Most of my family still lives in England. My great uncle served on the HMS Easton during the war. One of the Hunt class I think. He was over visiting us a few months ago and saw this game, didn't seem to bother him in the least. Said it was kinda interesting seeing thing from the other side. Though he got a huge thrill out of watching the convoy escorts plaster me with DC. Never had someone stand behind me and root for me to be sunk before :D

Yeah, playing these games together with the former enemies is great .. makes you wonder what would have happened if they had been around earlier for Adolf and Winston to play.

haha, "we will fight them in the skies, we will fight them on the beaches, we will beat them at Silent hunter!"
:rotfl:

LOL :rotfl: :rock:

That was so good I'm even thinking about changing my signature for it :arrgh!:

lol, feel free. :arrgh!: apparantly in england its national speak like a pirate day today :D (sorry totally off topic)

Bothers me none

I dont think of it as anything more than a game

I have a great respect for veterans from all countries. After any war all that's left are victims and veterans. I've always been fascinated by military history, tactics and the machinery, so SHIII is ideal for me no matter whose boat it is. I talk to every WWII vet I meet, and soak up every word like a sponge and don't care where they're from.

Very happy to read this thread and cannot agree more. However, I sincerely wish that more game developers (and movie makers too while I'm at it) would also share the same thought as we do. To keep it historically accurate, and not use games as a propaganda vehicle with fiction and modern ideas added to it that didn't even exist in that time. I feel it's bad for the younger people to grow up with a, dare I say, "programmed" and false impression of things past. I stay away from politics or anything that smells of it. That's one reason I have come to enjoy simulations, or games set in a fantasy environment, being able to have freedom of choice and the option to play as "the bad guys", something extremely rare.

I've played many good games in my life and recently I got a new game about WW2 which had the events of the Omaha beach landing as it's first campaign. Now, I've seen this in movies and other games over and over. Used all the same equipment so many times that it's not fun anymore, even with all the technologically advanced graphics. The same dialogues ("Get to the shingllllle!"), heck even voices, seem to be repititive through them. This is, in my humble opinion, terribly boring. I couldn't find it in me to continue playing the game so I gave it to my nephew. That's all. :88)

I may be totally wrong about this, but I assure you that I write it with a good and sincere intention. This might be another reason why people from USA and UK would not mind playing a great game that, if exposed to the politicians, might pose problems for the developers and/or the gaming industry. :rotfl:

I dont see harm in WW2 games,
I actually am one of those buggers that like to play as a german,
as I have a special interest in their strategics, machinery, technology and the fact that they lost the war to see if YOU can do it differently, still I havent won any games till the end of the war as the allied forces really pounded my butt back to berlin.

especially in the RTS games I own of WW2
I like to see if I can make any changes. especially the Old Panzer general game, damn till 1943 it was going so well, but then the table turns and darn, its get hard!
you barrely succeed or lose the battle. especially my biggest humiliation is in the second battle of bulge, I can hold the USA army's off for a while till patton arives...then I crap my pants and see everything I have been blown to bits

but about sinking , killing the other side, well you're not killing a Brit, you've just destroyed/killed/sunk some Codes, digits and models/textures. nothing to feel sorry about , its part of the game.;)

HunterICX

Well I do play Silent Hunter, and this, "it's only a game" kinda nags at me a bit. Just suppose you had a game where you were a moslem and you had to drive car bombs to restaraunts and kidergartens. Would you play it? (assuming you're a non moslem).

It's complex but wars (I think) are different to the individual actions that make them up. Also I agree with the statements that the majority of Germans did not know what was going on. My grandfather fought in WWII and the germans were amongst his favourite people.

Oh well another sleepless night with my conscience, Theme Concentration Camp anyone?...sorry probably not very funny.

I think I see what you mean Kurtz. I think one thing that helps is that so much time has passed. Imagine if WWII had just happened 5-10 years ago and most of us had fought in it. Would that make us feel different about this game. Might be an interesting topic there:hmm:

As for the muslim/moslem (not sure if one is right or both are) comment. I play Battlefield 2 quite a bit. Even being an american, I've no problem playing as the MEC (Middle East Coalition) and taking out the masses of american troopers who happen to wander into the sights of my sniper rifle. Yes it's a bit different from the "car bombs to restaraunts and kindergartens" that you mention. But then I am not doing anything like that in SH3 either. The game is 100% military. If the game had my crew spending their off time working at a death camp or something then I'd feel different.

