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moths posted:"Acceptable war crime" is on the same list as "when it's ok to use the n-word" and "perpetual motion machine" in terms of non-existent things that broke-brain white weirdos obsess over convoluting into existence. To be fair to Train it was never distributed. I believe it was always intended as an art piece and not a commercial work. That obviously doesn’t invalidate your point on whether the twist is an effective form of commentary.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:17
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:MGS games are a mess, sure, and there's talk about how its not possible to be truly anti-war if your games or movies or books are fun or entertaining to read but at the same time nobody would read a book or watch a movie or play a game that was a truly miserable experience to get through, at least not enough to justify the costs of producing that. It's a fine line to walk for sure, otherwise: Yeah, and part of that constructed nonsense is that he only had VR training, instead of you know being a child soldier under the command of Solidus, which is very much a part of the narrative. Raiden also wasn't designed as a chump, but to be cool to a different segment of the audience than Snake, so trying to make him a gotcha for people that liked the VR missions is some weird stuff. Also feels weird to be against bonus missions, when pretty much every game after that has them, either as VR missions(2,GZish), Multiplayer modes(3,4) or just regular side missions(5,PW). And the finding out who he is is sadly undermined in 4 and once again in Rising, because it turns out that actually all he'll ever be is a killing machine. And Big Boss and Ocelot are very much the overall "heroes" because even if their methods are wrong, they are the ones that are actively fighting against the patriots massive world spanning conspiracy to take over the world, in the end Solid Snake is just a bit player to that. TheDiceMustRoll posted:They also managed to go goofier than Kojima somehow by having the main villain at one point fold raiden into a football and punt him Zurai posted:Reminds me a tiny bit of Papers, Please. Of course, Papers, Please gives you agency about it, which is (one of the reasons) why it's such a great game.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:22
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The thing that makes me think Train is useless as commentary is the fact that for the real Nazis, there was no twist. They knew they were sending people to concentration camps. Odilo Globocnik and Albert Ganzenmüller didn't have a moment of dawning realization where they came to understand, "hey, we're sending people to Auschwitz, that's not good." The game is a nasty "gotcha," no more.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:24
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vgs has completely taken over this thread
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Jul 12, 2023 17:25
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The problem with MGS is the same with Resident Evil: every basic aspect seems to have been scribbled on a cocktail napkin in the mid-to-late 90s. Attempts to make it a Serious Story about geopolitics and black ops seem to come after the fact, and always involve making the plot even more convoluted than it was before. I get that the series is in part a parody of Tom Clancy gunfucker bullshit, with its bosses who are like an obese arsonist on rollerskates and a guy with bees in his pockets, but that's no excuse to present me with "Zanzibarland" and "Otacon" and a guy pretending to get possessed by an arm named Liliulokalani or whatever. At some point it just devolves into lolrandom monkeycheese.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:45
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Cessna posted:The thing that makes me think Train is useless as commentary is the fact that for the real Nazis, there was no twist. They knew they were sending people to concentration camps. Odilo Globocnik and Albert Ganzenmüller didn't have a moment of dawning realization where they came to understand, "hey, we're sending people to Auschwitz, that's not good." It’s supposed to be a commentary, IIRC, on how mechanics in themselves create a story or message in a game, and making the player complicit in the actions implied by that structure even if it’s not explicit. Like, I don’t know, how Puerto Rico is a game “about” colonizing indigenous land through the importation of slaves, or something like that, and the players participate in that even though the indigenous people aren’t represented and the slaves are called “workers”. Though, again, the mechanics imply so many things and frontoviks to Stalingrad is almost certainly equally valid.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:49
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The least realistic thing about Resident Evil is a Midwest city having a functional subway system.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:58
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LatwPIAT posted:Though, again, the mechanics imply so many things and frontoviks to Stalingrad is almost certainly equally valid. That's the thing, if you're just looking at mechanics you could say it's about sending grain to starving people. It's pointless as commentary.
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Jul 12, 2023 18:05
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There's a section in Avidly Reads Board Games where Thurm talks about several board games that deal with these kinds of questions. I'm in the middle of moving, or I'd pull some quotes, but it might be useful for people. The book tries to be directed at an audience that doesn't know board games so well, but it's a short and fun read even if you already have opinions on Legacy games and other niche topics.
