I've played RO (game and mod) since about a year before the retail game shipped, and I've always been curious about something:
How does the RO development team justify the decision to create a game based on the events of one of the most horrible wars in human history?
Let me clarify - I for one enjoy RO as a game a lot - as far as shooters go, it's one of the few multiplayer games that makes a genuine effort at realism, and I find the pace of the game to be enjoyable. However, I don't think that I myself would ever make a game based on World War II, or any other serious recent-history conflict, if it was my choice (though I have done some work on a few mods for other games that involve the Napoleonic wars). Why? Well, it seems a bit to touch a bit too closely on real world problems, and by doing so, it trivializes them. For instance, one would never make a game about having to escape a concentration camp (or a gulag... or, for that matter, a game where one has to guard said concentration camp and prevent inmates from escaping). So is a game about war that different? After all, people were thrust into both situations involuntarily, and suffered in both of them. That is not to say that the concentration camp stands on the same moral footing as a war, just that their portrayal in a game is not all that different in the sense that it would trivialize the very real human suffering experienced in both of them, and so recently at that.
As evidence of this, one has only to look at the RO forums and see all of the fiery rhetoric people use in discussion of Soviet and German equipment and tactics - the number of people who side with one country or the other and see nothing wrong with flinging insults at people who fought and died just sixty years ago. Such criticism might be suitable for an academic who has seriously studied the subject (and also is able to control his emotions a bit better), but these people don't post such stuff out of interest in the historical event - rather, they post it in the same way that (for instance) on the PlanetSide forums one might post about how a certain weapon should be nerfed, or something along those lines. The very real suffering is trivialized by being placed into a game.
Now, I would very much like to hear something like "we don't see it that way" - and I imagine a lot of people don't, - but I thought perhaps I could get some discussion on the subject and see what people think about this rather thorny issue.
I'm specifically posting this on the RO board, because while there are numerous WW2 games, most successful games were initiated for commercial reasons, while RO was a free mod, and thus must have been started for other causes, with the possibility that such an ethical dilemma may have been considered.
How does the RO development team justify the decision to create a game based on the events of one of the most horrible wars in human history?
Let me clarify - I for one enjoy RO as a game a lot - as far as shooters go, it's one of the few multiplayer games that makes a genuine effort at realism, and I find the pace of the game to be enjoyable. However, I don't think that I myself would ever make a game based on World War II, or any other serious recent-history conflict, if it was my choice (though I have done some work on a few mods for other games that involve the Napoleonic wars). Why? Well, it seems a bit to touch a bit too closely on real world problems, and by doing so, it trivializes them. For instance, one would never make a game about having to escape a concentration camp (or a gulag... or, for that matter, a game where one has to guard said concentration camp and prevent inmates from escaping). So is a game about war that different? After all, people were thrust into both situations involuntarily, and suffered in both of them. That is not to say that the concentration camp stands on the same moral footing as a war, just that their portrayal in a game is not all that different in the sense that it would trivialize the very real human suffering experienced in both of them, and so recently at that.
As evidence of this, one has only to look at the RO forums and see all of the fiery rhetoric people use in discussion of Soviet and German equipment and tactics - the number of people who side with one country or the other and see nothing wrong with flinging insults at people who fought and died just sixty years ago. Such criticism might be suitable for an academic who has seriously studied the subject (and also is able to control his emotions a bit better), but these people don't post such stuff out of interest in the historical event - rather, they post it in the same way that (for instance) on the PlanetSide forums one might post about how a certain weapon should be nerfed, or something along those lines. The very real suffering is trivialized by being placed into a game.
Now, I would very much like to hear something like "we don't see it that way" - and I imagine a lot of people don't, - but I thought perhaps I could get some discussion on the subject and see what people think about this rather thorny issue.
I'm specifically posting this on the RO board, because while there are numerous WW2 games, most successful games were initiated for commercial reasons, while RO was a free mod, and thus must have been started for other causes, with the possibility that such an ethical dilemma may have been considered.
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