The ethics of buying, playing military, war or games inspired by them?
I liked playing Ace Combat since I've been a kid, Ace Combat 2 was one of my favorite PS1 games alongside Crash Team Racing at the time, and I did play AC3 as well but don't remember much of it.
I completely skipped PS2 generations since I was on handhelds instead, so my first interaction with Ace Combat since 3 was ACAH(Yuck) on PS3, but I ended up buying Ace Combat 7 since that was actually a good game, but being bad at committing to one game hasn't allowed me to finish it, with AC8 being announced to come out soon, I decided I should try and focus on clearing AC7.
I never gave it a mind at the mind but since now I'm aware of what Lockheed Martin is, I noticed it when I started up the game the past few days at one of the splash screens at the start of the game, and given that Lockheed Martin's involvement with the current ongoing wars, it's safe to assume that Bandai Namco have had an agreement that most likely has had financial and monetary incentives to license their planes.
licensing weapons and arms aren't particularly a new thing afaik in games, I'm not much of an FPS person myself since I stick with Doom and Bioshock if I want a more "traditional" FPS experience (But prefer things like Ultrakill or Metal Hellsinger) and never been into CoD or other military shooters.
So depending on their license agreement, they either have paid the royalties upfront(Unaware of how licensing typically goes but I assume it's most likely to be this one?) just to have their arms in the game, or they get a portion of their sales. If it is the former then sales of the game do not directly(as in unless sequels or relicensing occur) contribute to their bottom lines, if it is the latter then every sale contributes to wars.
Posting this in places like reddit or other gamer spaces I'd imagine would elicit a "Don't bring politics to my games" kind of response.
I'm curious what Tildes users would think of this, I think that would make pirating these games or buying them secondhand(impossible on Steam though Steam family could count) be more ethical than buying them in a way, though I imagine some may advocating for separating the art from... whom the artist pays?
I doubt that the licensing fees (likely a few cents/dollar per copy of the game sold) materially help any of the major defense contractors bottom lines and if they did a singular boycott is unlikely to matter. That's not to say you should of shouldn't do something on ethical grounds, just that the magnitude of the impact is likely extremely low. IMO the more problematic element is that games heavily reliant on the 'realism' of real weapons are usually glorifying war and/or American imperialism. See folding ideas video on COD or Jacob Geller. If you can avoid that cognito-hazard then I wouldn't worry overly much about the direct financial arrangement.
For the few cents you buying/not buying a game would mean to Lockheed Martin my suggestion would be to dedicate the concern instead towards donating/volunteering/calling a congress critter/going to a protest/etc where you'll have much more impact. My ethos is that the ideas of no ethical consumption under capitalism and fallacies around personal footprint mean that it's not that worthwhile agonizing over these kinds of issues and to instead join, support, or create movements which collectively push on these fronts.
Ironically enough, this rationale is why I find I'm pretty turned off by things like the Call of Duty series but am okay with playing the Arma series.
CoD to me feels like a disneyification of American imperialism and violence writ large. I have enjoyed my time playing them, but when I'm done, I feel like I was just exposed to a Hollywood style pro-US action movie.
Contrarily, Arma is so realistic, that while I enjoy playing it, when I'm done, I feel like I have a deeper understanding of just how horrific the things I just saw actually would be (and probably are) if they actually happened in real life.
Put more simply, when a bomb goes off in CoD it feels like an exciting hollywood explosion. Its not real, just normalized. By contrast, every time I see a missile strike in Iran on the news, I recognize the missile, recognize that I've been on the receiving end of that in Arma, and realize how devastating and frigging horrifying that is to actually happen in real life.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else bring up what I think is the most obvious parallel -- Hollywood depiction of the US military. The DoD has deep and longstanding cooperation with Hollywood, and they provide a lot of useful information and resources at the disposal of filmmakers in a way they otherwise wouldn't be, but even in their own propaganda article on war.gov, they proudly acknowledge that this gives them veto-power over the film:
I think it's easier to recognize that this doesn't necessarily entail that all films involved are irreparably tainted. Even Jarhead's production team contacted the DoD for advice, and it was critical enough of the military to get officially condemned by the Marine Corps. Having the financial and editorial influence of the US military on your film is inevitably going to influence your filmmaking, but it doesn't force every film to be Top Gun: Maverick. The content of the actual art is by far the more important thing. It's also, imo, not even morally wrong to consume deeply flawed media, even media that spread genuinely harmful messages like Top Gun: Maverick (which as a disclaimer I did see in theaters myself). You're still able to think critically about media that is deeply flawed. You aren't obligated to swallow everything a piece of media says uncritically like a true consumer.
