continuum that starts with the totally abstracted, bloodless and chesslike experience of games like Panther's Conquest of the Agean and Battles from the Bulge, and culminates in the adrenaline-soaked, immersive real-time shooters like ArmA2 with all the blood and wounding mods installed.

One could argue that everything from chess to pro football to CMBN to Call of Duty all simulate war, to varying degrees. Real war is always hell. But IMHO it's an endless and inconclusive philosophical argument to declare that any a war *game* at given point on that continuum is immoral.

I'd submit that in the end, the morality or immorality of wargaming lies not with the game, but with the player. Only you know your motives for booting up that particular game again and again, and where the emotional payoff really is for you.

Even if CMBN had flaming soldiers dropping and rolling in horrifying fidelity, I'd probably avoid seeing it because I'm more interested in the tactical decision-making or seeing the realistic uniforms or the sheer spectacle of a battalion moving out. But if you get your main thrill from watching the biggest fireballs or goriest casualties, then you have to look into your own soul and ask why.

And yet...we all know that tug of voyeurism when driving past a car wreck scene -- morbidly curious to see something, afraid we might, and ashamed that we've looked. Maybe it's just the basic human need to think, "Thank heaven it wasn't me."

Bottom line: If the realism of a graphically realistic combat event in a wargame makes you think "war is hell," then good. But if you stare at that same event and think, "LOL look at that sucka scream and burn! I could watch that replay all day!" then I think you need to take a step back and ask yourself some serious questions.

To be sure, some mass-market shooter videogame makers are marketing to the "LOL" crowd and exploiting the graphic aspects for that reason. To me that's immoral. But just because a wargame uses graphic realism doesn't necessarily make the game itself immoral. It depends on why those aspects are there and how they're handled.

It's a lot like the debate over sex in movies. Just because a movie might contain scenes that realistically and graphically depict sex, is it porn film? It could be porn or it could be a great love story. Are the filmmakers deliberately appealing to what courts call "prurient interest?" Is there any redeeming social value? Would a reasonable person in that community consider it porn? No one has ever solved this once and for all -- hence the endless debates, rating systems, etc.

[kensal]

Flamethrowers ought to be modelled in CMBN if they can be done so accurately because it is a simulation and so should catch all aspects of the history it is intended to simulate.

The idea that modelling flamethrowers crosses a moral line is flawed in my view - the majority of WWII casualties were caused by artillery (I think I have seen figures around 70%) and a significant percentage of those killed by artillery were probably not killed outright immediately but instead suffered prolonged, painful and often lonely deaths on the battlefield. I do not think that that represents a significantly better way of dying compared to dying by flamethrower.

While handheld flamethrowers may not have been that common or used in Normandy (I simply don't know - I don't think the British used them much and they are primarily attack weapons, so the Germans probably used them sparingly, and I do not know about the Americans), the British did use the Crocodile flame thrower Churchill variants a lot and they were very popular with the British infantry they supported and reportedly very effective.