The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
warisboring.com
The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
1–10 of 149 posts
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#2Having played the game, it's just a shoot em up with a goofy story to justify shooting things. Nobody is going to care about it in 10 years. The only reason anyone cares about it now is cause everything is a culture war and complaining on the Internet about games you aren't gonna buy is a great way of fighting it, apparently.
I ran into some Holocaust deniers on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. Those people are so far gone that BBC video of bodies in concentration camps is seen as propaganda. If people don't understand the evils of the Nazis within the context of history, the videogame equivalent of Transformers isn't going to change minds.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#3War is Boring is the worst military/defense affairs blog I've ever read.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#4Another salient point that must be made: if we always depict the Nazis as inhuman monsters, as most videogames do, then people learn that true Nazism is perpetrated by those and only those. So when you hear an actual seemingly intelligent human being explaining how racism is totally cool, you automatically don't see that person as a Nazi, because he is a person and not a monster. People may not be able to understand Prolog programs, but everyone has the instinct that "A=>B !B=>!A". Nazi => monster, that person is an ordinary person, so he isn't advocating for Nazism. Of course, we want then to think "that is Nazism, so the person advocating for it is a monster", but many people don't think that way. In a way it parallels the failure of the War on Drugs and the Scare Them Straight campaigns.
I wish more media would humanise the Nazis, show that those are completely ordinary people, some up for the doctrine, some against it, all caught in one completely ordinary, if slightly mentally off person's plan to make his country the greatest place on Earth for his own people. They did horrible things. They did beautiful things. They were no different than you or me.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#5If you think "nazi ideology" or their actions are uniquely horrible, you are either historically illiterate, or so parochial that only their particular victims are of concern to you. History, especially twentieth century history, is a charnel house.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#6Having played the game, it's just a shoot em up with a goofy story to justify shooting things. Nobody is going to care about it in 10 years. The only reason anyone cares about it now is cause everything is a culture war and complaining on the Internet about games you aren't gonna buy is a great way of fighting it, apparently. I ran into some Holocaust deniers on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. Those people are so far g…
I heard someone on a podcast make a VERY passionate defense of the game. Not only was it well made and presented a good story (for a shooter) but a main character (THE main character?) was Jewish and as a Jew that was a huge thing for him. There was a Jewish character who wasn't tokenized or just a stereotype but a well written and critical to the plot. Helpful and not inept but strong and self directed.
Representation like that can be a very powerful thing.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#7Another salient point that must be made: if we always depict the Nazis as inhuman monsters, as most videogames do, then people learn that true Nazism is perpetrated by those and only those. So when you hear an actual seemingly intelligent human being explaining how racism is totally cool, you automatically don't see that person as a Nazi, because he is a person and not a monster . People may not be able to understand…
To be honest by how many times the terms Nazi and Facism get flung about these days i'de say that people _not_ seeing people as someone like a Nazi maybe isn't the problem, but quite the opposite.
Then again I suppose both our views are pretty anecdotal and futile to even talk about without it degenerating into "well i saw six people do this", "well i saw seven do the other so my view is more right" kind of gobblewash.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#8War is Boring is the worst military/defense affairs blog I've ever read.
It's born out of the ashes of an old Wired blog, that was popular ten years ago.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#9Having played the game, it's just a shoot em up with a goofy story to justify shooting things. Nobody is going to care about it in 10 years. The only reason anyone cares about it now is cause everything is a culture war and complaining on the Internet about games you aren't gonna buy is a great way of fighting it, apparently. I ran into some Holocaust deniers on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. Those people are so far g…
No post body was provided.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#10Another salient point that must be made: if we always depict the Nazis as inhuman monsters, as most videogames do, then people learn that true Nazism is perpetrated by those and only those. So when you hear an actual seemingly intelligent human being explaining how racism is totally cool, you automatically don't see that person as a Nazi, because he is a person and not a monster . People may not be able to understand…
Speak for yourself. I am perfectly comfortable viewing people who say racism is totally cool as Nazis, once it's established that they're smart/educated enough to know better and choose to be racist anyway.
It's not surprising to me that nice ordinary people are capable of monstrous behavior. Saying 'well everyone was just caught up in it, it could happen to any of us' is an abdication or moral responsibility. Subscribing to any kind of authoritarian/eliminationist ideology is reprehensible.