CM diversity update from UK MOD

[Placebo]

I have just seen this announcement from dstl, looks like the the UK are getting a more “inclusive” version of CM!

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/diversity-on-the-virtual-battlefield

[Bulletpoint]

That's strange, because I could swear there were already different ethnicities represented in the modern CM titles..

[domfluff]

There are, which means the statement in the video to that effect is not correct.

It's also true that the diversity represented for the UK forces in Combat Mission: Shock Force (and therefore the base for the UK forces in CM:PE) doesn't match up to the real-world UK army, particularly that of 2021.

[AlanSA]

Who knew race was so monolithic. Apparently all white people belong to the same hivemind. 

[Placebo]

I believe it is just talking about voices,  I thought the same there is already ethicities so must just be extra voice wav files.  I can't believe they want to spend the money to do this but must be ticking an "inclusivity" box for someone.

[daft]

1 hour ago, Placebo said:

I believe it is just talking about voices,  I thought the same there is already ethicities so must just be extra voice wav files.  I can't believe they want to spend the money to do this but must be ticking an "inclusivity" box for someone.

Many government orgs in my resident country of Sweden actually have inclusivity and diversity goals, with money set aside in the budget I assume. I also assume this is the case in the UK as well. Lucrative stuff, this. Sign of the times.

[chuckdyke]

Why not have a "Rainbow Division"? Alexander the Great was way ahead of his time.  

[Bulletpoint]

32 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Why not have a "Rainbow Division"? Alexander the Great was way ahead of his time.  

I think it's only fair that the actual people who fight real wars are also represented in game. So if I'm playing a game set in ancient Greece, I would not mind seeing the Sacred Band of Thebes make an appearance, just as I would expect to see female soldiers in a game featuring the modern Israeli Army.

What I don't like is if different minority groups are inserted in times and places where they historically were not present. But that's another story.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Bulletpoint

[Sgt Joch]

visible minorities are already in the game if you look carefully at US or NATO forces in CMSF, CMBS and CMCW. In CMCW, US forces are roughly one third african american.

[AlanSA]

4 hours ago, Placebo said:

I believe it is just talking about voices,  I thought the same there is already ethicities so must just be extra voice wav files.  I can't believe they want to spend the money to do this but must be ticking an "inclusivity" box for someone.

Well the grifter earning a reported £110 000  a year as a "director of diversity and inclusion" in the MOD has to do something with their time. Problem is when he/she has to come up with more boxes to tick.

It's one thing finding voice actors, it's quite another when you have to bring in a third partner into the business to meet diversity quotas so as to qualify for future contracts. Literally happened to a company I worked for. Lo and behold a humble company driver suddenly found himself a partner in the business......

Edited October 1, 2021 by AlanSA

[Erwin]

AFAIK, one cannot specify what trooper will speak in what dialect.  So, one could have white troops speaking (eg) Jamaican or maybe rapping?  Could be a lot of fun.

 

[Howler]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

What I don't like is if different minority groups are inserted in times and places where they historically were not present. But that's another story.

Anything to make history more accessible to young people today is a good thing, right? At some point, culture, ethnicity, race, etc. will also be known. The challenge is to first engage interest in the field of study. Just saying.

[Howler]

38 minutes ago, Erwin said:

AFAIK, one cannot specify what trooper will speak in what dialect.  So, one could have white troops speaking (eg) Jamaican or maybe rapping?  Could be a lot of fun.

 

Are you serious? Why would *anyone* rap a fire mission? I think a US New England accent or southern drawl, for example, would add some flavor to an otherwise bland trooper. I'd also forgive if both were mixed given the current engine limitations...

You need to engage with folks who didn't see when "Leave it to Beaver" first aired. Or, you can keep forcing the world to remain exactly the way you like it. There's comfort in that for sure which you don't seem to want to extend to others...

We older folks don't need to understand nor agree with what passes for current societal norms. Our norms were formed in a bygone time. We engage with society today by following what is currently accepted. We don't have to like it.

I'm not picking on you specifically - I'm ranting against 'reactionary' group think.

[ASL Veteran]

4 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Why not have a "Rainbow Division"? Alexander the Great was way ahead of his time.  

[Battlefront.com]

Even if we "didn't give a toss" (as our Brit friends might say!) about diversity from a socio-political point of view, we do care about it as part of our desire to simulate battlefields as realistically as possible.  That includes things such as race, gender, and language/dialects.  Obviously for us, a humble game developer, there's limitations on how much effort we can put into this.  Though that's true with pretty much every feature in CM, when one thinks about it.  There's only so much time and resources available to us.