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Jul 12, 2023 18:39
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Hell I'm surprised nobody brought up the Brenda Romero game Train, a literal board game where you're told via little cards to load meeples onto trains and you're literally placing the meeples in trains and choosing optimal routes and at the end of the game you're told you're literally a Nazi logistics officer, something that should've been obvious a turn or two in since the traincars are not passenger ones: LatwPIAT posted:The wagon design is pretty similar to the design of the “cattle cars” that took Soviet soldiers to the front, so why should I even look a that and assume I’m packing Jews into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, and not that I’m packing frontoviks into passenger cars bound for Stalingrad? Gotchas like that are super vulnerable to someone just not having the same assumptions and finding the ones being forced on them contrived. The game is not subtle at all. It begins with the breaking of glass to set up the "gameboard", and includes an actual Nazi typewriter.  Close-up: 
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Jul 12, 2023 18:45
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To defend Train a little, from what I gather the intended message is less "surprise, you're evil" and more of a banality of evil / "if you let yourself get lost in the task at hand you can do some truly horrific things almost without realizing it". Like, it's more of an exercise in getting into the mindset of a mid-level nazi and seeing how it's not all yelling slurs and shooting people in the back of the head, and for a lot of the most culpable people in the whole process it's just a day to day job of mundane logistical optimization work, solving math problems in a cubicle, picking up a paycheck, and never actually experiencing the people you're murdering as anything but numbers on a sheet of paper.
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Jul 12, 2023 18:57
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Hel posted:Raiden also wasn't designed as a chump, but to be cool 
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Jul 12, 2023 19:52
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OtspIII posted:To defend Train a little, from what I gather the intended message is less "surprise, you're evil" and more of a banality of evil / "if you let yourself get lost in the task at hand you can do some truly horrific things almost without realizing it". Like, it's more of an exercise in getting into the mindset of a mid-level nazi and seeing how it's not all yelling slurs and shooting people in the back of the head, and for a lot of the most culpable people in the whole process it's just a day to day job of mundane logistical optimization work, solving math problems in a cubicle, picking up a paycheck, and never actually experiencing the people you're murdering as anything but numbers on a sheet of paper. Yes it's a single touring art piece to demonstrate the mundanity of slipping into fascist genocide, not a commercial product. It's not subtle, but it's not really about the "gotcha" it's about pushing aside your own reservations that this all seems a bit off because you want to win and get those sweet, sweet points.
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Jul 12, 2023 20:04
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Ever play Secret Hitler?
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Jul 12, 2023 20:48
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Cessna posted:Ever play Secret Hitler? Once. Unfortunately. I really should have started throwing chairs at the point where they unveiled the, later revealed to be a house,-rule that if the Nazis win, they gotta shout "Heil Hitler", at the latest.
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Jul 12, 2023 20:57
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Nuns with Guns posted:it's about pushing aside your own reservations that this all seems a bit off because you want to win and get those sweet, sweet points. Meltwater.txt
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Jul 12, 2023 20:58
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Warden posted:I really should have started throwing chairs at the point where they unveiled the, later revealed to be a house,-rule that if the Nazis win, they gotta shout "Heil Hitler", at the latest. Yeah, that's not a real rule. Who the hell did you play with?
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Jul 12, 2023 21:02
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Lamuella posted:the only way to be truly anti-war is to be so dummy thicc that the clap of your rear end cheeks stops you from fighting in any battles. Isn't that the premise of that Kardashian Pepsi commercial?
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Jul 12, 2023 21:03
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The common point of Metal Gear Solid and Spec Op The Line is that it is not possible to be “good at war”. It is a phantom that leads you into an abyss. Spec Op is almost a rebuttal to Obama’s “Don’t do stupid things” ideology where bloody, pointless wars can be won because you’re smarter than the dummy that came before. No plans. You’re just better so things will definitely work out okay. You just won’t do the bad things. So easy. MGS takes a soldier that would be considered “good at war” and shows what that accomplishes. A soldier that can start with nothing and non-lethally take down an entire army. A soldier everyone is desperate to have a copy of. Lots of copies. Armies of copies. It is never enough. Legendary perfection is not good enough. Bar Crow fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 21:09
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Bar Crow posted:MSG takes a soldier that would be considered “good at war” and shows what that accomplishes.. MSG is the king of flavor.
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Jul 12, 2023 21:16
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Hmm, so how does it taste?
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Jul 12, 2023 21:23
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Bar Crow posted:Hmm, so how does it taste?
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Jul 12, 2023 21:27
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Cessna posted:Who the hell did you play with? Bunch of nerdy acquaintances of a friend, who were invited to the same boardgame weekend, who had seemed perfectly inoffensive and nice up until that point. It really came out of nowhere, since the games that had been played up until point were just the usual Euro-style games, for instance no wargames where someone insists always playing the Axis or anything like that. I (like to) think it was just really dark and wholly inappropriate humor, since I cautiously tried asking my friend later what the gently caress that was about and he seemed to think it was just edgy, socially inept nerd attempts at humor.
