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 MrMoustaffa wrote:
If this got implemented games like Spec Ops the line would be 90% spent in a courtroom

At least spec ops made you feel bad for what you're doing, which I think is the main idea red cross is trying to get at.

They want bad things to have bad consequences.

 cincydooley wrote:

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Well, I actually thought they're making a pretty reasonable case. Way better than most "censor stuff we don't like!" arguments that come up.

I did too. Until they said that they wanted to take out torture in games. I think it's a bit naive to think that it doesn't happen in warzones.....

It's not so much about giving a fair and complete portrayal of combat, but more about avoiding the banalisation of some of it's aspects. Anyway, I don't remember that many intricate torture scenes from the player's point-of-view in my games. The longest I remember was Snake Eater, and you were on the receiving end of that one.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:
Would the Fallout franchise count? The Karma system in that game is pretty important.

~Tim?

Oh yeah, forgot about that!

But running after raiders, cutting them up felt bad but was very funny.

 Velour_Fog wrote:
This really isn't necessary. It's quite hard to explain to people who don't play videogames, but I might run around and laugh manically cutting people up with a buzzsaw in fallout 3, but I wouldn't to do that in real life because
a) real people have feelings
b) i'd be in prison for the rest of my life or I'd be shot dead.

If people can't distinguish between fantasy and reality it might be indicative of some mental health issues which aren't the game's fault.

Also, why not do the same thing with movies?

This falls flat sadly.

No most people who play a violent video game will not commit violent acts afterwards, however.

1. The are known exceptions, and while they are rare they do exist. The main relevance of this is because game companies often added disclaimers denying any link between their product and violent behaviour, now disclaimers instead highlight those who commit violent acts on the backs of using the product are mentally ill and those considering such actions should seek medical help and no longerr continue using the product. A sublte gbut significahnt difference.
White Wolf studios is a case in point, intially denying any links between World of Darkness and violent occult behaviour as hysteria, however after some teens mudered thier parents in an orgy of violence clearly inspuired by concepts unique to the Vampire The Masquerade game franchise the company moved from denial to disowning such actions.
This is important because game companies no longer get away with saying there is no correlation between violent fantasy games and crime, which normally followed up by targetting those making such suggestions with vitriolic character attacks.

2. Children in general especially the under 12's are far more susceptible and can commit savage acts fuels by gaming fantasies. This is why some age restrictions for some games should be adhered to. Most 18 certificate stuff is ok for teens, we all saw 18 certificate content underage, but its not nanny state to apply restrictions for those under 13.
While video game related violence is very rare in adults, or more accurately there is no correlation provable, the same is not the casse for children and a number of cases have been documented of hildren playing violent cumputer gamnes and then commiting violent acts.

3. While the idea that people are nort influenced by video games to any degree is a popular one, indeed posters here would like to think they are not in any way effected by their gaming this however is not true either. While criminal acts are unlikely unless the gamer had a pre-existing mental health condition some effect will occur.
- As a case point have you ever played a scary computer game and then felt uneasy going through your house in the dark to go to the toilet in a gaming session. Just like a horror film the imagination is stoked, No I am not saying you believe there are monsters in the shadows just that your subconscious have been tweaked a little.
- Most important of all any attempt to claim that the media doesnt influence our minds can be rightfully dismissed with one word: ADVERTISING. If people were not effected by their media, would advertising be the multi billion dollar/pound./euro industry it is today?. If people can be statistically influecned to buy a product depdending on what rthey have been exposed to in the media is it too hard a jump to say that a computer game or film that glorifies atrocity cannot harden the heart against atrocity.

I can't see it happening in a Zombie Apocalypse game or something. Zombie civilians...zombie kids....zombie women...zombie LEO's......zombie religious figures...Laws of War is out the window...

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
If this got implemented games like Spec Ops the line would be 90% spent in a courtroom

At least spec ops made you feel bad for what you're doing, which I think is the main idea red cross is trying to get at.

They want bad things to have bad consequences.

They were shooting at me, it made sense to use the mortar. I didn't know they were in the trench, oh god...
The CIA guy was making sense, if we took their water then they'd have to give up, I didn't know his plan...
We needed to save the guy at the start, sacrificing the lives of those civilians was worth it if we could save the rest of the city, right? Wait, he got shot and died? Oh god...

Seriously, I was really trying to do good in that game, but I still ended up at the point where the load screen after my death simply said 'it's all your fault'

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:
Would the Fallout franchise count? The Karma system in that game is pretty important.

~Tim?

Yeah, I imagine that comes pretty close to what they're talking about.

I don't think I've ever played a military shooter where I've actually done anything to break the Geneva Convention and its not been portrayed as a bad thing. Not saying that what the Red Cross is suggesting is wrong or anything like that, just that I can't even think of an example off the top of my head.

MW2 is the only one I can think of, with its complete glazing over of fact that you can shoot up an airport.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
This has reawakened memories of conversations in college.

I had an ideas for a game called UN peacekeepers. The premise being you would be sent to different conflict zones and have to prevent escalations and serious human rights violations. You would also get hosed by various child soldiers toting Ak's, Be functionally useless, standing by as civilians were murdered - or worse.

