Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.
Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).
@kyros, on Apr 25 2007, 12:39 AM, said in Oh Man...:
This is ridiculous, it's a game, for crying out loud. I don't think anyone is supporting nuclear warfare here. You blow stuff up and bits and numbers "die." Seriously.
Do not underestimate the power to "manipulate" your mind. Fact is that DEFCON rewards you for killing people with nuclear weapons, which makes you think that a nuclear war is something positive, at least if you win. These experiences are made in a virtual game, but are saved in your real head, where they can be projected from onto the real world, too.
@zap, on Apr 25 2007, 07:54 AM, said in Oh Man...:
Ditto what Kyros said.
I can't believe you guys are overanalyzing a game. :blink: It is an excellent game, but I can tell the difference between a computer simulation and real nuclear war, I think...
Of course you know that DEFCON is just a computer game, but a computer game which can implicate that a nuclear war is a funny, exciting, strategic and all in all a positive experience. You may think that the reality is something entirely else, but other people could be less able to differentiate as good as you.
Is the implication that nuclear violence in video games changes us somehow, when shooter violence doesn't? (IMHO)
That's an absurd leap.
Who says that shooter violence isn't doing so? There's a difference between shooter violence and DEFCON violence, though, which "allows" me to play the latter. Shooter violence tries to be as realistic as possible, allowing your mind to connect the virtual reality a lot better with the real one than DEFCON does. This game shows the same approaches like a shooter, letting your major rewarded target be the entire destruction of your enemy's population (humans). But normally every victory contains losses of lifes with the same weapons you are also using, which is showing you the devasting effects of your doings. Otherwise an one person shooter always lets you think that the possibility of winning without losing exists, and DEFCON isn't doing that for me, at least.
I think one of the biggest distinctions in my mind between a shooter and a game such as Defcon is the difference in who it is you are killing to achieve victory.
Let us take a shooter for example. Rainbow Six Vegas. In this game you play the role of a Special Forces officer charged with eliminating a Terrorist Threat to a civilian population in Las Vegas. Now, while in reality I may believe that the whole premise for the game is totally preposterous, that brute force may not always be the best response to violence, and that I personally would not be willing to kill another human being, I am willing to entertain the premise set out by the game because I have no problem pretending to kill terrorists in a game.
In Defcon, the premise for the game is that killing as many defenseless, innocent civilians as you possibly can is the key to victory. I, personally, cannot accept that as a pretense for a game that I would play for entertainment. I would say that is the core difference between violence in other games and the implied violence in Defcon.
To those of you who seem baffled or surprised by this discussion, may I remind you that I am not here to tell you what games you can or cannot play, and was really just interesting in having a discussion about the moral issues Defcon brought up for me. As I have said before, I am not here to judge.
There is no such thing as an innocent civilian. They've all done something , even if it's merely support the government that is now launching nukes at you.
@crescentedge, on Apr 25 2007, 04:40 PM, said in Oh Man...:
Calling the enemies "terrorists" is a way of making them "not-people" so that they can be killed without remorse. By removing human motivations from them, it is possible to more easily rationalize killing them. DEFCON removes that level of abstraction. That is all.
xander
i stopped playing DEFCON because i don't want to see 12.1 people dead in my city. or 13.9 people in tokyo. i like the strategy of the game but i don't want to kill anybody even if they are digital. i think that ambrosia should put sort of warning on the game page.
Digital people aren't people. But I suppose anybody that can't tell the difference should stay away then.
And it says in Defcon's description that it is hinged around nuclear warfare. Even the title says that. If you can't take the hint that the game is about blowing people up then you probably shouldn't play.
I think this game is pretty good in what it portrays and how. From the cold clinical look and feel of the map, icons, DEFCON warnings, and with the background (what sounds like) recycled air...and then the horror of what is happening is poignantly brought about with the sobbing woman...that was pretty much when my simple game of strategy turned into something a bit more thought provoking and more human.
