When can we have a WW2 game with an axis campaign?

[Stg]

I thought the topic was about video games encompassing World War 2 but here we are talking about whether or not individuals agreed with what the rest of their country was accused of doing. Why must people try to tear apart every topic on this website down into an argument instead of staying on point and talking about what the topic is supposed to be about?

I know biting your tongue is a foreign concept to most people these days and a lot of people only come to forums to piss and moan or start a fight, but this is just a bit silly.

While on-topic, if I remember correctly, Faces of War allowed you to play as three powers for WW2 (US, Russia, Germans). It's a top-down RTS-style game where you can either command groups of units or take a handful and act as commandos. It's an extremely fun game and severely under-rated and overlooked.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

When twelve year olds and very immature adults stop flipping the fuck out whenever 'nazi' is mentioned. It was a political ideology that did some evil shit, okay. We shouldn't be losing our shit every time they get brought up.

We should be looking at the reason things like Nationalist Socialism developed in the first place and how people like Hitler come in to power with an appreciation and understanding of history so that we might be able to identify the ills that cause these evil ideas and tyrannical despot's to crop up and avoid those problems before they happen.

Remove the matches before somebody spills the gasoline, if you get what I'm saying.

But no, we can't examine the evil as it was, we have to make sure not to portray the SS or the Wehrmacht in an honorable or sympathetic light, even though many of them didn't know about the human atrocities being committed or only followed orders because orders were sometimes issued at gunpoint. (Read up on the Nuremberg trials, it's actually interesting stuff).

We must deny humanity and empathy to those who ended up on the wrong side of history, because that way we can have villainier villains for our media!

 

[murrow]

Please guys, there's a Religion & Politics subforum in this website. Plenty of space to discuss wartime statistics and their ideological implications over there.

Back on topic, Battlestations: Pacific had a Japanese campaign, set in a conterfactual scenario in which Japan had won the Battle of Midway. It proceeded to a speculative invasion of Hawaii.

The game is mostly focused on naval warfare, so don't expect a philosophical debate on the Axis morality. The Japanese campaign is pretty much an excuse to let players pilot Zeroes and blast carriers to pieces with Super Yamatos.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Please guys, there's a Religion & Politics subforum in this website. Plenty of space to discuss wartime statistics and their ideological implications over there.

Back on topic, Battlestations: Pacific had a Japanese campaign, set in a conterfactual scenario in which Japan had won the Battle of Midway. It proceeded to a speculative invasion of Hawaii.

The game is mostly focused on naval warfare, so don't expect a philosophical debate on the Axis morality. The Japanese campaign is pretty much an excuse to let players pilot Zeroes and blast carriers to pieces with Super Yamatos.

On a related note - Pacific Storm: Allies. Naval-based grand strategy map with tactical-based battles. Think of an entirely naval version of the Total War games with all the complicated fleet building and resource management of grand strategy.

Its a little old and glitchy and very complicated and management heavy but it can be a lot of fun if you're into that sort of thing. You can also take control of individual units on the battlefield. Do NOT buy it on Steam though because there's a bunch of fan-made patches and stuff like that which apparently vastly improve the game but which aren't compatible with the Steam version which has been basically abandoned.

 

[JamesStone]

You did the read the date of that quote of yours right? 1941? Did you read what I posted too? "they were also clever about it and didn't simply give orders to "go out and rape and put people in death factories".

It was a steady program of dehumanisation, the worst of party supporters did whatever with out qualms but the rest were desensitised into it which was backed up by the fear of groups like the Gestapo."

The Nazis came to power in 1933, the war began in 1939 and the "Lebensraum" began shortly before that and the reign of terror from the Gestapo and the SS were well documented before the war even started so that is not "post war excuses", it's also It's a matter of simple psychology when it comes to decent people doing indecent things, the Nazis took full advantage of it.

Look its obvious the idea of this upsets you and I'm not going to pick at scabs and neither am I willing to argue with someone coming straight from an emotional perspective. So lets just disagree okay? You will not argue me into ignoring facts and science in favour of emotional appeals, I know Nazi Germany did a lot of awful things and even today it can be hard to look at it all objectively in retrospect so I'm not trying to be dismissive I just don't see how arguing about it would e constructive.