You could also engage in theft and smuggling, with the height being drug smuggling and people trafficking.

Side quests included evading the mother of your illegitimate child.

I would totally play that. Seems like it would be a mind screw

The one time where i actually stopped playing a game because it was glorifying war crimes was Call of Duty:World At War. Basically every russian mission had you gun down tons of german PoWs and I really got sick of it, The game seemed to basically say "its ok to kill PoWs if you think they're really bad"

I now call World at War "World at Warcrimes"

They weren't POWs. They were just germans trying to surrender.

You also were never forced to do it. It was just something you could do.

I never saw it as a glorification of the act. It was just a representation of what actually happened.

TLDR: Optional/encouraged? Sure, could even be positive in some cases. Mandatory? Hell no.

The Karma system in Fallout is important? What about how you can just pass out purified water to that one bum until you smell like roses again?

I feel a punishment for doing the wrong thing system in games will get gamed just like any other system, quite possibly giving people the wrong idea anyway :p

I see this as better implemented as a pre-scripted plot event rather than, oh hey- you shot civilians.. now have a boring cut scene you can't skip as punishment. It really would come down to a game-by-game basis.

Say you're playing X-COM and you blow up a civilian with a grenade while killing an alien. Three things happen: the home country doesn't pay your support money the next month, even if the soldier isn't injured he is still benched for a period of time due to court for the war crimes and such, and maybe the panic level goes up by 1 for any mission involving such acts.

I can see something like this being woven into a game from the beginning, and it being a good thing, a thing to be done to enhance the game and not just make a certain group happy. But not every game would support it. If you're part of some secret branch of the government running around doing covert ops, its unlikely they're going to let you go on trial before your world-saving mission is complete. And it seems like a major slap in the face to "save the world" but have your ending revolve around your heroic character facing down jail time because of civilian casualties. Perhaps its more true-to-life, but it would also be a major downer after the rush of exultation from beating the mega-hard end boss or whatever.

I had to look up the concept of "good" karma on Fallout - I've played hours on that game, never occurred to me NOT to dismember, steal from and generally be mean to people on those games!

I kid, but still, it'd suck the fun out of my Mass effect playthroughs too. (Renegade 4 life)

And the CoD WaW didn't go half as far into the brutality the red army inflicted on the Germans. The nature of war brings out the worst in people.

Basically, I see the Red Cross's angle, but I commit horrible acts in the "virtual world", and laugh about it, but would I really kill everyone in a village with a hammer, before piling their corpses in the street and firing arrows into the corpses? No, of course I wouldn't.
In real life.
In Skyrim, no-one is safe

I don't know if I'd play a game where I spend the last half of it being told off for blasting the limbs off animated civilians. War crimes hearings do not an interesting game make, though YMMV.

I'm waiting for a Parody game lampooning the Red Cross.

Something like the goal is to commit warcrimes and then defend yourself at your court martial. Could be hilarious!

 Orlanth wrote:
*snip*

Orlanth, I'm not saying they don't have an influence on people, but whatever influence they do have shouldn't cause people to go out and murder or assault people unless they have serious mental problems already. A child who murders his parents recreating something in a game can't just be called impressionable. If videogames didn't exist they'd likely get "triggered" by something else.

I'll get on board with this only if all aerial sequences in CoD begin with a requisite preflight. Also only if it's a full six hour box hop that you can't pause or get up from - finally a use for the Kinect. Want to urinate in anything other than a bottle? Too bad, your Kinect will sense you leaving and shut the game off. You'll need to start over.

That makes sense. Trivializing cruelty and death are part of the problem with people nowadays. I like their attitude about this too. Very modern.

If they really want this, then the Red Cross should give Atomic Games a big fat loan to finish making Six Days in Fallujah. The bottom line is that games and reality have almost no connection whatsoever, and when a game does it's to present the "reality" of warfare like Six Days in Fallujah did (The creators made the game based on the experience of Marines with 3/1 and 3/3 about Operation Phantom Fury 2, the second battle of Fallujah, the game is violent, with destructive physics, but very real missions and rules, failing to follow the R.O.E (Rules of Engagement) and L.O.A.C/L.L.W (Law of Armed Conflict/Law of Land Warfare, the local U.S. laws that are essentially the Geneva conventions) were instant game overs. Six Days in Fallujah, which was described more as a survival horror game then an FPS/Action game, was determined to be "too terrible" to expose people to, and was quietly dropped by it's publisher and sent to languish in production hell for telling the true story.

Would MW2 have actually been affected though? The 'No Russian' airport level saw you playing as a CIA operative wearing no uniform or identifying designations.

So I'm not exactly sure they could bring you up on charges at that point.

I think they mostly don't want you "getting away clean" with it.

 Velour_Fog wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
*snip*

Orlanth, I'm not saying they don't have an influence on people, but whatever influence they do have shouldn't cause people to go out and murder or assault people unless they have serious mental problems already. A child who murders his parents recreating something in a game can't just be called impressionable. If videogames didn't exist they'd likely get "triggered" by something else.