I think anyone who doesn't feel a bit hesitant about how in reality there are folks who have their hands hovering over a big red button waiting for a call from one person who can easily wipe out millions should really start read the title, "DEFCON: Everybody Dies" and think over what the game is about.
We should remember not to believe in Stalins quote "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Each death was a human being...even if digitally represented.
Good game all around. Makes one think about what they are doing. Bravo!
@mrxak, on Apr 25 2007, 01:14 PM, said in Oh Man...:
Do you truly believe that? I agree that it is probably impossible to find a human being who hasnt done something wrong (although right and wrong are constructs, so lets assume we can agree on some universal basics), but to say that supporting a government who has engaged in Nuclear Warfare makes you a target for justifiable annihilation doesnt logically follow in my opinion.
Lets take this to a human level for the sake of clarity. I pay my taxes. In a sense, this means I support my government since I provide them with currency. And yet, there are many actions my government has taken or may take in the future that I do not support in the least. Because I pay my taxes, am I to be held 100% accountable for the actions my government takes, no matter what they are or how I feel about them? By your logic, living in a country that goes to war (Even if you oppose said war and took steps to prevent it) makes you just as much a valid target as a soldier on the front line.
Why then, do you think, humanitarian law as well as international protocol differentiates absolutely between an innocent civilian and a soldier?
@darwinian, on Apr 25 2007, 01:26 PM, said in Oh Man...:
I agree that terrorists are rarely humanized (a very valid point) and yet, semantics aside, do you believe that someone who has taken hostages, blown up buildings, and is prepared to detonate more bombs is somehow as innocent as a guy going to work in the morning living in a country that for whatever reason has gone to nuclear war if you know nothing more than those few facts? As stated earlier, it is true that in a game like Vegas, the Terrorists are shells with a label slapped on, people who have no motivation for killing other than personal gain or profit, which, in turn, does make them very easy to eliminate. However, this still doesnt address the issue that regardless of the depth of character a terrorist is given, they have chosen to break the law and blatantly and directly endanger human life. Within the game conduct, it seems to follow that they must be willing to deal with the consequences. When a real human takes hostages, it doesnt matter why he does it, he could have plenty of human motivations for doing so, but the situation will still be treated the same way.
@mrxak, on Apr 25 2007, 05:46 PM, said in Oh Man...:
@jacabyte, on Apr 25 2007, 07:39 PM, said in Oh Man...:
If you can't take the hint that the game is about blowing people up then you probably shouldn't play.
I dont quite understand why people are feeling the need to be so hostile and insulting. Of course I am fully capable of telling the difference between a real human being and a digital one. The said, the moral, ideological, and emotional responses and questions that arise from an event, even one that is not real are still valid and worth exploring.
This post has been edited by CrescentEdge : 25 April 2007 - 08:38 PM
Wow, I really can't believe this topic has gained so much momentum. It's interesting to see how different people can think about the same issue. So here's my two-cents:
1. Don't look to video games for a basis of morality. I hope no one expects that games reflect what ought to be done in reality. This applies to all games that emulate "real life" -- from Civilization to Rainbow Six, I hope people realize that what goes on in these games has very little to do with what ought to be done in reality.
2. To get excited about the realness of DEFCON, you really have to use your imagination. Sure, it uses the same cities and map as you'd see in a geography book, but can anyone really believe that Africa can go toe-to-toe with the rest of the world in a nuclear Armageddon? And for that matter, does anyone really worry about nuclear war anymore? The Cold War is so '80's.