Anyways, just my thoughts. And a quick hello to everyone here on the forums. Been reading them for a long time but just started posting yesterday.

welcome! nice post too, sums things up nicely :up:

hey all, i have been away for a couple days and im really surprised how many reactions my post got.

first of all i want to say, that my "apology" was meant rather the ;) way, i dont really feel guilty for anything, and - as has been stated before in a good post - no one should feel guilty for anything he or she has nothing more to do with than nationality.

Although i am very happy for the positive response, not because it was necessary to salve my consciences, but because i believe it's a good and even necessary thing just to become aware and think about that kind of stuff.
the day we forget such things or remark it with "it's long time over so why think about it", is the day the seed for intolerance and misunderstandings is sown. It's good to hear that many of us - a generation that really has nothing to do with the war anymore - still have an opinion about it.

most of the posts in this thread are very good and reflect an intelligent average SH3 player. thats really cool. i guess the no-go-behavior guys are rather to be found in a wolfenstein forum ;-)

yeah, the reason for my initial post. although i really dont feel personally guilty for what happened these days, it just felt a bit weird that day, playing SH3.

the trigger was of course the swastica on the kriegsflagge, which (dont know whether its known outside of germany) is illegal to show or use in Germany for reasons that are not clearly educational (e.g. in the movie "das boot" - which is a german production - the kriegsflagge on the port-leaving U-96 is always hanging straight down so you CANT see the swastica, although its windy in that scene).
anyway, it just started a whole series of thoughts. am i being a nazi now, because i love playing that game so much? would i also like to play as a british submarine commander? one reason i dont like SH4 is because the pacific war doesnt interest me so much... damn.

of course i know i am not a nazi, and there is nothing bad about playing SH3. though i uninstalled the kriegsflagge mod (its really good RB, no offense to you) because i felt weird. the reason isnt suppressing my home country's history, its rathre because i wouldnt like my girlfriend or my friends seeing a swastica in my beloved game thats always on. because i dont know how they would react. its just easier not to have it.

kinda is a form of suppression, hm?

yep, thats exactly what i think. for me its not just a game. it's also a kind of very vivid history book (especially thanks to our great modders who made the game as authentic as it is now). or would you play a game in which you basicly do nothing all the time, use 1024 time compression sometimes because nothing happens, where you submerge every hundred miles just to hear - nothing.

i dont believe i would love Silent Hunter so much if i knew it was all fictional. I'm sure that most Silent Hunter fans dont just play silent hunter, they also read books, watch movies and are in a way fascinated by the u-boat war. it is really complex and it has absolutely nothing to do with nazi stuff. as has also been said before in this thread, the u-boat weapon was the most unpolitical and often even anti-national socialst part of the wehrmacht (e.g. Kusch sentenced to death for removing hitler portrait from his u-boat and stuff like that, Teddy Suhren's famous quote "are the nazis still at the rudder" etc).

we cant get to a conclusion to all of this, it really is too complex. for some of us it's "just a game", for others its also a bit of interesting history, and others even get to think a lot about that stuff through the game.

i guess this is just another reason why SH3 is such a valuable game for all of us :-)

I'm an American whose family members fought in WWII as well. I don't think you can condem an entire nation's population for it's leadership. Both the allied and axis side had honorable people who fought bravely for their country. Both sides also did some less than honorable things. Not to say that I want to debate who was 'worse', since that's really not the point, and it's a meaningless discussion. The point is that I can appreciate the dedication of the average German soldier fighting for his country just as I can the Americans, British, etc. SH3 is a game and it honors the courage of both sides. As far as being just 'from the German side', heck, I've gotten sunk enough in my U-Boat to make any allied fan proud!

Couldn't agree with you more. :yep: :up:

Further, I think the original topic is moot (no disrespect to the OP). It just seems illogical to me that gamers from the "Allied" side of the house who might be sensitive playing SH3 would in fact buy and continue playing it if it bothered them to a substantial degree.

Didn't say it wasn't an interesting question, didn't disrespect this discussion in anyway or those who have participated in it. Simply stated that IMHO the original question is moot. :yep: