Interesting and very well thought out perspective. He's right, video games have brought an unprecedented amount of simulation and realism to gaming in general, but they still can't, never will,...
Interesting and very well thought out perspective. He's right, video games have brought an unprecedented amount of simulation and realism to gaming in general, but they still can't, never will, and probably shouldn't capture the full experience of war.
If you boil it down, virtually every form of entertainment human beings enjoy is an abstraction of conflict in some way. Reality TV is an overblown lens on interpersonal conflicts, and sometimes physical confrontations. Gridiron football is an abstracted battle between two opposing armies over a desirable objective. Movies are almost exclusively either about war, or interpersonal conflict of some sort.
Of all of these conflicts that we depict and simulate for our entertainment, war is the most basic, brutal, and visceral. It's probably also the most popular. The top grossing movies are ones depicting large scale wars between superheroes or futuristic armies. The top grossing games are ones depicting battles between soldiers, police and criminals, terrorists and counter terrorists. The technology that these movies and games use let them become less abstract over time, instead of more, which is an interesting development, and one that lets people much more clearly see this link.
Chess uses symbolic pieces to represent a king or a knight or a food soldier. Combat is simulated by simply moving into a space and removing a piece. Call of of duty uses 100,000+ polygon character models with realistic blood particle simulation, ragdoll physics, and 1:1 looking models of weapons. It's much more obvious that you're playing with war.
I'm not nearly qualified to say whether this has a negative effect on someone's psyche regarding the sensitization of war or not, but I would say that not all of these things are created equal.
There is room for entertainment that explores the purely technical, tactical, and strategic aspects of war as a means for people to learn or entertain themselves, and there is room for entertainment that tells the personal stories of the people who suffer because of those wars. I don't necessarily think that the first is bad in a way that the second isn't, but it does tend to leave a bad taste in your mouth when you see video and pictures of real people fighting and dying by the equipment you just spent time simulating for your entertainment.
I feel a similar pang of guilt within myself. I'm a career military officer, and someone who has always been interested in military tactics, strategy, and history. I'm also a big proponent of capital W Wargaming as a means of decision making both within the confines of a traditional battlefield and outside of it. Seeing the truly terrible consequences of war and comparing it to the cold analysis I’ve done both professionally and for personal fulfillment often gives me a really off putting feeling. Ultimately, I reconcile this guilt by coming to terms with the fact that a given human intellect is limited. Military officers need to make decisions which provide the highest strategic return possible with the fewest losses. Its incredibly hard to do this while individually considering that literally every decision you make will leave wives without husbands, parents without children, people maimed and slaughtered and horrible destruction of the goodness that humanity has worked so hard to create. The decision merely determines who will suffer, and how much. It's tempting to just throw your hands up and say, well, we wouldn't need all of that if we could just stop fighting wars. I think most military leaders would agree, and would happily take a world without war. That’s always been the great dream of humanity. Unfortunately, countries are not in control of anyone but the people who directly report to the leadership of that country, and sometimes not even then. Ultimately a country’s military's job is to fight wars as efficiently as possible to protect their own interests. We can't stop other countries from deciding that the best way to do that is to attack.
I view the idea as "playing with war" in much the same way as war itself. It exists, its here to stay. We devote an incredible amount of money, intellect, lives, and careers into how to fight wars better and more efficiently. Expecting that people aren't going to then simulate that and play with it for entertainment is a little crazy and expecting people to act in very inhuman ways. Despite it being a little bit morbid and at first glance, really distasteful in times like this, it's also an integral part of the human experience.
Although the war story itself is very unrealistic, I liked Ada Palmer's take on war in her Terra Ignota series. When war itself becomes unavoidable, it's still the case that avoiding mistakes will...
Although the war story itself is very unrealistic, I liked Ada Palmer's take on war in her Terra Ignota series. When war itself becomes unavoidable, it's still the case that avoiding mistakes will save many lives. It's important to study these things, prepare for it, and to have competent people who know what to do. It doesn't seem wrong for those people to sometimes enjoy aspects of what they do. Making games of it can be useful?
One of the many tragedies of the war in Ukraine is that many ordinary people there apparently didn't anticipate war enough to prepare well for it, when it was seemingly one of the most predictable wars ever. Though the Russians tried to obfuscate, any casual reader of newspaper headlines knew it was highly likely. Maybe there should have been traffic jams in the days before the invasion? At some point this failure should be analyzed and learned from. If there were people who did see what's coming and prepare well, I haven't read about them yet.
Getting back to entertainment, I'm not going to pretend that the many hours playing Civilization were well-spent. It's a very imperialistic game and definitely a guilty pleasure. But it didn't hurt anyone, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.
I think "conflict" is an insufficiently general way to think about what happens with entertainment. I think of conflict as a special case of problem solving. Yes, some theories about fiction frame everything as a conflict ("man versus nature") but I think it's an awkward and misleading fit. A good plot involves people with interesting problems and how they solve them (or manage them, or work around them, or fail to solve them). Sometimes these problems are due to unavoidable conflict with other people, but not always. It's true that having an intelligent opponent can result in interesting problems, but not every problem is like that.
In gaming too, there are plenty of puzzle games. You could sort of think of that as a conflict, but it's a stretch. You might also look at Factorio, where there is definitely a conflict but it's secondary to the main problem-solving. Even war games often have logistical sub-problems.
Interesting and very well thought out perspective. He's right, video games have brought an unprecedented amount of simulation and realism to gaming in general, but they still can't, never will, and probably shouldn't capture the full experience of war.
If you boil it down, virtually every form of entertainment human beings enjoy is an abstraction of conflict in some way. Reality TV is an overblown lens on interpersonal conflicts, and sometimes physical confrontations. Gridiron football is an abstracted battle between two opposing armies over a desirable objective. Movies are almost exclusively either about war, or interpersonal conflict of some sort.
Of all of these conflicts that we depict and simulate for our entertainment, war is the most basic, brutal, and visceral. It's probably also the most popular. The top grossing movies are ones depicting large scale wars between superheroes or futuristic armies. The top grossing games are ones depicting battles between soldiers, police and criminals, terrorists and counter terrorists. The technology that these movies and games use let them become less abstract over time, instead of more, which is an interesting development, and one that lets people much more clearly see this link.
Chess uses symbolic pieces to represent a king or a knight or a food soldier. Combat is simulated by simply moving into a space and removing a piece. Call of of duty uses 100,000+ polygon character models with realistic blood particle simulation, ragdoll physics, and 1:1 looking models of weapons. It's much more obvious that you're playing with war.
I'm not nearly qualified to say whether this has a negative effect on someone's psyche regarding the sensitization of war or not, but I would say that not all of these things are created equal.
There is room for entertainment that explores the purely technical, tactical, and strategic aspects of war as a means for people to learn or entertain themselves, and there is room for entertainment that tells the personal stories of the people who suffer because of those wars. I don't necessarily think that the first is bad in a way that the second isn't, but it does tend to leave a bad taste in your mouth when you see video and pictures of real people fighting and dying by the equipment you just spent time simulating for your entertainment.
I feel a similar pang of guilt within myself. I'm a career military officer, and someone who has always been interested in military tactics, strategy, and history. I'm also a big proponent of capital W Wargaming as a means of decision making both within the confines of a traditional battlefield and outside of it. Seeing the truly terrible consequences of war and comparing it to the cold analysis I’ve done both professionally and for personal fulfillment often gives me a really off putting feeling. Ultimately, I reconcile this guilt by coming to terms with the fact that a given human intellect is limited. Military officers need to make decisions which provide the highest strategic return possible with the fewest losses. Its incredibly hard to do this while individually considering that literally every decision you make will leave wives without husbands, parents without children, people maimed and slaughtered and horrible destruction of the goodness that humanity has worked so hard to create. The decision merely determines who will suffer, and how much. It's tempting to just throw your hands up and say, well, we wouldn't need all of that if we could just stop fighting wars. I think most military leaders would agree, and would happily take a world without war. That’s always been the great dream of humanity. Unfortunately, countries are not in control of anyone but the people who directly report to the leadership of that country, and sometimes not even then. Ultimately a country’s military's job is to fight wars as efficiently as possible to protect their own interests. We can't stop other countries from deciding that the best way to do that is to attack.
I view the idea as "playing with war" in much the same way as war itself. It exists, its here to stay. We devote an incredible amount of money, intellect, lives, and careers into how to fight wars better and more efficiently. Expecting that people aren't going to then simulate that and play with it for entertainment is a little crazy and expecting people to act in very inhuman ways. Despite it being a little bit morbid and at first glance, really distasteful in times like this, it's also an integral part of the human experience.
Although the war story itself is very unrealistic, I liked Ada Palmer's take on war in her Terra Ignota series. When war itself becomes unavoidable, it's still the case that avoiding mistakes will save many lives. It's important to study these things, prepare for it, and to have competent people who know what to do. It doesn't seem wrong for those people to sometimes enjoy aspects of what they do. Making games of it can be useful?
One of the many tragedies of the war in Ukraine is that many ordinary people there apparently didn't anticipate war enough to prepare well for it, when it was seemingly one of the most predictable wars ever. Though the Russians tried to obfuscate, any casual reader of newspaper headlines knew it was highly likely. Maybe there should have been traffic jams in the days before the invasion? At some point this failure should be analyzed and learned from. If there were people who did see what's coming and prepare well, I haven't read about them yet.
Getting back to entertainment, I'm not going to pretend that the many hours playing Civilization were well-spent. It's a very imperialistic game and definitely a guilty pleasure. But it didn't hurt anyone, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.
I think "conflict" is an insufficiently general way to think about what happens with entertainment. I think of conflict as a special case of problem solving. Yes, some theories about fiction frame everything as a conflict ("man versus nature") but I think it's an awkward and misleading fit. A good plot involves people with interesting problems and how they solve them (or manage them, or work around them, or fail to solve them). Sometimes these problems are due to unavoidable conflict with other people, but not always. It's true that having an intelligent opponent can result in interesting problems, but not every problem is like that.
In gaming too, there are plenty of puzzle games. You could sort of think of that as a conflict, but it's a stretch. You might also look at Factorio, where there is definitely a conflict but it's secondary to the main problem-solving. Even war games often have logistical sub-problems.