playing war

[ichso]

Hi,
I just stumbled upon one of the most interesting threads so far, having read a LOT at this board ;)

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=96988&page=1

Just wanted to add something, but the thread seems to be already closed.

Because most of the answers there had gone in a different direction than I was searching for.
My question would be more in general the morale question of war sims. I would nobody here judge anyone for enjoying playing a nazi-soldier, nor would I do in the case of any other ww2 sim.
The politics behind that aside, I think the thing is more about being able to phase anything out which has to do with killing (in case of SH3 mostly innocent) people and just concentrate on the technical aspects of the war and it's machinery.

I've read that e.g. Falcon 4.0 (this Korea-war flightsim) was supported by the U.S. Airforce (maybe through giving the needed details to make it as realistic as possible - again only the technical aspect). So this had the good side effect for the USAF that a good light was thrown onto itself by creating a nice flying adventure with a complex and well simulated gameplay.

No, this is not the exact same point about SH, but it is a very similar schema I think. Just shipping around a bit, enjoying the sunrise, watching dolphins and from time to time shooting some cargo ships.

It's the whole thing, talking just about 'tonnage' (or as the germans called it back then: 'Schiffsraum') and forgetting about people who have to suffer from it.
And I know, this is just a game, nobody should take those things he plays too seriously, but in fact one just repeats those euphemisms usual war propaganda uses still today.

his is what makes me think, not those stupid, old let-them-rot-in-hell-Nazis from back then, with their stuffed dummy with the funny mustache, shouting some brain-out parols at a stadium full of people -.-

BTW: As sordid, I'm german too, having played subsims since I was 13(?), was about Wolfpack and Silent Service II back then ;).
I enjoyed SH3 very much, got by concerns described above with that and tried to stay away from this WW2 stuff and such.

A few month ago I came back, just wanted to sail a bit more over a beautifully rendered sea, watching seaguls, and I again ended up shooting harmless freighters and getting chased by DDs. Just couldn't resist :roll:

So I'm really not here to judge anybody, just wanted the to here what the rest of think about that, when playing sh3. (The thread from sordid just didn't ask the question I was looking for).

greets, fp
(I wrote way too much, hope anyone has time to read...)

[johan_d]

Its inside man, making war.. somewhere it must be fun :lol:

May its he fascination ? the thrills? dunna, but playing it safely from a chair is what I think the most close to a general far away behind the lines.

[MarkShot]

I play both war games (first person flight/sub, tactical, and operational) and business oriented games. I consider these to be intellectual exercises. As a systems person, I can tell you that any game based on real world material to simulate is likely to be more logical, interesting, and have closure than some sci-fi fantasy. So, I think war games offer a good challenge to the player. Finally, they are educational and I have learned more about history through this hobby than school ever taught me.

But these are only games to me. I am thankful that I have never stood on a hot battlefield, never been shot at, and never had the chance to shoot or take someone elses life. I am not pacifist, but I know that I am lucky to not know the horrors of war and that I owe a debt to the young men and women who gave/give their lives for me to have the life I have had.

[Brag]

A good war game will give you a better understanding of the period.

[bigboywooly]

Amen to that

I have learnt soo much from Sh3
Modding helps too as always looking references up etc but all in all its been a great education
And I thought I knew a bit about WW2 :o
How wrong was I

And I have to say this forum is a goldmine of knowledge

Back to the original q

I never see it as that I am playing a Nazi\German
Sure I have Ge voices and always check the flags of the merchants I am sending to the bottom but its an escape - a game - a bit ( lot ) of fun

I never stop to think they are my country men I am sinking etc or about the real horrors on either side

[ichso]

Thing is: what kind of knowledge do you mean, that you have learned at this board and while playing SH ?
The only things a war sim simulates are the tactics, strategies, technologies and such. So simply everything related to warfare itself but that has not very much to do with history. You can learn something about the course of the war, who went there when, who attacked whom when, when came this and that machinery up. But that is nothing which can help prevent such wars in the future, nothing to learn what mistakes must have been made so it could start in the first place.
Most things you can learn from a game like SH is for interest, I know it isn't about history education though ;)
In the end it is still making something fun and adventurous (or whatever this is spelled) of something very cruel out of the past, whether one has this in mind or not.
People who have been concerned more directly by the horrors of war, should think a lot different about all that.

