Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?

[Mongoose]

Seems interesting to be aware of, although not applicable (or is it?) to FFXIV.

 

The Red Cross wants to have a greater influence in the virtual world of battlefields.

The International Red Cross has told the BBC that it wants military-themed video games to adhere to real-life international laws.

Article (with reader comments) from The Guardian

... In a BBC news report earlier this week, however, Francois Senechaud from the International Committee of the Red Cross told a reporter that, due to the increasing verisimilitude between first-person shooters and real-life combat, games should start to abide by the international laws of armed conflict. ...

[elisan]

I imagine that while the Red Cross has their heart in the right place, most people find this idea to be absurd. Most civilized countries have laws regarding war crimes that are very specific and quite frankly - whomever thought this up has no concept of reality. Video games, while violent and often depicting death, do not result in the real world equivalent of dead people. Without an -actual- crime, I don't see how anyone could be held accountable for war crimes in this manner. Not to mention that a vast majority of first person shooters are played by teenagers and young adults - to think that anyone would seriously consider incarcerating hundreds of thousands of children because they play video games blows my mind. It sounds to me more like some guy's personal vendetta against gamers.

[Dravus]

It's political correctness gone mad, though I fear this goes deeper than that and is more of a spin on the usual attempt for the mainstream media - and their various allies - to paint large portions of the gaming community as budding psychopaths. It's also pretty terrifying that there's people out there seriously considering proposing something like this, though little surprises me when many of those in positions of influence and power turn out to be out of touch with reality and/or corrupt.

[Dat Oni]

If I think too hard on how this level of insanity and/or sheer stupidity came about I'm going to bust my brain. It's not worth the expense. :dazed:

[K'dath]

Funny, how I read it was someone from the Red Cross saying "I think realistic military simulators should include realistic military consequences for realistic military crimes."

 

It doesn't sound like they mean to court martial people playing Halo in real life. Just that Call of Duty-esque games, which are realistic representations of modern conflicts should address the fact their are consequences for your actions. Something that I think more of the youth playing CoD need. I don't think it's a bad idea from my completely subjective moral standpoint.

 

I also think more realism is always good in games. It adds immersion. If I knew I'd get a dishonorable discharge for murdering civilians, I would make extra sure not to do it, instead of callously blowing away everything in front of me. It involves using at least one more brain cell, and that's always a good thing.

 

Doesn't seem like an outrageous demand to me. Just a 'Hey, you know what would be nice? This...'

[Lost River]

With arcade or semi-arcade style games (Call of Duty and Battlefield respectively), it isn't suitable, sure it's a pipe dream. But it could realistically be put in actual military simulators, such as ARMA for example. Odd as it sounds, but I'd actually enjoy seeing this sort of thing in those military simulators. It'd make hell of a lot of sense to add to the realism.

[Salty Lake]

I suggest folks read the article before going "OMG PC" or "OMG IDIOTS." I don't think anyone would appreciate someone saying that about us based on a headline.

 

I imagine that while the Red Cross has their heart in the right place, most people find this idea to be absurd. Most civilized countries have laws regarding war crimes that are very specific and quite frankly - whomever thought this up has no concept of reality. Video games, while violent and often depicting death, do not result in the real world equivalent of dead people. Without an -actual- crime, I don't see how anyone could be held accountable for war crimes in this manner. Not to mention that a vast majority of first person shooters are played by teenagers and young adults - to think that anyone would seriously consider incarcerating hundreds of thousands of children because they play video games blows my mind. It sounds to me more like some guy's personal vendetta against gamers.

 

I don't see where Red Cross is calling for gamers to be punished. If you look at the Guardian article, Red Cross is suggesting that videogames be more realistic and have in-game consequences for committing war crimes:

 

The ICRC is suggesting that as in real life, these games should include virtual consequences for people's actions and decisions. Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes.

 

And Red Cross says they don't want to ruin anyone's fun; they just want "realistic" war games to address the same political and social consequences of real wars. Seems like a reasonable suggestion to improve the quality of videogames, if you ask me, but I like fiction that deals with consequences of war with ambiguity and complexity.

 

As for war crime laws themselves... they aren't working terribly well, if the Bush years taught us anything, but that probably a rant for another day.

[Hali]

I suggest folks read the article before going "OMG PC" or "OMG IDIOTS."  I don't think anyone would appreciate someone saying that about us based on a headline.