3. People have the wrong idea about what war is. A lot of people seem to think that it is possible to remove all the 'bad' people and leave the 'good' people alone, much like we can remove cancerous growth from a person. This is much to simple a view of war. My good is the enemy's bad (not in everything of course, but in a lot of things) and vice-versa. It's naive to think that war is a precise endeavor. Even if you can drop a bomb precisely on target, you are still dropping 2000 lbs. of high-explosives and shrapnel that is anything but precise. There are two opposing factors to waging war successfully: Complexity and Brutality. The more brutal you are, the less complex your plan can be. If you don't want to be brutal, you must have a complex plan. Example: The Iraq war. If we were totally brutal, we could easily win the war. My brother, an officer in the Army, assures me that we could easily win all of Iraq if we laid siege to troublesome Iraqi cities and starved the people until they killed all the insurgents for us. Once they tell us the insurgents are dead, we give them food and water. If they lie about the insurgents being dead so that we end the siege (this would most likely happen to the first several cities that are besieged) we simply carpet bomb the entire city until there is not a single person or thing alive. Then we move to the next city. Word would travel and soon the whole country would be very cooperative. However, we are not that brutal. So that means we have to come up with a complex plan to win the war. Think about the plan we have today; it involves many things, including winning over the people, setting up a government, policing the Iraqi citizens etc. etc. It has become so complex that it seems like most people have no idea what we're trying to accomplish anymore. And it's not because our generals are dumber than they were in World War II, it's because their task is much more complex.
4. There really is no such thing as an innocent civilian. Now, please don't go thinking I'm crazy because I say that, try to think about it. How does a country come to have an evil person in charge of its government? Could someone who kills hundreds of thousands of our fellow countrymen ever lead America? What is our responsibility if someone truly evil comes to power? I can tell you that a dictator cannot possibly come to power in America, especially not one who kills Americans. Why not? Because we would not stand for it. We would rise against him and destroy him. In fact, I would say that we have a responsibility to do so. If we do not do anything, we have brought it upon ourselves. I don't see any neutral ground here: either you are for the evil or you are against it. No matter what you do, you are either giving time and money to the evil government or you are trying to destroy it. So what should you do if you do not want to support an evil government, but you cannot oppose it? The answer is simple: run. There is no shame in abandoning your country if it has abandoned you. I do believe there are innocents, but I believe that when they decide to support their country, they become nothing more but another resource for their government. And while I believe all that, I still do not like the idea of killing civilians (even though they are not innocent). They are just people, like you and me. Only they are in a very difficult situation. That is why I think effort should be made to save these people. This can be done even with a brutal war. Instead of bombing them without warning, encourage the civilians to run away, or encourage them to get away from places they may be mistaken for an enemy. But we should never encourage them to keep living their lives like nothing is happening! This is a war for crying out loud! People die and things get destroyed. We don't want people living through that. And we can never guarantee that they will be safe in a city we are attacking. In fact, if we assure them that they will die if they do not leave, more of them will run away and be safe because of it.
So there's my not-so-concise opinion (whew!). Also, please note that I'm not suggesting that you abandon your country because you do not like a decision made by the government (assuming you live in the free world). That is only a worst-case scenario. We are fortunate enough to have a government that listens to its citizens and allows them to change what the government does. So if you don't like what's going on, I highly recommend you try to change it by staying here and doing what you can to fix it.
I'm looking forward to hearing what people have to say.
~Joel
CrescentEdge,
I was rereading my post, and I thought I sounded kind of like a jerk in the first two points. Let me clarify a bit: I am really glad you brought up this issue. It's probably the most intellectually stimulating post I've seen in this forum to date. Also, I agree that what happens in a game is important in a sense. Even though I don't think that you should use games to judge what is good or bad, I do think that what you allow yourself to experience does have an effect on what you think -- Garbage in, garbage out. I also think that people have different tolerance levels for things; you don't like the idea of blowing up civilians, even virtual ones. I respect that, and other people should too. I'm of the opinion that we should respect others' feelings about things, even if we don't hold that view ourselves. I don't like people who put down others for a difference of opinion, and that was not my intention. However, you should recognize that people are different and tolerate different things. I don't think it's wrong to play a game like DEFCON unless you are offended by it. If it bothers your conscience, it may be good for you to not play. If it doesn't bother another person, it may be OK for them. Remember, you don't have to convince anyone here of your opinion, you only have to get them thinking. And you've done a great job of that so far.
