Not a fan of those, though of course the outcry around them was way overblown. At the very least these homicidal maniac simulators show how utterly repetitive and boring it is to kill everything that moves. If the design document for a game fits on and probably was a beer coaster, I don't usually stop snoring just because it releases somewhere.

And of course, if you can kill everybody, that gives you loads of opportunity to break the narrative to bits, spoiling most of my reason to even touch the darn game. Doesn't float my goat at all. I think I decided that with Gothic 3 back in 2006. That game really didn't make any sense to me, and it wasn't even the bug overload.

Turn off your pc when you are drunk.

I just see a lot of arbitrary rationalizations that tries to sound deep and authoritative. Like, WW2 subsims don't have you play as nazis if they don't show the proper flag (even if you sink liberty ships from a type vii u-boot based in occupied la rochelle), and if they are nazis well, they're not nazis doing bad things (they don't genocide anyone, they just slaughter troops trying to prevent the genocide). But that's just dishonesty, as historical games that let you play the german side in WW2 simply have you play the bad guys, full stop. Thing is, you simply struggle with the idea that someone could play, in a video game, a side they would not endorse in real life. It apparently baffles you, but people who make or play games are sometimes happy that their in-game side did not win in real life. There's a healthy clear-cut dissociation that doesn't require cheating with meanings (like "hey maybe it's taking place in an alternate universe where nazis were humanitarian democrats"). And doesn't require excuses of "abstractions" (the holocaust was pretty "abstract" too, for the german population which simply avoided wondering to much where the jews had gone - just like the possibility of global warming was abstract to anti-ecologists, just like the death of exiles in the mediterranean sea or their destruction in retention camps are abstract to frontex supporters). Sid Meier's Pirates glosses over what happens to the crew and passengers of the galleons you sink, and RPGs ignore the consequences for the owners of all your casual burglaries, but it's the same "look away" abstraction that is used in real life. It's not what defines the difference.

The difference is that, in a game, you can go "in that bubble I'm now the opposite of me" (like on a theater stage, or in a writer's mind when they have to develop the baddie's side of the story). In real life, you are you - or double faced. And the issue is with the sad cases of creeps playing the baddies in am "in that bubble I'm fully myself" mindset. But again, you cannot adapt the whole industry to these people - just like you shouldn't adapt movies to people who genuinely, "positively" identify with Gordon Gecco or Tony Montana. It would kill intellectual and artistic productions at insane levels, ie: Hays code level or China level. No more James Ellroy, no more heist movies, no more conquest games. Or worse, more pernicious : games that bend morality to justify horrible actions (like we glorify Napoleon, Alexander the Great or street vigilantes). I'm much more at ease with players knowingly playing the baddies when discovering/invading the New World than players picturing themselves as on the right side (as... benevolent civilizing colonials ?).

Everything can and will be exploited by freaks for their own discourses and fantasies. A WW2 shooter can be used (for instance during EU's economic crisis) to shoot "germans" instead of "nazis". As I said, an anti-racist joke (a dark humor joke depicting injustice in an outrageous manner -the very function of committed caricature- can be decontextualized, reversed and seen as making light of it or making fun of the victims, which is a reason why I'm reluctant to give examples on the internet, but also a reason why Charlie Hebdo's satirical humor cannot operate anymore). But adapting the world and all cultural productions to these freaks is a dangerous impoverishment. They have to be lived with, shun when spotted, laughed at, denounced, whatever, but without making the whole cultural world revolve around them. It's a marginal side effect of being among human beings.

But again, very marginal. Most people play the good guys in videogames (most games offer no choice, those which do offer choices don't have the alternative perused as much), and then some people like to play the bad guys sometimes (often in addition to have played the good guys, it's not mutally exclusive), and then there are genuinely nasty people who exploit it with full identification with evil. They do not weight enough to redefine all of it.

So, relax. Also don't be THAT offended with that "goody two shoes" term you keep quoting. I was putting myself into that category, lighten up, you're allowed to laugh at yourself even if you self-identify with the "good guys".

But seriously, I feel you're just trying to find arguments for your gut feelings instead of critically analyzing them, distancing yourself from them, and sorting out what, in their causes, can and cannot be genuinely used as objective arguments. Sorting this out is important for cohesion, for a bit of relativism, for the basis of viable judgments and to avoid double standards. Keeping an eye on arbitrary subjectivity helps taking our own reactions to ambiguous cases less seriously (and, frankly, most cases are ambiguous, importing outrage from extreme examples doesn't help at all).

That's where your mind goes when you drink?

I see. You have a problem understanding my "too abstract (to be seen as evil simulators)" comment.
Well, there's no point arguing then.

