Let's ban Taliban game

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The Taliban's point of view is and should be of no concern for us.

I indeed supoort the idea that shooters should not enable the player to identify himself with any faction shown in the game on odeological grounds, especially when the faction is trying to simulate a faction from reality. Psychologically it makes a difference whether you shoot at the "blue Alliance" or Red Bots, or at Nazi figures, Allied aces or UN blue helmets. In the first case, you game against bits and bytes and oixels. In the second you haven given it a face, making you shooting at something that is a bit more human than just bits and bytes and pixels.

Leave it to "Bluefor" and "OpFor". does not change the mission a bit, nor the gameplay, but psychologically it makes a difference. Ort did oyu think the game "America's Army" is named like that just by random coincidence...? Here, the identification effect is a wanted ingrendient, since the game was designed to acchieve right this effect - for recruiting purposes. I oppose such projects.

Let's leave it to tactical challenge and strategic problems. It's like with sports shooters. These guys for the most to not imagine to shoot at real people, and they do not prject mental images of people they hate onto the target poster. They are about the mental focussing, calobrating the instrument, and getting a good point score for the series they fired. If one of them starts to pin photos of faces onto his target posters, I would avoid him at all costs (and report him to the staff).

Of course it changes things, otherwise there won't be any atmosphere or story, you would just go around shooting faceless mooks without any point. Sure, the game is about the same, but it would not be much fun.

Nobody playing such games is identifying with factions or imagining they're shooting at real people anyway, they are just playing a game.