@train_glunkr, on Apr 25 2007, 11:20 PM, said in Oh Man...:
Don't look to video games for a basis of morality.
Very Sound advice. When I originally posted this topic I was interested in exploring what people are willing accept as reality when they play a video game and where they draw the line. What does a game have to put forward as a necessity for victory for you to stop playing it? When can you write off something as - entertainment - and when does it become too much? It's a hard topic to post in because you must preface everything you say with, - With regards to video games I feel, since, at least for me, what I am willing to play as a game differs greatly from what I would do in real life and I suspect this is the case with most everyone here. As we have established, no one here believes that Nuclear War is a positive thing, but many are willing to participate in a fictitious reenactment of Nuclear War carried out against population centers for the sake of entertainment.
And thus, my initial response to the game was the odd use of a scoring system that awarded points for killing civilians.
To that end, a few of you have responded to the use of the term - Innocent Civilians - claiming that it is an oxymoron. For the sake of discussion, it might be wise to examine the usage in its original context before we get too carried away with semantics and what connotes true innocence.
When I first used the phrase, it was in reference to the scoring system of the game, which, as previously acknowledged, awards points for military targets destroyed as well as the total number of civilians killed.
One of the definitions of the word innocent, and the one I was using in my statements, is as follows:
a. Not dangerous or harmful; innocuous.
As Train and MrXak have pointed out, every citizen could be branded - guilty - given their level of participation in the government of the country in question, but with when viewed using the definition stated above, it seems that in the context of war, there are certainly innocent civilians, or at the very least, people who pose so little direct threat they should not be valid targets. After all, an unarmed civilian poses no immediate military threat to another country. They may have different ideologies, they may work and pay taxes in the country at war with you, but they are innocent as far as I am concerned and certainly have not performed any action that validates them as a target for a direct, intentional nuclear attack.
I don't see any neutral ground here: either you are for the evil or you are against it. No matter what you do, you are either giving time and money to the evil government or you are trying to destroy it. So what should you do if you do not want to support an evil government, but you cannot oppose it? The answer is simple: run. There is no shame in abandoning your country if it has abandoned you. I do believe there are innocents, but I believe that when they decide to support their country, they become nothing more but another resource for their government.
There is some very strong black and white thinking here that I disagree with fully since in life there are very rarely two absolutes with no middle ground, but let us bring this back to original context. You go on to say:
They are just people, like you and me. Only they are in a very difficult situation. That is why I think effort should be made to save these people. This can be done even with a brutal war. Instead of bombing them without warning, encourage the civilians to run away, or encourage them to get away from places they may be mistaken for an enemy. But we should never encourage them to keep living their lives like nothing is happening! This is a war for crying out loud! People die and things get destroyed. We don't want people living through that. And we can never guarantee that they will be safe in a city we are attacking. In fact, if we assure them that they will die if they do not leave, more of them will run away and be safe because of it.
It sounds to me like you are genuinely concerted with the welfare of the population of a country at war. Your tone airs a bit on the side of - Get out of the way or we might kill you,? but I am hoping that this is only because you do not want to see those killed who do not need to die.
And so, this has been and still is the basis for my question to you all.
Why does Defcon award so many points for killing civilians? In what way could the slaughter of millions of civilians really solve anything? Would a - brutal -? approach to war really lead to a military victory? Could you even call it a - victory -? when in the end, you killed in excess of 35 million people?
A side note: With regards to your comments about the war in Iraq: I do not know that a discussion of the war in Iraq would be wise here since I get the sense our ideological differences on the subject are many in number and quite vast in scope.
(I'm having to bite my tongue here too keep things on topic, but I will refrain from posting about the war since that wasn't my intention when I posted originally.)