I, for one, see a clear distinction between playing a Uboat sim (on side of the Germans) and playing a (again: German) Concentration Camp guard, who's smashing infants against a wall to kill them.

But that may just be me. As we have already established, I'm a delicate flower, and should stay away from the things other people enjoy.

And next you'll explain to me that the same people also will happily lose if playing said side, right?
They'll deliberatley play bad, only to make sure that the bad side (which they enjoy playing, otherwise) will lose in the end.

Btw: I'm still waiting for you to tell that racist joke, that is totally non-racist, if put in the right context.

Nothing to do with abstraction. You could have an idle incremental clicker about numbers of jews/homosexuals/gypsies that your virtual third reich is exterminating, it would just show icons and digits, and it -as its players- would be just as creepy as a 3d child smashing simulator.

Again, once more, again - it's a complex continuum, on which extreme hypothetical examples are pointless.

Also yes, playing historical baddies actually make defeats marginally less irritating (at least versus AI), but that's not the point. The point was that (re-read the sentence) players/designers of a game about historical baddies usually aren't people who would have wished the side that they play in-game to be have won in the real world. Maybe it's a paradox that doesn't compute for you, but it's simply a fact about humans, so, deal with that one way or the other.

And no, I don't want to give concrete examples of antiracist jokes that can be used as racist jokes, partly because this forum isn't a community whose sensitivity I'm comfortable with (even though the most horrid forumers have calmed down since the recent start of forum semi-moderation), and mostly because the moderators themselves aren't people whose subtlety I've learnt to trust. Jokes that can be recuperated by different sides are precisely vulnerable to interpretative bad faith and crude moderation. That's a reality of the internet, the required notion of common background is missing from the irony equation. Poe's law plus dishonesty...

I think that as long as it is fiction (real people are not getting hurt) and that the medium (game, song, movie, whatever) is very clear about what it is (a work of fiction) and labels itself properly, anything goes.

I think we live in a climate of hyper polarization and extreme sensitivity to anything touching hot button political issues (some of those issues not really belonging in politics to begin with in a rational society with mostly secular values) and sometimes we need to chill.

Yes, games can be violent, sexual and/or make a political statement. If it ruffles someone's sensibilities the wrong way, that person shouldn't play it (sometimes, I exert that option myself). People shouldn't demand the game be taken out of circulation because they feel everyone should have the exact same sensibilities as them. We shouldn't worry, if a game goes too far outside of accepted social norms, it won't sell. It won't magically convert everyone to some warped point of view.

Personally, I'm a lot more sensitive to misinformation (ie, presenting things that are untrue as fact), hate propaganda (ie, recruitment in hate grounds) and mistreating people in real life, as opposed to in a work of fiction.

Works of fictions are thought experiments. Nobody is getting hurt. Go crazy.

If someone does some hateful sh*t and attributes it to some game, I'm pretty sure that this person was messed up and a ticking time bomb to begin with, probably needed psychological help they didn't get (which is really the crux of the issue) and the game was just some lazy pretext.

If you're referring to the game UBOAT, it's still a Nazi Germany uboat simulator just for the fact that the game takes place during the WW2 era. It doesn't matter if you don't see a single Nazi uniform, swastika, concentration camp, or Hitler. You're playing on the wrong side of things in this game and are fighting against countries trying to take down Hitler. You're not the hero. If this game took place during any era either before or after WW2, then you could say that it's just a sim involving German sailors having a good time with their uboats and no Nazis allowed.

The fact is that censored Nazis are still just Nazis. And saying that, I don't have an issue with people playing Nazi Germany uboat sims if that's their thing. I just wouldn't go around pretending that the game is anything other than what it is.

The only game series that gets a pass with me where you can say "but they're not actually Nazis" is Civilization. This is only because these games exist in some alternate reality where world leaders never grow old and die no matter how many centuries pass. (Vampires?) This means that if Fredrick is representing Germany while I'm playing Civilization 4 and offers me yet another permanent alliance, I don't have to worry that I'll find myself in a permanent alliance with Hitler at any point if I agree to it.

The most disturbing thing about the conversation is the AI machine learning vibe I keep getting while reading this thread.

Hey SkyNet, chill! xD

1) That wasn't what I asked for.
2) That's also not what you declared to be a thing.

You said there exist racial jokes, that are non-racial - if put in the right context:
That's why I wrote "a modern remake"...of course today you would release it in 3D, with action sequences, and an Amon Göth DLC.
Today's under-educated right winger audiences wouldn't be interested in boring spreadsheets.
No matter what (or rather: whom) the numbers represent.
No, the reference was in regard to Das Boot: German U-Boat Simulation https://www.gog.com/game/das_boot_german_uboat_simulation
Yes, I know that.
And nowhere did I claim you are "a hero" in any of these games.