I think the same thing is the case for videogames, which is why I bring up this comparison. I'm not an expert on this domain, but licensing particular things from defense contractors is likely just a cost of depicting them in your game at all, which is kind of a prerequisite for certain genres of games. I don't think playing games that have licenses like that crosses a moral line, and I think it's more important to think about the actual content of the games and how they represent their subject matter. If Spec Ops: the Line would still be a powerful and important piece of art that effectively criticizes the way military FPS games represent war, even if they had to license certain things from US military contractors (not sure if they did, fwiw, but as a hypothetical). And I don't even think it's morally wrong to play the games when their depictions of war and their messages are harmful. The obvious gaming equivalent to something like Top Gun: Maverick is the CoD franchise, and I don't think you're morally tainted for playing those games even if they spread wildly harmful ideas about war, torture, people in the Middle East, and many other things. It's absolutely possible to enjoy playing those games and engage with the way those games misrepresent those things critically. Someone else already recommended Jacob Geller and Folding Ideas's videos about those things, which is a recommendation I wholeheartedly echo.
I can go into how I think this is different from something like paying for things related to J.K. Rowling's intellectual property if anyone wants, since this may seem superficially at-odds with my opinion here. But that would be a kinda long tangent and it's 2am for me already, so for now I'll leave it at this.
What the heck is war.gov - is that a thing now?
Edit to add the link you posted: https://www.war.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2062735/how-why-dod-works-with-hollywood/
Games of war or inspired by them go back as far as humans have existed. Many games of strategy are brought about by the desire to improve one's military prowess against a future opponent. Its a part of existence in the military and frankly? They can be fun to play. Just avoiding them can be fine, but where do you draw the line? That personal choice can be difficult. Call of Duty and Battlefield? Easy miss, but what about board games? Chess is a war game by definition of its history but is seen as a game of high intellect by many.
For me, personally, I think it comes down to how the game approaches the idea of war. War and conflict will never go away, it's an unfortunate side effect of humanity. We can, however, treat the concept with the respect it deserves given the seriousness of the idea.
Let's take Call of Duty as the first example: its literally gameified war. The stories of the more recent titles have been more focused on the machismo essence of war, looking and feeling badass over the gruesome reality. I really dislike these games because of that mentality
Battlefield, at least the old ones, had more of a cog in the machine feeling. You are one of many and wins for your team can be hard fought. But the impact of loss isn't really held to the players attention and its still likes to play with the rule of cool. Rising Storm: Vietnam did this well though, as when players are killed, their sceeen "goes black" as if they just died and thats it. Ive never played it, but watching it on stream was jarring and it did give the impact of "death" when it happened. But at the core you still have a death match shooter game. Still on the "fun" aspect.
Ace Combat is a series that sits on the other side. At first blush, it romanticizes the idea of jet planes dogfighting and blowing each other up. Which is true, it totally does do that, but what it does that many other arcadey war games don't do is have a really strong "war is hell" narrative. Most games have the narrative of the ebbs and flows of war. You hear the impacts of your efforts on the ground, both good and bad. When notable characters are killed, the game often takes a moment to recognize that. It really feels as if it values the human element to war and usually treats it in a healthy manner. It made you think and in the current environment, thats a healthy thing to do. I would not worry about the licensing fee for jet planes in your strangereal fantasy war
I play DCS where the licensing of military hardware names/designs is pretty extensive. I hadn't actually considered this before, but not because I wouldn't boycott a company if I disliked their ethics. There's two things that come to mind:
First, the only thing you can do to a primary government contractor to hurt their bottom line is to vote for someone who wants to lower their involvement. If everyone stopped playing games with licensed weaponry, they'd shrug and make more actual weapons.
Second, if you start looking at a company's supply chain not just their own choices, everything gets murkier the further you go down the rabbit hole. It's going to be impossible to know exactly which companies are getting your money, and to what extent, so I personally think any ethics based boycott should focus on the actions of the company you're interacting with directly.
Just wanted to voice a minority opinion that my interest in conflict type games is inversely proportional to how realistic and detailed the weaponry/ combat is.
(My negativity then, to me suggest I must be into an equal but opposite niche which might be sponsored by death and suffering. Say, cooking and raising farm animals linked to untold animal cruelty.)
In any case, I wouldn't feel too badly about it: it's like brands sponsoring sports or watching a show with ads about soap -- I am the end tier consumer, my dollar which goes into the company does not trickle back up into arms dealers or big Agri or fashion brands.
But who sponsors these might go into my decision to pirate a game.... If they're well funded they surely don't need my $10.
Gamers often use the term "guilty pleasure" to describe a playing a less prestigious game when it should describe your engagement with something that goes against your principles, as is the case here. Unfortunately, gamers on the whole lack media awareness and regularly consume products that would otherwise not be accepted outside of this niche market, showing an inability to critically examine the harmful effects of a hobby they won't allow to be criticized.