- - - - -
@train_glunkr, on Apr 25 2007, 11:39 PM, said in Oh Man...:
(See above for the post by Train, trying to keep things a bit shorter by not quoting too much.)
This is genuinely appreciated and I thank you for your sincerity and compliments. As I have stated before and will state again. I have no intention of judging anyone here for playing Defcon nor do I wish to change anyone's opinion about which games are okay to play and which aren't. I recognize that everyone here has varying views on this topic and I am open to hearing what they are.
This post has been edited by Mackilroy : 25 April 2007 - 11:52 PM Reason for edit: Cleaning up your formatting...
@train_glunkr, on Apr 26 2007, 05:20 AM, said in Oh Man...:
So you're not thinking that things which are rewarding you for doing something make that "something" more positive?
Ahm, just because currently people don't talk about it that much this doesn't mean that the danger vanished. The nuclear weapons are still there, and can always be used. So thinking about it, and yes, even in real life, is never a bad thing.
I don't think that total brutality would lead to victory, especially not in countries like Iraq. Being brutal always lead to more resistance, eventually supported the enemies of the occupying force and sooner or later caused a defeat, that happened very often in the past. Was Russia able to hold its west? Or Austria the Balkans and the rest of its east, back in the 19th century, beginning of the 20th one?
I don't want to start an Iraq discussion here, if you're thinking about that. I just wanted to show you my opinion about such a war schematic.
You can't draw such a straight line, as CrecentEdge already mentioned. Look at the second world war. Germans were manipulated first with wrong promises, avoiding them voting against the new government. And after some years... even if some were able to see the true government through all the propaganda, saying something against it immediately caused your death. And there aren't many people who really risk saying something, even citizens of the USA. So just saying "They aren't resisting, so they must be evil" is wrong.
You should target the enemy populations for the same reason you target their military: Self-preservation.
I've studied international relations and the Cold War specifically, and international strategy demands that war be total when it comes to nuclear exchange.
The obvious case here is that your opponent is trying to destroy your population. The reason they do this is because they expect you to do the same. International relations are full of chicken-and-the-egg problems, but that's just how reality is. Should the world go on in any real way after a nuclear war, you do not want the enemy's industrial and economic power intact with yours completely annihilated. To butcher a famous quote, you don't want to fight World War IV with sticks when the other guy still has tanks. Nuclear war is not fought between nations, it is fought over nations. Think about the most likely scenarios for an actual nuclear war. USSR vs. US over Eastern Europe. China vs. US over Taiwan. North Korea vs. US over South Korea. Pakistan vs. India over Kashmir. There's no reason to fight a nuclear war unless you're able to have the industrial and economic power afterwards to achieve your goals for the trigger region. Thus, if they're launching nukes at you, you'd better be launching nukes at them. Your strategic aims are completely lost if you do not nuke cities.
Another important international relations concept is credibility. You only threaten MAD if you are 100% prepared to follow through on it. MAD only works if both sides are committed. The basis of Defcon's scenario is the carrying out of MAD (Everybody Dies), thus it is entirely appropriate to follow through. You lose all credibility as a nation and should you survive a nuclear conflict without carrying out your threats, which in the long run will result in far more wars you have to fight in the future. But likely, you will simply cease to exist. The threats you make you follow through on, because it makes your enemies hesitate.
I just feel like I should contribute this (on the topic of killing civilians in DEFCON):
Quote
Just repeat to yourself, Its just a game I should really shut up and play!
If you want to really think about it, go and watch WarGames. The movie basically makes the same point, which is to win at the game of Global Thermonuclear War, the strategy is just to not play. Because, as the tagline to DEFCON goes, "EVERYBODY DIES."
You must give kudos to Introversion for making yet another game that really makes you think about stuff. I was already impressed when Darwinia made me really care about the survival of a computer program, and feel that a virus itself was pure evil. They've gone and done it again with DEFCON.
