First ever game I'm not going to buy a game due to content.

[ph0b0s123]

I love bfbc2 and battlefield games in general, but I am probably not going to buy the Vietnam DLC. Why not, it is supposed to be good, you ask. Well because of it's setting and how realistic now the graphics have gotten, at least on the PC.

It maybe due to my family being made up of Vietnamese people now and having a new half Vietnamese step sister. It might be due to background of this war, which I have heard about from both sides now.

I find my reaction odd as I have been quite happy blowing up computer characters for the past 30 years without problems. I certainly am not trying to pull out the ban hammer or anything, I have not problem with others playing it. I have just looked at the videos of the game and stuff like the flamethrowers and been a bit uncomfortable.

BFBC2 is fine as most of the characters are wearing masks apart from the medics. Is this the downside of graphics getting more realistic? I felt a bit uncomfortable playing the early stages of Crysis as well. Was fine once the aliens turned up. But prototype where the subject matter is even worse and closer to home I was fine with as the graphics were good, but not good enough to provoke a response.

Anyone else had any games they did not buy or felt uncomfortable playing like this?

 

[Wutaiflea]

There's only ever been one game that I would say really tweaked my bad-taste-o-meter, and that was GTAIV.

Pretty much every previous GTA had been jokey, light-hearted and pretty unrealistic, and then along comes GTA IV with its tragic, tortured main character, and depressing story.

I think it's okay to have a gang-banger crime game when it's so far removed from reality (ie. jumping a motorcycle across various skyscrapers so that a giant spotlight can project tits on the side of a building) but it seemed wrong to make that kind of game entrenched in real life tragedies and issues, particularly when the humourous parts DID turn up, seeming all the more inappropriate.

I didn't play the game personally, but I found listening and watching it played to be quite offensive and in poor taste.

 

[Gigano]

Well, it's entirely a matter of personal taste, as long as you don't claim that it's unethical or harmful, no arguments are needed for what one personally choose (not) to do.

While not something I've ever felt, I don't think it's particularly "odd" to have a bit of apprehension towards depictions of a (questionable) historical conflict where your own or close relatives' ethnicity was involved.

I for one have never been held back from buying a game(/movie/etc.) I otherwise had interest in due to being disgusted/offended by the content. Though I do regret a single acquisition on that account.

 

[Archaic Thought]

I really don't see a problem with this.

That's like saying I refuse to play WWII shooters because I'm of German decent, or refusing to play any game where some Englishman is the big bad.

It's fiction, well, historical fiction in this case. No matter how disturbing it is, one has to realize it is very much separated from reality, even if, like I've said, it is based off real events.

 

[Woodsey]

Pretty much every previous GTA had been jokey, light-hearted and pretty unrealistic, and then along comes GTA IV with its tragic, tortured main character, and depressing story.

Luckily it's told terribly, so you don't care anyway - I don't care what anyone says, Niko might be "likable" compared to other GTA protagonists but we need to move past the idea that GTA and CoD have good writing.

OT: Well don't we all do this anyway? I mean, I think it's all clear why most of us won't play RapeLay.

But if we're talking about "proper" games, then I can't see this is ever happening to me. You're fulfilling a fake role for a short period of time, you're not literally becoming that character.

I'm not exactly sentimental either, so that probably helps.

I don't buy the graphics thing either - people have looked like people for quite a while now in games. If a game comes along where you play the Nazis I'm not going to have trouble shooting British troops.

Likewise, I wouldn't not watch a film that takes the side of the Nazis (not that I can ever see that coming up) - you need to embrace these things so that you can discuss them more.

I know I'm getting a little way away from the subject now but just because a journalist makes a documentary about a racist group of people (Westboro or the BNP, for example) and follows them, attends their demonstrations, etc. doesn't mean they support or condone it. They're taking up a different point of view.

And the Vietnam DLC is multiplayer anyway, the context is minimal at best.