[ronbrewer]

Actually, there are other subjects of value that can be learned from SH3:

1) 30-60-90 triangle geometry
2) Law of sines
3) Compass headings
4) Timing of sextant readings
5) Metric system (for us imperial Americans :) )
6) Knots as a speed reference
7) A little German language
8) Active/passive sonar technology
9) Radar technology
10) European geography

I'm sure there are more subjects that I can't think of at the moment.

EDIT: Oh man, how could I have forgotten SLIDE RULES!

[ichso]

Ok, some minor things they are ;) (Minor, because most people know those things without playing a war game)
And geography should be something of very common knowledge but it isn't one of my strengths too. Though I could not learn very much about the european one as being a European by myself ;)

But as you say this, it reminds me of the RealNavMod, this one can make one learn MANY new things, that's right.
As I posted initially, at first I came back for sailing aroung a bit... :lol:

[Schöneboom]

Guten Tag, ichso,

I regard SH3 as more than an intellectual exercise -- yes, there is real satisfaction in doing something difficult, like manual torpedo shooting. But at its best, one can experience genuine emotions, like when watching a very good film (naturlich, you know which one I mean). This includes conflicted emotions: the pleasure of successful patrols & advancing one's career, vs. the dismay at the waste of life on both sides, for a government that one does not admire.

My Kaleun-persona is not just a dumb tool of the Reich; in idle moments I think about the tragic turn of events from the perspective of a German who is not eager to take on the whole world. Having travelled widely in Europe, this Kaleun is familiar with the neighbors, & has no quarrel with them personally. When possible (1939-41) I try to stop to help the survivors, & feel regret when a ship sinks too quickly for her crew to escape. This feeling is soon replaced by the desire to just survive against an enemy that grows ever more powerful. A complex experience, to be in this position, eh?

I suspect it may be easier for non-Germans to do this role-playing -- since we have not been raised with all the emotional baggage of war guilt. Whether one wishes to apply the lessons of the past to the present day or not, that's up to the individual, nicht wahr?

Mach's gut,

[ichso]

This includes conflicted emotions: the pleasure of successful patrols & advancing one's career, vs. the dismay at the waste of life on both sides, for a government that one does not admire.

This feeling is soon replaced by the desire to just survive against an enemy that grows ever more powerful. A complex experience, to be in this position, eh?

Pointed that out very well. Bringing home your own crew when it gets harder and harder is the challenge I'm looking for when playing SH3. Although not yet as I am still in 1940 in my current career.
It's just nice to read that other players have the same thoughts about sinking ships instead of just rampaging over an ocean and shooting at some big swimming steel chunks from time to time ;)
Bit this would in fact be the exact opposite extreme, and such people wouldn't be the ones populating the mass at a board like subsim's.

[bigboywooly]

Well I may differ from some due to modding but in the course of GWX I have had to learn all I can about the Black Sea operations\Kreigsmarine surface units\Convoy tactics and routes\Airforces from WW2 and countries at war
The list is endless

Even before working on GWX questions asked in here led to searching the web for one thing which led to another and another

I probably have over 200 bookmarks on my comp from all sorts of things related to WW2

You say you couldnt learn much about Europe Ichso as you come from there
Well you will be surprised
I was
Who owned what towns\regions at what times etc
All very interesting and still learning today

Still thats only if you want to know more
I do\did which only came from playing SH3 and being a member here

No other game I have played has led me to find out so much from the past for myself

Meh

[ichso]

That you can learn much about a specific war in a sim game related to that war is not much of a surprise ;)
I've too learned many things about WW2 playing such games, be it at the Atlantic, Pacific or somewhere in Russia.
My point was more about the morale question behind this. A game like SH simulates the war itself, but nothing surrounding it. The civil population of concerned countries for example, or what lead to the war and could it had been prevented.

There are some things I learned about that just because of SH3. Some time ago I stumbled upon an article what it meant to the french people living in the towns where the germans built there submarine bunkers. That many people died through allied bombardment just because of those bunkers.