A perfect example of diversity enhancing the game experience is in CMFI Rome to Victory where we included Sikh models and textures, but didn't make specific voice samples for them.  For most CM players the effort to have more tailored voices would likely have been wasted, but the visuals?  Totally worth it!

As an FYI, for the MoD we also modified code to select races and genders to reflect the current makeup of British military demographics.

Steve

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, Howler said:

Anything to make history more accessible to young people today is a good thing, right? At some point, culture, ethnicity, race, etc. will also be known. The challenge is to first engage interest in the field of study. Just saying.

I think the way to help young people develop an interest in history is to present the real history. It's plenty interesting as it is.

[Lethaface]

Although I sometimes frown on diversity budget spending here, like our national railways spending a couple of millions changing all the 'speaker' voices to edit out 'dear ladies and gentleman, we have arrived at...' into 'Hello, we have arrived at...'.                                                              

But I don't see what's not to like about more voices and accurate depiction of ethnicities in the game. Also it's not like the UK MoD hired an expensive movie actress or whatever to do the voice recording, but a real soldier. 

Would be nice if the MoD shared that mod!

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by Lethaface

[MikeyD]

MoD's diversity request was super-easy. it was already 80% done before they even asked. The problem was their request for female faces. I had my doubts about being able to properly texture the generic soldier model. I was VERY surprised when it actually worked! Here's a couple women soldier heads being tested in CMSF2.

 

[Erwin]

It's ironic that many of us were asking for female troopers ever since CMSF came out in 2007.  One issue is that AFAIK one cannot assign specific voices to specific troopers. So, one is likely to have male troops speaking with female voices.  However, maybe the tech has move on and specific sex-related voices are possible.  I'd be happy to have our back at rear base off-map artillery voices use sexy female voices for example.

And of course the WW2 titles will be able to feature the famous "red light district" female civilians.  

[Sgt Joch]

The issue with adding women is that all the soldier units are the same size so you only need one set of animations. To have a realistic woman model, you would need a smaller more feminine looking model which requires a new set of animations, uniforms and gear, so a lot more work.

The other issue is that women did not generally serve in front line combat units in the WW2, Cold War or even Shock Force period (2008), so this is only really an issue for Blue forces in CMBS, women are not in combat units in Russia as far as I know.

The simplest solution would be what other sims do and as Erwin mentioned, having women voices in air/artillery missions which only requires new voice files and could be added as a mod.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Sgt Joch

[Codreanu]

A nice addition imho would be the addition of more Central Asian and Turkic looking faces, at least to games with the USSR if not Russia as well. The Soviet army may have been one of the most ethnically diverse armies in the world but all of the faces in game look very Slavic.

[A Canadian Cat]

11 hours ago, AlanSA said:

Who knew race was so monolithic. Apparently all white people belong to the same hivemind. 

The person quoted about wanting more points of view in the war (game) room was not explicitlt talking about skin colour correlating with thought patterns. At least I don't think so. He's a Brit so he is likely talking about the class of British citizen that used to exclusively make up officers and is still a large part of their officer core. If you get a bunch of people who grew up with comfortable amounts of $ and went to a short list of boarding schools taking the same education curriculum then yeah they tend to have learned similar views on the world. If they want to in crease the diversity of experience and educational back ground in their officer core then they are going to get some different races joining the club too.

[A Canadian Cat]

On 10/1/2021 at 2:27 PM, MikeyD said:

MoD's diversity request was super-easy. it was already 80% done before they even asked. The problem was their request for female faces. I had my doubts about being able to properly texture the generic soldier model. I was VERY surprised when it actually worked! Here's a couple women soldier heads being tested in CMSF2.

That looks damn good actually. My limited experience with soldiering is that there are actually a pretty wide range of sizes and shapes. None of that is currently reflected in the models in the game already. It doesn't bother me in the game currently. Adding faces that look like the above into the mix would work quite well. We had some really tall and some quite short guys in the platoon. Granted the women were skewed to the shorter side and the shortest woman was the shortest squaddie but we also had a few women who were over the average height too. So modelling that with a bunch of computer models all the same size is really any less reflective of woman any more then the men.

Edited October 4, 2021 by IanL
spelling

[weapon2010]

now we can all get blown up and die equally

[BFCElvis]

The most surprising thing about this thread is that nobody commented on having a Steve sighting in the video and the award we got from Dstl.