How about the germans soldiers in the their own words
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/rape-murder-and-genocide-nazi-war-crimes-as-described-by-german-soldiers-a-755385.html

note its German newspaper

Well I don't think its a big surprise that there were German soldiers that were nasty pieces of work is it? I wasn't denying they did those things but you're denying the fact that some of the were not like that, some were every day people desensitised and bombarded with a steady campaign that dehumanised people. That kind of propaganda is incredibly effective, propaganda in general is.

Then you come around to the way war changes people for the worst, Allied soldiers as well as the Soviets (they where terrible) commited huge amounts of rape. There are even claims [http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/422860/D-Day-GIs-raped-and-killed-their-French-allies-while-US-army-generals-turned-a-blind-eye] that they raped French women after the D-Day landings, there are also claims [http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/book-claims-us-soldiers-raped-190-000-german-women-post-wwii-a-1021298.html] that Allied soldiers raped hundreds of thousands of German women during the occupation of Germany with the Soviets accounting for 500,000.

Of course the Allied side of the story was swept under the rug by "history is written by the winners", war does something terrible to people. Many of the German soldiers were simply conscripts and forced into fighting, if they did not they faced court martial. Many of those me then underwent that terrible transformation that turned them into monsters, many of them didn't.

I actually agree with what you're saying, that not every member of the german army can be held responsible for te crimes their party commited, and the war wasn't exactly black and white, but holy hell you're doing such a bad job at defending your argument you might as well be discussing against yourself.

Stop trying to not get the emotional side involved. It's literally impossible for a discussion like this not to get emotional when the magnitude of the Nazi crimes extends so far. If you want to convince people of what you are saying, also appeal to the emotional side, while sustaining your arguments with logic and physical, tangential proof

 

[chuckman1]

There are some lines you should not cross and you might as well just get another war that didn't almost extinct an entire race. At best maybe playing the game with the japanese (though they had their own share of horrifying acts), or italians (though they didn't won anything important if I remember correctly).

I disagree, vehemently. Even at the time, "German" did not equal "Nazi", and "soldier" did not equal "concentration camp guard", neither of which equaled "extermination camp guard". Johan and Fritz, frontline Wehrmacht soldiers, were fundamentally no different from John and Frank, frontline US Army soldiers; just a bunch of farm boys conscripted into the armed forces- should a different language really be that much of an impediment to empathy? Other posts in this topic have mentioned the rapes and lootings German soldiers engaged in; I don't know why they think the Allied crimes (in this category) were any different. More to the point, I don't why they think they're more relevant; all but a handful of these games ignore that side of war entirely; it's just soldiers shooting at one another. That one side had a monstrously evil power structure behind it to the other's moderately evil power structure doesn't really change the day to day realities of a given solider; why should it change gameplay experiences? I don't think Chuckman was asking for a Holocaust game, just a world war 2 one with an Axis campaign. Can you see no difference? Do you really think the regular duties of a German solider at the time involved routine massacring of captive civilians?

As and actual jewish man, not an SJW who takes offence to others that's the idea to humanize the german army AND it's allies (who like to hide that fact in the background) is very disturbing.

Saying only a small minority knew about ther holocaust is at best naivety at worst it's outright white washing europeans out of their crimes, you have an entire population which used to live next to them just vanish and they don't have an inkling of idea what happened, a huge amount of the war effort used to systamatically torture and murder and nobody noticed that? Even before the war there were pogroms and anti jewish laws and that doesn't count? Not to mention any of their loved ones they have might cooperated with the atrocities.

Turning a blind eye to such a horrifying thing happening and claiming ignorance is just as bad as commiting it yourself, for me every german and polish who could have, but did not do anything to save the jews are irredimable monsters.

Would it be better if a game were to portray the atrocities openly or have you play as an Oscar Schindler type?
Personally I think a game with a German protagonist in a Spec Ops the line but with more choices style could be good. Do you follow orders and live an easy war crime life? Or do you be the one to fight the system from within? Risking capture? Maybe you can defect to Soviet Union or something.