I simply said, that there is a clear distinction (at least for me - a staunch antifascist) between such an abstract gameplay as in "Das Boot" - which: again - doesn't feature any particular symbols that would make it especially Nazi related, and wherein you play one of several war parties (as in: army against army, resp. military member against military member)...and something like "Warsaw 1941-1942: the Ghetto Cleansing", in which you commit atrocities against innocent civilians.

Btw: have you ever watched "Das Boot" (the German movie, resp. TV mini-series)?

Because - and I find this is interesting in the context of this discussion - I've seen several YT reactors watching that, and they all had one single thing in common: in the end, they "kinda" sided with the "Nazis" (note the "") on board of "U96", respectively, they felt sad after watching their demise in the port of Rochelle.

And of course they all felt "strange" because of that...since they, as the offspring of former war opponents of Nazi-Germany, aren't supposed to feel for the baddies.

Only that the baddies in this case weren't really that bad at all.

They weren't staunch Nazis, far from it (with one exception, and even that guy transformed during the movie).

See: just because someone fought on side of the Nazis - doesn't mean they were Nazis.

It simply meant, they thought fighting for their country was "the natural" thing to do, and something that was expected from them.

Which was both true, if you let the blinkers down.
And it still is true today.

It's the same thinking that has people today fighting for their countries.
The US, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, Israel,...you name a country of your choice, and I'll show you people willing to fight for that country.

And honestly, what would have been the alternative in Nazi-Germany?

From wiki: (in regard to Conscious Objection)
In April 1933, the National Socialist regime banned not only most democratic parties but also pacifist organisations and imprisoned many of their leading figures in concentration camps.

With the founding of the Wehrmacht, conscription was reintroduced in the German Reich in 1935:
Since then, conscientious objectors faced severe prison sentences for undermining military morale - usually incarceration in a concentration camp - and the death penalty if they persisted in their refusal.

Nevertheless, by 1945 there were about 8,000 conscientious objectors (out of ca. 18.000.000 military members (= 0,04%)), about 6,000 of them Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to take the oath of allegiance.

Of these, about 1,200 died.

635 of those 1200 died due to the conditions of imprisonment or murder in custody without a court sentence.

203 or 250 (depending on the source) more died (= got executed) due to a court sentence for their conscientious objection.
----
From wiki: (in regard to Desertations)
The Kriegsssonderstrafrechtsverordnung (KSSVO - Ordinance on Special Criminal Law for the War), which was issued before the start of the war, stated indiscriminately in § 6:
"In the case of desertion, the sentence shall be death or life imprisonment or temporary imprisonment.
Death penalty seemed preferable.

In accordance with the lack of judicial independence, it can be assumed that Hitler's quote:
"The soldier can die, the deserter must die" had a decisive effect.

Inducement of others to desert was punished more severely than desertion, namely as one of the still comparatively precise subsumable cases of (rather broadly formulated) subversion of military strength (§ 5 para. 1 nos. 1, 2 KSSVO); here the death penalty was provided for without alternative, except in less severe cases.
The field war tribunals were responsible.

A more detailed evaluation of the Wehrmacht criminal statistics revealed that during the Second World War, approximately 26,000 soldiers were convicted of desertion. This resulted in a death sentence rate of approximately 60 % by the end of 1944.
The execution rate, measured in terms of death sentences, was also around 60%.
This would mean that about 10,000 Wehrmacht deserters were executed by the end of 1944.

In total, about 350,000 to 400,000 soldiers deserted.
With about 18.2 million soldiers in all sectors, this makes a desertion rate of about 2%.

It's easy to say from today's standing point, that one should have resisted the draft, or outright refused to comply...but who here would really have the balls to do that...under the same conditions, they faced?

Of course I like to think that I would have been a conscientious objector, or that I had joined "Die Weiße Rose" (one of their members is from my area), but would I have actually done so, knowing how harsh the consequences will be?
Luckily, I never had to find out.
And so did nobody else in this discussion.

PS: a little family history from me...one of my grandfathers was a "Jehova's Witness", and got incarcerated for his conscious objection. He was lucky, he survived the war.

My other grandfather was a catholic, a volunteer for the war (make of that what you want), lost both his legs somewhere on the Eastern Front, got discharged from the WM, and died when his daughter (my mother) was 14 years old, due to drunkenly rolling along a country road, in his wheelchair, where a truck hit him.