That means the biggest impact to a popular game isn't a boycott that would harm revenue, but a discussion that could (possibly) change opinions. If I were a trillionaire warmonger (I admit I've thought about it), sure I would want money from a licensing deal, but I would probably prefer having control over the way my image was being portrayed. Dollars to donuts that they are using the Ace Combat franchise as a way to control they way they are perceived by the public. Whatever they are earning in this licensing deal, the military porn converts they earn are worth every penny spent.
If you're one guy who enjoys military sims, your financial support of AC won't be as substantial as the politicians you vote for, or the causes you are willing to fight for. Expanding further, enjoying sex and violence in video games does not have to mean you support these things in the touch-grassiness of real life.
That out of the way, I'll admit I haven't played Ace Combat, but would venture to guess that this is not the type of game that features Lockheed Martin getting grilled at senate hearings or continues the narrative of victims that had their lives altered by your successfully deployed bombs, S-Tier Ranking Achieved, Good Job! This game is inherently political; it coddles the player with the fun aspect of war without any of the messy ramifications of their human cost. It shouldn't mean that you can't enjoy it for the fun game aspects of it, nor excuse it for its problematic associations.
Videogames have reached a state in which ethical consumption has become a real issue. Human-rights-denying companies with exploitative practices want us to support their illicit practices with the fun games we aren't willing to give up. I agree it's tough, but you can make the right choice for you, and it begins by ignoring the statement "Don't bring politics to my games".
I'm pretty sure Lockheed Martin's made more from a single sale of an F-35 than all the licensing fees for ALL games that have used their planes combined, never mind just Ace Combat. When it comes to supporting them monetarily, these licenses are probably such a small drop in the bucket that I wouldn't feel guilty about that angle at all.
If these games were to make a real impact that might be ethically dubious, it would be how much they inspire or motivate their players to actually join the military and inflict violence in real life. A not-insignificant number of actual military pilots in the US and Japan are fans of Ace Combat and may have been inspired to become pilots through the series, but that doesn't necessarily also mean they were inspired to become warmongers that approve of LockMart and the military industrial complex.
I myself am a fan of the series but definitely not a pilot, but I love the planes as marvels of modern engineering, less so as killing machines. Ace Combat lets me appreciate that without hurting a fly. I have no qualms with buying more Ace Combat games, but I won't buy LockMart stocks.
I had a recent stint of Call of Duty. Didn’t play it for years, decided to revisit Warzone. The amount of time spent on customizing the guns, seeing them in fine detail, unlocking all sort of accessories, feels like a big advertisement for guns. I got tired of it pretty quick and I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it again for a long time, if ever. It didn’t help that the public games seem full of assholes. The whole thing just turned me off and made me rethink the kind of game I’d spend time on.
Similarly, I used to love racing games, but recently I can’t help but seeing these as large ads for expensive vehicles. After how many hours of racing in cool supercars does one start feeling like their own vehicle is insufficient? How many racing games does it take before one starts thinking “even though I can’t afford that car, I can afford leasing it.”
This is an interesting perspective, a certain type of mass market game being subliminal advertising for whatever niche they are aggrandizing. The car example particularly struck a cord, because I have been playing a lot of My Summer Car recently, an intentionally hostile lifesim set in 90s Finland where you put together your dad's old sports car, piece by piece, bolt by bolt. And I would not call this game an intentional advertisement of owning and maintaining a car, because it really captures the frustration that comes from owning a car and having to spend a lot of effort and financial investment to keep it running smoothly. However, since putting significant time into it, I have had a semi frequent thought of, "Man I should do this in real life, get a project car and just start working on it." Which is distinctly not something I had ever desired or even thought much about prior to playing the game. So it really isnt a stretch to see someone playing Forza and feeling a desire to have the fancy new car, finances be damned, or playing Call of Duty and becoming the local Gun Guy™. I guess the question is where is the delineation between hobby advertisement through video games and harmful industry product advertisement through video games?
As an aside, check out some racers from smaller teams! Not every racing game is an expensive car glaze fest, some are like Wreckfest, where you drive old cars and junkers in demolition races and derbies. Or Parking Garage Rally Circuit which is a super tight arcade racer focused on MarioKart style drift boosting and tight courses.
I agree, there is a line between a game simply showing you a hobby you may have not yet considered, and the game being a blatant in-your-face aggressive advertising for it. A racing game like Burnout uses fictional car brands. A game like Lotus Road Challenge (MS DOS ooollldddd game) is pretty clearly an ad for Lotus as you cannot even pick any other car. Still a fun game tho, to be honest. The music was very good!
