A violently true depiction of what war really is

#1

Post by sberder » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 4:00 PM UTC

A violently true depiction of what war really is
mediumdifficulty.com

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#2

Post by Sakes » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

Wow, awesome read. If this guy consulted on a video game I would never play it. Mowing down Russian civilians in the game MW2 was more than F'd up enough for me.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#3

Post by dlikhten » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

Sakes wrote: post #2

Wow, awesome read. If this guy consulted on a video game I would never play it. Mowing down Russian civilians in the game MW2 was more than F'd up enough for me.

If they want to make a video game depict war...

Have a bad guy escape through some civilians, you shoot after him. Then after coming closer find a parent/child dead with another child screaming over his/her family's body.

That would be a scene that makes people remember what war really is. But war games are not about war. They are about shooting things and feeling justified about it.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#4

Post by nonce43 » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:38 PM UTC

The Onion has its own take on the difference between real war and video game war: an "ultra-realistic" war game featuring endless paperwork, awaiting orders, and repairing trucks: http://www.theonion.com/video/ultrarealistic-modern-warfare-... (I don't mean to trivialize war by this, and I should point out that The Onion is satirical.)

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#5

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:47 PM UTC

I can't imagine how it is for a person like W to try and live a "normal life" after he leaves the war zone. And if he'd want to to begin with.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#6

Post by mattdeboard » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

As a former Marine infantryman, and a former Marine PR idiot, I think his numbers are off but a lot of the concepts are right, with a caveat. It's not sociopathy of the organic sort. It's the kind of detachment from prolonged exposure to extreme, unmitigated stress. So don't take this article as justification to feel like there's something mentally wrong with people who join a combat arms unit.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#7

Post by roboneal » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:51 PM UTC

Being ex-military and not a sociopath -- he lost me when he said that the "vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths"

We constantly made decisions that increased the risk to ourselves while trying to minimize the risk to civilians. That is not a mindset of a sociopath.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#8

Post by anonymous » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

Sakes wrote: post #2

Wow, awesome read. If this guy consulted on a video game I would never play it. Mowing down Russian civilians in the game MW2 was more than F'd up enough for me.

> If this guy consulted on a video game I would never play it.

I found Operation Flashpoint to be quite enjoyable.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#9

Post by Tossrock » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

Whoa, I know the guy who runs this website, along with several of the authors. He actually just launched it a few days ago, primarily for the Penny Arcade forum readers. Small internet.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#10

Post by cpursley » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

I can't imagine how anyone enjoys games like these unless they really are sociopaths. War is when young men go die for the old men's mistakes and kill a lot of women in children in the process.