@freq245, on Apr 26 2007, 07:54 AM, said in Oh Man...:
I'm having a hard time deciding what exactly you're trying to say. Could you try to clarify it for me please?
I agree. But it's not enough to only think about how not to use nuclear weapons, we also need to think about how to use them. I'm not sure what you think about the nuclear bombs used on the Japanese in WWII, but I think that dropping them was the right decision, and I'm glad people thought it out beforehand. So in a sense, DEFCON can be a good exercise in how to protect your country in case of all-out nuclear war. Or, you can take home the bigger lesson: all-out nuclear war is not good for anyone.
I will be honest here and tell you that I don't know enough about Russia, Austria or the Balkans to comment on them. However, I do know that every empire in history eventually weakens and loses territory and influence. So even if an empire can effectively win a war, they cannot hold on to what they have forever. Again, I don't know the specifics of the conflict you mentioned, but I think it's possible to wage effective war and later lose the conquered territory. Also, I think "victory" is a subjective term. Brutal warfare was used with great success by the ancient Persians and Assyrians. They were able to conquer most of the known world. They would routinely besiege and conquer cities, kill and enslave peoples and take everything for themselves. To them, this was victory. And I would say that they were very effective at it. I'm not saying anyone ought to wage war like they did, I'm just saying it is an effective way. Modern warfare relies on complexity, and that was my point.
Just because everyone is doing something (in this case, not resisting) doesn't make it right. Also, many of the people in Germany tried to be ignorant of things that were happening. They did not want to know because it let them blindly continue along the path of self-preservation. Ignorance is not a good excuse to behave wrongly. I do agree that speaking up would have most likely gotten them killed, but that still does not justify inaction. You seem to think that the most "right" a person can do is save their own skin. The mob should not determine what is right and wrong. Nor should convenience.
@crescentedge, on Apr 25 2007, 11:39 PM, said in Oh Man...:
Honestly, I think DEFCON has the scoring system for gameplay, not for ideology. They designed the game to be balanced between protecting your citizens and killing everyone else. If the goal of the game was not total annihilation, I think there would be many other considerations -- how to get rid of another player's nukes without escalating violence, how to destroy military targets without being detected, etc (I know CrecentEdge talked about this earlier). In short, it would be a different game. Actually, a game like that might interest me more than DEFCON does...
When you mention victory, you need to think of the context. What victory ought to be in real life is not victory in a game. What you have to do for victory in DEFCON is clearly spelled out: you need to kill civilians. In Monopoly you have to get hotels and bankrupt everyone else (something I would not condone in real life). So while I think "victory" in DEFCON rings hollow in reality, I think it's safe to say that it really is victory in the context of the game.
When I originally posted this topic I was interested in exploring what people are willing accept as reality when they play a video game and where they draw the line. What does a game have to put forward as a necessity for victory for you to stop playing it?
I do think that there is definitely a line that ought to be drawn. Personally, I have never and will never play Postal because the victory condition (killing everyone in strange ways) is something I do not at all approve of and something I would take no pleasure in accomplishing.
Edited for clarity.
This post has been edited by Train_Glunkr : 26 April 2007 - 08:50 PM
You are ALL morons for debating the ethical ramifications of switching 1s and 0s.
I disagree, Anax. If I don't want to play a game based on gorily murdering people with a chainsaw and then setting them on fire, does that make me a "Moron," because the people involved are not 'real people' and merely strings of binary? I don't think so. I admit that Defcon is quite different, but in some ways it's worse. The cold, clinical annihilation of millions of people in such a detached manner is rather frightening, don't you think?
I agree that a game where you were to destroy military capability with as few civilian losses as possible would be more enjoyable to me, though this game certainly does make you think. I doubt that this was unintentional, I bet that that was half the idea behind the game.
On the other hand, i do think that it's not really worth too much of a moral debate, and i enjoy the game anyway.