Also in a more widespread sense I could see Italy being something of a hard mode in a multi campaign game where your idiotic leader sends underequipped troops to far off lands, etc. I know little of Italian war crimes, maybe there were plenty. But if not maybe they can be unique in campaigns among the axis for not having you herd up civilians for mass slaughter? If Italy did do this though I'm not surprised.

As for Japan I feel it's easier for the individual soldier to not be part of Unit 731 stuff but there should be strong pressure from your countrymen to shoot the people in ditches, etc.

I want something with choices where the easy choice is the wrong one, but perhaps gaming hasn't come so far.
And this game idea could probably quickly be seen as "Jewish and Chinese killing sim" as opposed to "the Horrors of warfare (with psuedo choices)". I want the war crimes to not just be glossed over and ignored like in every WW2 fps I know of.

Is the medium ready for Nimdock I have no mouth and I must scream levels of fucked up from a fps? Probably not, but I hope it is one day. We see the horrors of war and real life genocides in all other forms of art. But I can think of only one game to mention genocide and one to mention war crimes.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

It's a touchy subject. I would very much like to see Call of Duty tackle it. Preferably in a Goyer/Treyarch game.

CoD: WaW had you fighting the Nazis in what amounted to a genocidal rampage against a woefully outmatched German army. Fighting on behalf of a communist regime that murdered over 20 million of its own citizens. Black Ops depicted what happens to heroes of communism who are no longer useful. It's very interesting how playing as communists has traditionally been fair game, but Nazis has always been taboo. A CoD game where you play as a Nazi soldier during flashback sequences would be extremely taboo, but not thematically inconsistent with the Treyarch CoD games.

 

[J Tyran]

Stop trying to not get the emotional side involved. It's literally impossible for a discussion like this not to get emotional when the magnitude of the Nazi crimes extends so far. If you want to convince people of what you are saying, also appeal to the emotional side, while sustaining your arguments with logic and physical, tangential proof

Not my style, I don't go for the "why won't you think of the (insert emotional appeal here, [small]usually children and/or rape[/small])?" Yes it might be more effective in some circumstances, if you're appealing to a certain group about a certain topic but when you're trying to refute them it changes nothing and achieves nothing.

Logic and reason stands on its own long after the emotional surge has passed.

 

[CeeBod]

I really enjoyed the Silent Hunter series of games, in part because being on the side that's going to lose adds an interesting dynamic to the gameplay: Early in the campaign your equipment is shite, but your opponents are hopeless - which is perfect for being a level 1 Noob learning the ropes. As the war progresses you get better toys and more support but the enemy also gets stronger and more numerous, and eventually the odds against you become pretty much insurmountable, whilst your support becomes non-existant.

Gameplay wise, I think it makes a lot of sense to have an Axis campaign in practically any WW2-based game.

On the emotive side:

I really don't get this obsession with having to reference the holocaust in absolutely everything WW2 related or somehow you're an apologist for the holocaust (I find the references being made to the Germans being "Jew-killers" in Saving Private Ryan, Inglorious Bastards, etc pretty jarring) - yes the industrial genocide of millions of ordinary people was a truly horrific thing, and one of the most chilling things about it is that the people who carried it out were not the inhuman monster/psychopaths we like to think of them as, but ordinary people doing what they thought of as a mildly unpleasant job. Seriously go and check out the letters home of the camp guards at Auschwitz - their ordinary-ness is pretty horrific in its implications! It's also worth noting that the disabled, conscientious objectors, Gypsies, and many others were also killed by the same inhuman machinery.

WW2 went on for 6 years and involved fighting on (or in the sea just off) every continent except Antartica. Depending on whose estimates you believe somewhere between 50 and 80million people were killed worldwide, and whilst the fighting was going on most people really didn't know a damn thing about the evil that was happening in the concentration camps. Whilst some people appear to take issue with this today, it is a fact that Lehi/The Stern Gang sought an alliance with Nazi Germany to fight against the British in WW2 believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than was Britain - they only switched allegiances to Stalin's Russia after the death of Avraham Stern in 1942, and if "everybody really knew what was happening at the time" then there is no way that a group fighting for a Jewish homeland would ever contemplate an alliance with Nazi Germany!