Nocturnal Gentleman said:
Therumancer said:
That said I think Yahtzee needs to understand the differance between "Espionage" and "Black Ops.". Espionage is when you send in the shadowy spies and do quiet, sneaky stuff. Black Ops. are off the books military operations. One country violating another's national sovreignty to kill people and break things while maintaining denial that you did any such thing.
Typically Black Ops. are conducted in such a way that stuff just gets destroyed and lots of people die, but there is no one around to tell you who did it.... if they go right. If they fail then typically they try and kill themselves, or give false information about who they actually work for.
I think the majority of people who bought this needed to know the meaning of Black Ops. I see way too many complaints on lack of stealthy gameplay.
Also, the America needs to be wiped out comments need to stop. To have a major country collapse would have serious ripple effects. The world is too connected to say mess like that lightly.
The "America needs to be wiped out" stuff is pretty much the same thing any dominant world power has gotten. It's just with advances in media we can hear more of it, much more quickly. Spain, Britan, France, and others have all gotten their chance at being dominant global powers and every one of them was hated at the time. We're nicer than most other dominant global powers were, but that doesn't change the fact that the people on the bottom of any system are ALWAYS going to be discontent, and the rest of the world is always going to be envious when they see another culture dominating because every people ultimatly wants their way to be #1 in the world and to be assimilating other people like dominant world powers do.
In general I just respond to that with a lot of pro-Americanism. Sadly with the left wing dominance in this country you don't see as much of that in response as we probably should.
*THAT* said, I am somewhat irritated that there is a dual standard on these forums. I once made fun of France and got moderated for it (one of the few times that has happened), yet I notice our mods/Red Guard do not do the same thing in response to anti-American comments. Then again I generally have a policy of not reporting people for messages that bug me, part of my personal beliefs in free speech.
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At any rate, on the subject, I'm glad this helped clarify this. "Black Ops." are "Black" because they exist off the books, and ops. are "Operations". It's differant from "Covert Ops.".
The big differance being that the USA at least has always admitted to being involved in Espionage. The CIA is a publically known organization, as are defense organizations like the NSA (general national counter-espionage) and Secret Service (focused protection for our higher ups). Everyone knows those guys are "spooks" they just don't know what their doing at any given time.
The Military on the other hand is not *SUPPOSED* to act except during times of war, or in very specific policing capacities. Thus when our military attacks someone it's kept hush-hush. I believe the term first came into usage during the time period of this game when certain bean counters started saying "WTF, who pays $1,500 for a hammer?" and things like that. This is how the military was concealing the money that was going into operations in other nations. Groups like the CIA have it simply as part of their budget for the most part.
Incidently this is also why a lot of fiction on the subject is idiotic. It's lead people to the expectation that there are secret files, discs, and other things that catalog these kinds of operations somewhere. The entire point of "Black Ops." is no records, at all. The only hint that something might have happened is that someone in the goverment paid $10,000 for a toilet seat to conceal where that part of their budget actually went. Other countries are the same way. This is why anyone who expects any kind of "proof" about off-the-books military ops (being called off the books for a reason) they are insane. Yet fiction lead people to believe that there could be evidence and proof gathered in things like "The War On Terror" when by definition people do not keep records on the kinds of things being done specifically so there can never be definate proof even if someone is captured.
In reality with lack of proof and the nature of international business, your typical Black Op. is going to be reported as something else. No nation is going to accuse the US of coming into their country and blowing up some buildings to get a few people. Not only due to lack of proof to the international community, but also because the kind of nation we do this stuff to doesn't want to admit that we can hit them anytime we want to. Thus all the damage being done is going to be blamed on 'natural disasters', 'gas leaks', 'gang wars', and similar things.