This was precisely what I was saying.

However societal triggers are often restricted with good reason.
This is why there are cut in ages for drinking smoking and some media content, to lessen the effect of triggers.

Depending on circumstances activating a trigger can be seen as incitement, which can carry stiff penalties. While a line has to be drawn somewhere it is unfair to let computer gaming off the hook where other triggers are not. Social responsibility means that atrocities in gaming should come with negative consequences.

Its not so much the people who are immediately effected as those who are gradually effected. Violent media innures people to violence, making actual violence more acceptable, whether are a participant or not.

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
If this got implemented games like Spec Ops the line would be 90% spent in a courtroom

At least spec ops made you feel bad for what you're doing, which I think is the main idea red cross is trying to get at.

They want bad things to have bad consequences.

To be honest, I think Spec Ops The Line would quite possibly be a great example of what they are suggesting. All my friends that have played it have come away with varying levels of My god what have I done?.

That was the entire point of Spec Ops: The Line and the property it's based off of, the book Heart of Darkness.

 cincydooley wrote:
I did too. Until they said that they wanted to take out torture in games. I think it's a bit naive to think that it doesn't happen in warzones.....

They don't want it removed from the game, just to have other mechanics added to the game that represent legal penalties.

It'd be quite interesting to have a game where you are able to get extra information and stuff if you commit torture and the like, but it changes the ending. You have the option to use torture and take out terrorist targets when civilians will be caught in the blast... and it will make it much easier to save the world from the terrorists, but you end up serving 15 years for war crimes, and spend the rest of your life as a contraversial figure... But if you complete the game without doing any of that stuff then you end up a celebrated war hero, with a chest full of medals and cushy life


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
I think it sounds like a pretty neat idea for games to implement. I wouldn't want it to be a legal requirement though.

Yeah, nothing like this should be a legal requirement for games, or even something they all feel they have to implement. But as a thought experiment I think it's a really good one, especially in the context of the 'hard men doing hard things' environment of war games we get right now.

 Peregrine wrote:
I wonder which franchise will be the first to include a level where you massacre a bunch of red cross workers as retaliation for this.

Bayonetta 2 will probably do something like that. If not Platinum and Mikami are wonderful.
Suda51 wil do something about it.

 iproxtaco wrote:
MW2 is the only one I can think of, with its complete glazing over of fact that you can shoot up an airport.

The same game has you shoot a fleeing bad guy just to wound him because you want him for information, and the cut scene shows you running off to capture someone else while other guys in your unit stay behind to torture the wounded guy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EmilCrane wrote:
The one time where i actually stopped playing a game because it was glorifying war crimes was Call of Duty:World At War. Basically every russian mission had you gun down tons of german PoWs and I really got sick of it, The game seemed to basically say "its ok to kill PoWs if you think they're really bad"

I now call World at War "World at Warcrimes"

In one of the old Close Combat games... I think it was A Bridge Too Far, enemy troops would surrender and spend the rest of the game trailing behind the unit they surrendered to. There was a bug in the multiplayer, though, where the other player would still get to see whatever these troops could see, so any unit that captured someone could never hide from the enemy - making it impossible for them to set up a new ambush position, and a magnet for enemy mortar rounds. The game didn't let you target these POWs... but you could force fire on their location, and eventually a round would hit them.

The game made you commit a war crime because of its bug

America's Army already does this, doesn't it?

 sebster wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I did too. Until they said that they wanted to take out torture in games. I think it's a bit naive to think that it doesn't happen in warzones.....

They don't want it removed from the game, just to have other mechanics added to the game that represent legal penalties.

It'd be quite interesting to have a game where you are able to get extra information and stuff if you commit torture and the like, but it changes the ending. You have the option to use torture and take out terrorist targets when civilians will be caught in the blast... and it will make it much easier to save the world from the terrorists, but you end up serving 15 years for war crimes, and spend the rest of your life as a contraversial figure... But if you complete the game without doing any of that stuff then you end up a celebrated war hero, with a chest full of medals and cushy life

Or they could go in hard core mode, like Six Days with the brakes off and the safety mechanisms taken out, fully researched, veteran aided, brutal, in your face reality, and even if you do everything right you watch people die around you that you could have protected without clumsy ROE that did more to aid the enemy then it ever did to protect civilians, coming home detached, broken and unable to relate to civilians, outcast even as people shake your hand and call you a hero, happy to sweep you under the rug or into the closet with the rest of the dirty secrets, leaving you to stew in dark places normal human beings don't even like to admit exist much less talk about at parties.

I suppose it wouldn't make for much of a game though, at least the ending arc.


My point here is reality doesn't make for much of a game, it's why soldiers and Marines play video games in our off time. It's fun.

 sebster wrote:

It'd be quite interesting to have a game where you are able to get extra information and stuff if you commit torture and the like, but it changes the ending.

Mass Effect 2 springs to mind (Mass Effect 3 didn't end), as do Alpha Protocol and the KoToR games.

Realism in video games, eh...

Let's start by giving the player a helicopter but when you're surrounded by enemies the pilot says "Sorry bro, I can't engage. I'm just here for eyes on."