For racing, maybe the distinction is this: how much time do you spend racing, and how much time do you have to spend in menus, garage, customizations? An old Need for Speed game made you pick the car, and away you went! Newer titles, you spend a lot of time in the garage: gotta have a drift car, a race car, a drag race car, etc. Then a game like Gran Truismo 7 is more of a simulator and it's just honest that basically it tries to be as realistic as possible in every aspect. Not sure what category that goes in. Maybe its own category: simulator.
I know this isn't the point of this question at all, but why the fuck should Lockheed or Boeing or any other military contractor be able to make money off licensing vehicles or weapons that are made to spec by a military contract? If anything, I should get the licensing fee as a taxpayer.
I remember seeing this topic when discussing plastic model kits and how Boeing was getting money from kitmakers for the B17 which was designed in the 1930s.
Here is a discussion about that from Finescale Modeler
Because the spec that the military gives is something like "the thing should be able to do this" and then the big primes design something that can do that. The distinctive look of a fighter jet is the result of the company's design, which was created in response to a military request for a capability (not the aesthetics you get in a game).
As for Boeing and the B17, that's not so crazy. Disney is still fighting people over "Steamboat Willie" from 1928. It's rare that a trademark lasts that long, but it's not unheard of.
As far as supporting a developer goes, I can think of very few better war games devs to support than Project Aces. The PS2 generation of Ace Combat games are blatantly anti-war - especially Ace Combats 4 and 5, my personal favorites. Having war games that explore anti-war narratives and putting some maybe hard questions in the head of people who would otherwise be taken in by the dogfighting, the planes, and the explosions, is a very good developer to support in my estimation.
Though Ace Combat games after Zero have been much less anti-war - especially Assault Horizon - I would still give the vaguely "war is hell and pointless" narrative of Ace Combat 7 a pass compared to any of the Call of Duty or Battlefield games I've played. Also, as a side recommendation, play the indie AC-inspired Project Wingman game a shot if you haven't. Its a better Ace Combat 7 in almost every way, including showing the horrors of war.
There's this saying by cinema director François Truffaut that says that there's no such thing as anti-war movie cause even showing by showing it you are glorifying it. And that's acutely the case because the Ace Combat series is without question games about Cool Planes(tm).
However... There's this title of the youtuber Timmm for his retrospective about the series that kept with me: "Ace Combat is a simulator, but not of reality". He argue that the whole point of view of the AC series is the one of a kid that comes up with crazy stories to feature their favorite cool planes. And indeed if/when you have a look at the golden trinity, you'll find tons of melodrama (and even in 7, Mihaly's story is bonkers).
And so yes you are licensing planes from the industrial military complex, but this is only in an effort of verisimilitude (because this is Cool) and not so much propaganda. I don't think the series (and that I includes PW) is so much anti-war as they are more fantasy featuring cool planes for me. We only see the point of view of a plane, so showcasing the horrors of war is somewhat surface level (this is not This War of Mine), and the coolness factor somewhat dilute any message that would come from it. Yes nuking is bad, but when you have 99 missiles and doing manoeuver that would normally centrifuge you to death, what would be a tragedy is transformed into a cool backdrop for an air duel. The story could be about knights and monster ; and indeed there's tons of chivalry/mythology motif in the games (even inventing their own with the Razgriz).
So yeah it's probably bad, but not as bad as other war games that have more overt propaganda in it. AC8 is still #1 in my wishlist.
Never heard of that game until you mentioned it, It's going on my wishlist, thanks. Reviews are mostly positive but they seem kind of mixed on Steam reviews though.
I don't get what they were going with Assault Horizon, coming to it from AC2 and AC3 is quite a shock, basically just CoD in sky. But I want to eventually go play 4,5 and 6 if 360 emulation for it good nowadays.
I second /u/Hollow recommendations in playing 4, 5, 0 (six I haven't played yet because of emulation).
Then afterwards play Project Wingman; it's feel like a natural evolution of the series from a gameplay perspective (even moreso than AC7). It's also very peculiar in that's it was almost a solo dev. And in a true Ace Combat fashion the soundtrack is awesome.
PCSX2 for PS2, and Project Xenia for 360.
Ace Combats 4, 5, and Zero are popularly known as the holy trinity of Ace Combat, for good reason. Some are more flawed than others, but all of them are unique experiences and playing them in order kind of takes you on a journey. Good luck, pilot! And join the Discord!
I'm wondering if games would pay licencing fees to military contractors or not. I couldn't see anything in the thread that considered that; I wouldn't be surprised if military contractors had enough incentive to collaborate just from military games helping to skew public opinion towards war being okay/good and therefore growing their market.