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Jul 12, 2023 22:36
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I always wondered how much they disliked Kojima's philsophy because "Give War a Chance" is one hell of a thesis statement to stick to. They also managed to go goofier than Kojima somehow by having the main villain at one point fold raiden into a football and punt him The characters saying that are also shown to be complete psychos who the protagonist has all the worst things in common with, and knows it. A career mercenary literally saying 'The good old days after 9/11!' and all.
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Jul 13, 2023 01:26
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The characters saying that are also shown to be complete psychos who the protagonist has all the worst things in common with, and knows it. A career mercenary literally saying 'The good old days after 9/11!' and all. Yeah but Jack's entire arc is that he stops bullshitting around and talking about how he fights for justice or peace or whatever. He manages to resolve his internal conflict by going "actually, violent video games are loving awesome and fun and you're a loving nerd, Hideo". Which is in line with a studio known for making games where you're scored on how magnificently you defeat enemies.
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Jul 13, 2023 04:24
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This is a ludicrously un-generous take, esp. since Kojima wrote Rising :v
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Jul 13, 2023 06:23
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Hel posted:Yeah, and part of that constructed nonsense is that he only had VR training, instead of you know being a child soldier under the command of Solidus, which is very much a part of the narrative. Raiden also wasn't designed as a chump, but to be cool to a different segment of the audience than Snake, so trying to make him a gotcha for people that liked the VR missions is some weird stuff. Also feels weird to be against bonus missions, when pretty much every game after that has them, either as VR missions(2,GZish), Multiplayer modes(3,4) or just regular side missions(5,PW). And the finding out who he is is sadly undermined in 4 and once again in Rising, because it turns out that actually all he'll ever be is a killing machine. I mean no single work is going to encompass all aspects of the horrors of totalitarian bureaucracy. Showing how such systems perpetuate themselves on a day-to-day basis is also important. You’re not entirely in a position of power- someone’s looking over your shoulder, you need to keep this job, etc. The perspective of the victims is important but that brings us to how you’d ever make a game of a situation where you have no power at all.
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Jul 13, 2023 06:32
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A very big theme is how war fucks people up and many of them are just doing the only thing they really know how to do, and/or trying to make the best of a bad situation. Whether as a recruit, a conscript, a child soldier or a clone trained from birth, they all have their identities paved over and made into living weapons. Raiden's best acts aren't his own redemption, but saving other kids from the life he was forced into, so even if they aren't unmarred they have a chance to do something better. Also that giant robots and tanks and guns are cool, and it'd be pretty silly to try to pretend they're not. Maxwell Lord posted:I mean no single work is going to encompass all aspects of the horrors of totalitarian bureaucracy. Showing how such systems perpetuate themselves on a day-to-day basis is also important. You’re not entirely in a position of power- someone’s looking over your shoulder, you need to keep this job, etc. Heh. Discussion thread topic reminds me that prob the closest thing here is Paranoia.
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Jul 13, 2023 06:51
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Paranoia rips, and is a really goofy version of what your looking for
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Jul 13, 2023 07:20
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Maxwell Lord posted:The perspective of the victims is important but that brings us to how you’d ever make a game of a situation where you have no power at all. It's not a perfect match, but there was recently a game where you have to make up a new password with increasingly absurd requirements. Which does put you on the victim side of an absurd bureaucratic system. It still weighs fun over message, just like Papers,Please, by showing that you can actually thread the needle and win, which tbf is also a problem with the a lot of the non-fun poverty/refugee simulators. To the point that there have been studies showing that they reduce empathy for migrants/ poor people. This is honestly why I think Train works, because it can only be played in a specific context, and if you release a game to the general public (even w/o profit motive)that is lost and certain messages become harder or impossible to consistently transmit. And even if you don't intend that, accepting that people might take the wrong or in extreme cases harmful message out of it is a risk you gave to either accept, mitigate or deal with.
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Jul 13, 2023 07:29
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sasha_d3ath posted:This is a ludicrously un-generous take, esp. since Kojima wrote Rising :v No he didn't.