 

I imagine that while the Red Cross has their heart in the right place, most people find this idea to be absurd. Most civilized countries have laws regarding war crimes that are very specific and quite frankly - whomever thought this up has no concept of reality. Video games, while violent and often depicting death, do not result in the real world equivalent of dead people. Without an -actual- crime, I don't see how anyone could be held accountable for war crimes in this manner. Not to mention that a vast majority of first person shooters are played by teenagers and young adults - to think that anyone would seriously consider incarcerating hundreds of thousands of children because they play video games blows my mind. It sounds to me more like some guy's personal vendetta against gamers.

 

I don't see where Red Cross is calling for gamers to be punished.  If you look at the Guardian article, Red Cross is suggesting that videogames be more realistic and have in-game consequences for committing war crimes:

 

The ICRC is suggesting that as in real life, these games should include virtual consequences for people's actions and decisions. Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes.

 

And Red Cross says they don't want to ruin anyone's fun; they just want "realistic" war games to address the same political and social consequences of real wars.  Seems like a reasonable suggestion to improve the quality of videogames, if you ask me, but I like fiction that deals with consequences of war with ambiguity and complexity.

 

As for war crime laws themselves... they aren't working terribly well, if the Bush years taught us anything, but that probably a rant for another day.

 

It essentially boils down to "shoot" and "don't shoot" targets like in the arcade shooters. Killing civilians gets points deducted or what-have-you, while shooting the baddies progresses the game or gets you points.

 

It "sort of" exists already in some effect. Though this kind of makes me think of a bunch of 10-year-olds running around in the deserts of the Middle East, screaming long lines of cuss words at each other while shooting anything that moves.

[Xydane Vale]

This topic makes me laugh. Gamers in their right should play video games however they want it and when they want it. What the public fails to realize is that video games are big stress relievers for a lot of folk, myself included. BBC has no right to stick their nose in bloody business that's theirs.

 

You know, I could continue to rant on this but I'm going to cut my reply short. Realism is good, yes, but to an extent. There is a big line between reality and the virtual world and for example, I cannot remember a video game shooter where I'm gunning civilians. Last I checked, I'm out and about hunting bad guys whether they're the Covenant from the 'Halo' series or terrorists bad guys in 'Modern Warfare'.

 

I dunno, it just frustrates me that people keep poking s**t when there is obviously nothing wrong with it. They can go ahead and give an opinion but at the end of the day, people like me couldn't GAF.

[SessionZero]

If nothing else, adding behind-the-scenes political proceedings would increase the realism and imersiveness of war games, making them more fun (to me, anyway). 

 

And like someone pointed out earlier, it's not like many countries that engage in combat actions often actually follow their own rules of engagement anyway.

[BlessedSilence]

I read an article like this in a PC Gamer or Game Informer some months ago, but they seemed to be really focused on real-to-life war games, like Call of Duty and the like.  I doubt fantasy games cross their vision.

 

That's all I'll say.  This brings in subject matter I am not comfortable to discuss on a forum.

[Dromwald]

This topic makes me laugh. Gamers in their right should play video games however they want it and when they want it. What the public fails to realize is that video games are big stress relievers for a lot of folk, myself included. BBC has no right to stick their nose in bloody business that's theirs.

 

You know, I could continue to rant on this but I'm going to cut my reply short. Realism is good, yes, but to an extent. There is a big line between reality and the virtual world and for example, I cannot remember a video game shooter where I'm gunning civilians. Last I checked, I'm out and about hunting bad guys whether they're the Covenant from the 'Halo' series or terrorists bad guys in 'Modern Warfare'.

 

I dunno, it just frustrates me that people keep poking s**t when there is obviously nothing wrong with it. They can go ahead and give an opinion but at the end of the day, people like me couldn't GAF.

The BBC were quoting The Red Cross in an interview with The Guardian - these were not the opinions of the BBC. How dare any news organisation report something that people don't want to hear. Tsk, tsk

 

But from a serious perspective this article refers to realistic conflict and it makes absolute sense that people, especially young impressionable people are made to realise that actions in the real world have consequences. Seriously, including this sort of responsible realism isn't going to spoil anyone's fun.

[LeCard]

Not to say i'm anywhere close to up to date with current FPS games, those tend to be that last thing i pick up on my list of games to play, but I know from the last CoD game I played that friendly fire was instant game over, and the same applied for the very very very few civies that were in the game. 99% of the possible targets on the field were in fact baddies and had the free to kill on them.

 

The only way I could see games getting more realistic in this type of respect would be to add a sort of PoW feature instead of just busting in a room and killing all the bag guys without any option for them to surrender. Now of course it would get boring if everyone gave up, but having the random enemy throw their hands up and surrender would add some realism to the game, and force the player to pay attention to the room instead of the standard, it twitched shoot it rule.