I just wanted to discuss a little where there are more people thinking of stuff like that while playing SH3. These are things that no war sim teaches you.
If you're interested in submarine warfare in WW2, the whole SH series is the right place for you, that's right. And this is why I own the first 3 games of it.
And by saying that: thx for the whole GWX thing btw :D

[Hitman]

ichso (Das heisst ich-so, also mich-selbst, oder? Mein deutsch ist leider ein bisschen eingeröstet :hmm: )

I have left this thread going on because it has been a very civil and mature discussion, and you asked it very politely, but I also would like to point out that the thread you have linked to was not casually closed. Closing it was a purposeful action taken by a moderator at a certain point, because that topic has been more or less discussed here many times before, and at certain moments some people get angry and the need to draw an end line appears. Right now there is a similar thread going on in the general topics forum, started in the SH4 forum and moved there by moderators.

This thread here has kept the close relation with SH3 that is required for such a topic to stay here at this forum, but I want to friendly remind that if things get out of that path and steer towards more general discussion, I will move the thread to the "General Topics" forum.

Thanks:up:

[Foghladh_mhara]

This game is very much like a busmans holiday for me.

I work as a civil engineer on roads and major excavations and spend a lot of my time working out angles, chords and tangents. I hated trigonometry as a kid and really wasn't much good at it. Then on my first job after college I spent 5 months sitting in an office on a building site converting endless lists of grid co-ordinates down into whole circle bearings and distances relative to the co-ordinated points we had on site. Mind numbingly boring but it certainly improved my grasp of trigonometry and geometry:D

Dont know why I spend all day bitchin' about having to do this stuff for work and then when the kids are in bed jump on to the computer and do it for fun:hmm:

Maybe because in GWX land if theres a loud bang, a plume of smoke and a mushroom cloud of fire it means I've done something right whereas at work the same result means I'm very, very wrong:D

[Puster Bill]

EDIT: Oh man, how could I have forgotten SLIDE RULES!

I was going to have to whack your knuckles with a Pickett N500-ES if you didn't remember! :D

[Puster Bill]

I think that in general, war games satisfy an innate desire to experience conflict in a safe setting. Beyond that, modern war has a certain intellectual component that is separate from the primitive emotional side. This is a creative component that allows one to think of different methods, technologies and tactics to accomplish the established goals.

As this specifically relates to SHIII, perhaps more so than to SHIV, a certain mythos has arisen over the years related to the U-bootwaffe. Perhaps it has to do with both Allied and Axis propaganda, but there is a certain air of the elite surrounding the crew of the u-boats.

Certainly, I've been interested in WWII submarines, and u-boats in particular, since before the advent of the personal computer. I started out playing a game called 'Sub Battle Simulator' back in the late 1980's. It allowed you to play either the German side in the Atlantic or the American side in the Pacific. I usually played played as a German.

This has carried all the way through games such as 'Das Boot', 'Wolfpack', and now SHIII. GWX has just solidified the what was already there.

[ichso]

ichso (Das heisst ich-so, also mich-selbst, oder? Mein deutsch ist leider ein bisschen eingeröstet :hmm: )

:)

Your translation of ichso is fine. But eingeröstet means more something like roasted, what you mean is eingerostet ;)

[TarJak]

Let's put it another way. If you were given the choice of playing a game like SHIII with actual corresponding real world consequences; i.e. ships sinking taking real people and cargoes with them, would you still play it?

One of the reasons people have no problem with games like SHIII or any other game is that they have no real world consequnces in and of themseleves and therefore offer an opportunity to do things one normally would not do whilst suffering no ill effect.

One of my reasons for playing is a fascination with technology and history and one of the main things that has driven technology thoughout history is war. Advances in technology come fastest in times of dire need. There is indeed something exciting about working out how to get into a position to fire a weapon at a target and to see that target ddestroyed. Now would I be able to do that in real life? Possibly, but to be honest I wouldn't want to.

[Henri II]

Ok, some minor things they are ;) (Minor, because most people know those things without playing a war game)
And geography should be something of very common knowledge but it isn't one of my strengths too. Though I could not learn very much about the european one as being a European by myself ;)

But as you say this, it reminds me of the RealNavMod, this one can make one learn MANY new things, that's right.
As I posted initially, at first I came back for sailing aroung a bit... :lol:

Another aspect of this, at least for me, is that when I'm interested in a war game I also get interested in the history of the conflict in question. This usually leads to me reading every book about it that I can get hold of. It has been like that with just about every game I play, the Red Baron series, the Aces series, IL2, SH3, the Total War series, I'm currently waiting for SH4 to be patched up so I can (hopefully) get interested in the sub war in the pacific.