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Jul 13, 2023 10:37
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sasha_d3ath posted:This is a ludicrously un-generous take, esp. since Kojima wrote Rising :v I mean, for one, he literally didn't write Rising, and two, its not really me attacking literally anyone, just my interpretation of the work  Framing it like I'm intentionally being mean when its just how I interpret the game's story and themes is weird imo. I just don't really see it as antiwar in particular, its a completely different game in comparison to any of the Metal Gear games. When Liquid goes "It's because you enjoy the killing don't you?!  " and Snake takes the accusation like a slap in the face, it's completely different in MGR:You are explicitly called out by members of Desperado (Sam and monsoon) for just justifying whatever you want in a heroic context so you can whack away at the cyborgs guilt-free and then lets you know that every single person you've been killing has a family, hopes and dreams and only signed up for this because there was nothing else they could do, and that they're all in literal actual terror of you but it's being suppressed by the fancy technology that keeps them alive for ten seconds longer than they would if they fought without all of the cyborg poo poo. They are all literally war refugees and a few of them are brains in a jar. Jack then cackles like a madman, refers back to his past as "Jack the Ripper" and says it's time to "Let 'er rip!" and starts to really revel in the bloodshed and violence. If this is an attempt at telling an anti-war story they're completely making GBS threads the bed harder than Kojima ever did. And that's fine. It's really okay to not have higher-minded ideals about every single activity you do and sometimes it's really just fine to enjoy playing games for the sake of playing them, regardless of the context. You can disagree thats fine its just my opinion
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Jul 13, 2023 11:47
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Not trying to do any sort of gotcha or anything, just curious, but do you extend the same analysis to Verhoeven's Starship Troopers? Is Starship Troopers a fascist film because it portrays the actions of the protagonist in a positive light?
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Jul 13, 2023 12:05
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You are allowed to have your interpretations but the "jack the ripper" persona is raiden disassociating and i dont think the game frames that as positive Or at least i was pretty horrified by it anyway
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Jul 13, 2023 12:13
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:And that's fine. It's really okay to not have higher-minded ideals about every single activity you do and sometimes it's really just fine to enjoy playing games for the sake of playing them, regardless of the context. You can disagree thats fine its just my opinion i gotta hand it to you, you're condescending at the best of times but this is top tier
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Jul 13, 2023 12:39
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If y'all are gonna talk about "war is bad and there are no winners or right choices" you need to talk about Tactics Ogre. It never laughs at you but it sure does make you feel like a monster for doing the lawful thing.
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Jul 13, 2023 12:41
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Ravus Ursus posted:If y'all are gonna talk about "war is bad and there are no winners or right choices" you need to talk about Tactics Ogre. killing ogre babies?
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Jul 13, 2023 12:43
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Ravus Ursus posted:If y'all are gonna talk about "war is bad and there are no winners or right choices" you need to talk about Tactics Ogre. have you considered that because you can end that game as a king that the game is pro-monarchy you can just play games for frivolous fun if you want thats just my opinion Arivia posted:killing ogre babies? p sure all the babies that would die in that massacre were human
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Jul 13, 2023 12:45
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neongrey posted:have you considered that because you can end that game as a king that the game is pro-monarchy I mean, go off but the part that made me feel lovely was the post battle bios where every person you took down was "Jimbo was drafted and caught only because he was looking for his daughter" who you coincidentally also murdered.
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Jul 13, 2023 12:54
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Tekopo posted:Not trying to do any sort of gotcha or anything, just curious, but do you extend the same analysis to Verhoeven's Starship Troopers? Is Starship Troopers a fascist film because it portrays the actions of the protagonist in a positive light? I mean you are absolutely allowed to simple like SST as an entertainment product and appreciate the film-making on display. The CGI is probably some of the best we ever got in that decade and honestly they were good enough using the tech that it at times looks good enough to be a modern film. There's a lot of really great miniature work as well which, sadly, has been disappearing from film as a medium. I'm a huge huge fan of Phil Tippet's works though! I personally have always considered it to be kind of a black comedy more than anything else since most people outside of Rico and Ace in training don't get promoted without the higher up getting brutally killed in a battle iirc and there's a lot of stuff like "ah ha! mobile infantry made me the man I am today!" and he's missing limbs and Razchak orders rico to field-execute him instead of just field-evacuating him right there. I'm just rewatching that specific scene but I don't really see anything preventing Rico and others to just pick the dude up and put him on the boat. There's also oddly anti-fascist things like how women generally have equality but also need a license to have babies, and preventing women from having babies and letting them serve in the military and/or pursue careers is explicitly not something fascists really jive with and I'm convinced that Veerhoven put that in because the original book is rather dismissive of women in uniform outside of noting they can look cute dolled up in military outfits (and have their place in combat as like, medics and truck drivers etc). A better one to talk about would probably be Gears of War since it has similar themes but leans way harder into fascist ideals uncritically with stuff like the guy looking for his wife just blowing her brains out after finding out that she's catatonic(this was allegedly CliffyB's take on the Terry Shiavo controversy, which uh, means that his opinion on that issue was basically take less than a minute to assess your wife's condition and then immediately kill her. CliffyB is really loving dumb however) from the horrors of her time in prison or the "forced impregnation" human farms which is never really dealt with or talked about TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Jul 13, 2023 |
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Jul 13, 2023 12:58
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