 

Also, zombie games are not included in this, in a zombie game if it twitches it dies!

 

OK, I'll stop here.....

[Swift Nightclaw]

Honestly, if they added this to it and worked it into the game properly, I might actually have more interest in playing an FPS.  The current "shoot everything and don't get shot" extent of those games are /yaaaaaaaaawn

 

Having more of these games with varied missions, rules/laws you have to abide by, etc. could potentially make them more interesting than just shoot shoot shoot in a hail of bullets.

 

It would take a LOOOT of work to make it actually an engaging aspect of FPS games, though. LeCard's example of enemies looking to surrender, having to subdue them, handcuff them, handle that aspect of the mission instead of just "er mah gerd shert shert shert them all, keep sherting til they're all deeeerd!"

 

And as said above...if you're playing COD: Black Ops (or any game) on zombie mode, there are no laws.  ZOMBIES AREN'T PEOPLE ANYMORE!

[N'taeyl]

tl;dr all the posts, can't be assed to detail a response to this besides:

 

Have fun watching your game sales tank (HAH?) if someone actually implemented this.  Quit trying to run with 'video games teach kids violence', and blame bad parenting and lack of accountability in this day and age.  I don't think this was about introducing more reality to games, that was just the most convincing excuse they could conjure up.  At least I don't play real world war games.

[Raccoon]

Yeeeeah, I'm doomed if they manage to do anything with this. The amount of people I've killed in horrible, horrible ways in the Prototype series alone will have me locked away for a very long time. Or is it only bad if someone mods it so that it takes place in the Middle East instead of NYC? Hm, tempting.

[Swift Nightclaw]

Yeeeeah, I'm doomed if they manage to do anything with this. The amount of people I've killed in horrible, horrible ways in the Prototype series alone will have me locked away for a very long time. Or is it only bad if someone mods it so that it takes place in the Middle East instead of NYC? Hm, tempting.

 

I don't think Prototype would count under "realistic war game"

 

(PS, that's a cool raccoon drawing. It makes me want him as a wisecracking sidekick...)

[Dravus]

It doesn't matter how realistic a game ends up being, if people can't learn to separate reality from a simulation/video game then they don't have much business getting their hands upon them.

 

Besides, 'realism' in cases such as this would likely amount to pushing particularly political agendas. Let's be honest here - most of what is considered to be a 'war crime' these days tends to only be a 'war crime' when the enemy does it. Though that's touching on a political debate I'd probably best not fire up on a site like this.

[Swift Nightclaw]

It doesn't matter how realistic a game ends up being, if people can't learn to separate reality from a simulation/video game then they don't have much business getting their hands upon them.

 

Besides, 'realism' in cases such as this would likely amount to pushing particularly political agendas. Let's be honest here - most of what is considered to be a 'war crime' these days tends to only be a 'war crime' when the enemy does it. Though that's touching on a political debate I'd probably best not fire up on a site like this.

 

"Nobody ever considers themselves to be the villain."

 

But that's why the whole suggestion being made is the games follow the international war laws, Geneva Convention, things like that. It's supposedly what we all agreed were the "rules" of war.

 

Sun Tzu would probably laugh at all of it. >_>

 

I don't think anything like this would ever go in, but I'd still be intrigued by a game that did have more than just "go pew pew pew everything" as part of the gameplay.

[LeCard]

 

 

 

Sun Tzu would probably laugh at all of it. >_>

 

.

Hehe, yea....Sun Tzu would be laughing at all this.

 

Tzu would probably fall under villain now a days, as he uses real tactics to slaughter us all and take over the world while we sit here and try to "play by the rules". The rules would just be a nice little piece of cheese for him to get us to follow into his traps.

 

Though now that i stop to think about it, is modern war anything other than it twitched shoot it? maybe games really ARE too realistic =P

[Haven's Fox]

They should go check out EVE Online! They would absolutely lose it since everything goes!

[Naunet]

Funny, how I read it was someone from the Red Cross saying "I think realistic military simulators should include realistic military consequences for realistic military crimes."

 

It doesn't sound like they mean to court martial people playing Halo in real life. Just that Call of Duty-esque games, which are realistic representations of modern conflicts should address the fact their are consequences for your actions. Something that I think more of the youth playing CoD need. I don't think it's a bad idea from my completely subjective moral standpoint.

 

That's how I read it, and honestly? That sounds like a really fun video game.

[Dogberry]

If governments aren't being held accountable for war crimes anymore, why should people playing video games?