Computer Games – Now With Added War Crimes

I know what you’re thinking. “Does this guy have anything to do other than sit online blogging?” Well, sure but sometimes you need to get things aired and there is no better medium for finding people who are willing to agree and disagree with you than the highways and byways of the Interwebz.

Therefore, I’d like to direct your collective attentions here. This has the potential to be a highly charged topic. I know this isn’t specifically a video games blog but  every single contributor here spends time playing them and as it’s our blog we’ll damn well post what we want! So, perhaps a civilised discussion about this then?

To be honest, it may be perceived that I have a bias as I’m sitting in the video game playing community side of things, I don’t own Modern Warfare 2, nor do I plan to. However, we see more and more in the media an attack upon video games as a form of entertainment. Just like rock n’ roll in the 50’s we have a new media being accused of the corruption of our youth. I’d like to think by now that humanity would have caught up with that people are free to make their own choices and sometimes they choose badly. This is nothing new but as society has aged and grown we have now entered this amazing era where someone else is to blame. Your kid goes out and tries to car jack some dude on the street? Must be GTA IV’s fault, after all, he’s been playing that for weeks.

Well, perhaps your 13-year-old shouldn’t be playing a game that is rated 18, you could also do some crazy thing like interact with your kids rather than let a console do the job of raising them… outlandish idea I know, I fully expect to be burnt at the stake for such radical and dangerous thinking. However, let’s have a proper look at just what the article linked to is saying.

War crimes are capable of being committed in computer games. You could argue that regular crimes are committed in computer games all the time and yet not all gamers are repeat offending compulsive criminals. I’ve pickpocketed stuff on my Rogue in Warcraft but have never lifted anything (nor tried it) from an actual person. We could also look at real warfare, war itself is a brutal act of destruction and invariably good does not come out of it. I’m not going to go into history and pick specific examples of anything but I do not believe that war is good, we consider ourselves an enlightened species yet we still fight each other over perceived differences. Being able to commit war crimes in a computer game is, to me, no different from the often seen lack of regard for the so-called rules by many parties engaged in armed conflicts. If you want to show through a media such as the computer the true decisions that are faced by a man on the ground then obviously they are doing a grand job. It is even possible that if certain acts are performed covertly enough or with enough like-minded individuals that in real life it is possible to get away with these things. There are many armed forces around the world today that are committing what are defined as war crimes and yet we get all hissy over a game that allows someone to make those choices. Yes, perhaps there could be some repercussions from those choices (more traditionally RPG territory though) but you tend to find that it is only the west that really and truly abides by these conventions in the conflicts going on in the world today.

Now, is this really about war crimes or, more likely, just another attack at the video games industry to create sensational headlines that will help to sell copy? I’ll leave that to your judgement. However, not everyone that plays these games is a sociopath. In RPGs that allow you to take different moral routes I will often play through at least twice in order to experience both sets of outcomes, I personally find it a lot harder to go through the bad as opposed to taking the good. Yet, in video game land, I can be an uncaring, insensitive person without having to face the consequences myself, however, the character inevitably does. Is it really any different than reading certain works of fiction that portray these kinds of things, or watching a movie?

Yet, while these kinds of media are accepted as soon as something appears in a video game everyone is up in arms. Perhaps this is due to the fact that video games are so prevalent in our homes that society feels compelled to yet again cry out with “won’t someone think of the children” well, in my opinion the person that should be thinking of the children are the parents and they should exercise discretion about the media that their offspring are subjected to. This may not be the preferred method of parenting these days but I think we can all see the consequences of that right now.

I imagine this story will have its moment in the sun and then vanish into the ether alongside all the other “computer games will bring about the apocalypse” style stories. I’m just stunned by the fact that people are bemoaning that a game allows you to commit war crimes (something that isn’t new to video games) when so many real life armies flaunt these “rules” anyway. If everyone agreed and fought the same way, then perhaps they’d have a case, by something that is supposed to represent the real world being labelled as bad because it does a good job of mirroring real life… well, I have no coherent answer to that.

Getting Excited by a New Project

As has been mentioned on these boards before I am an extremely slow painter. Not only that but I am beset by a fickleness that is well documented in my MMO playing. No matter what game I play I am normally accompanied by a horde of alts. I have already described the pernicious disease that is New Army Syndrome and therefore you can imagine how my normal whimsy can sometimes mutate into “super-whimsy”(TM). Now, my purpose today is not to talk about my many and varied idiosyncrasies nor my inherent psychological instability but more of a time when cosmic forces align to somehow influence us beyond our normal ken.

Over the past few days I am feeling something that I don’t think I have felt in quite a long time. I actually do quite enjoy painting and sometimes hold myself back from doing it more often, hence the consternation of my venerable gaming brethren who are often heard to lament the fact that nothing I have is actually fully painted. However, I believe that sometimes these things are down to motivation and if you do things right, well, in my case it may be that miracles can happen. I haven’t had a fully painted army since I was in my teenage years and that’s quite a time ago now, obviously this needs rectifying. I have finally come up with a project that is enthusing me. I have plans, actual proper plans for getting things done, I have an army list that I am super excited and happy about. I believe that I know what I am doing and for the first time in as long as I can remember I want to throw down this army on the tabletop as 100% painted! A tall order no doubt considering my notoriously slow style. This is going to happen and I reckon it’s also going to look half decent. I refer you back a couple sentences to where I refer to that fact that I have PLANS!!! Yes, plans! As a part of this I need to further motivate myself so that I do not just let things flag, this army list is not going to drop down until I have painted it, hence a second level of motivation here so, I can publically declare that I will not play a proper game of Warhammer Fantasy until I have put the finishing touches to this army. I am a grown man, it’s time that I did actually have something like this to be proud of and I reckon I finally have the excitement and drive to do it.

No doubt the people in my playing circle will also be super excited to see this. Gribblin might feel annoyed that he is robbed of his regular opponent but with nBreaker and another addition to our circle I can try to lend my talents to teaching them the game while I see them enjoying themselves and thus driving my desire to play even more and increasing the chances I have of being forced to complete my pledge. I reckon that this is the only way I have of getting something full painted. I need to do it. I can still partake of Uncharted Seas and I plan too, but the fun we’ve recently been having with Warhammer I don’t want to miss out on and I am going to do this. Motivating myself in this fashion coupled with the fact that I am actually excited about this list I hope that things combine into a successful implementation.

So Interwebz, have you ever been in the same boat as this? Do you often find yourself fighting the drudgery and need something fresh to inspire you? Or are you all top-notch people who paint everything as soon as you have it and get it on the table?

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments section, which might be easier.)

 

Owwwwwwwwwwwww!

Last night while assembling some models I managed to slip with my pin vice while trying to drill into a rather small piece of a model. I am now sporting a rather lovely reminder of how easy it is to slip and just how sharp that drill bit is… my poor thumb!

The Legend of The Girl Gamer

Once upon a time, when mud was fashionable and petrol was cheap there was a girl gamer.  Nah, just kidding, petrol has never been cheap.  Come to think of it, has there ever been a proper girl gamer?  I don’t really know.  By proper I don’t just mean someone who games occasionally, or is in the business due to other family members.  I mean my wife has gamed and painted stuff but I would never call her a gamer.  When I get excited about games she gives me a little patronizing ‘That’s nice dear’ and lets me get on with it.  She’s even been into a few Games Workshop stores but that still doesn’t make her a gamer.  A gamer is probably someone who actually has a big bunch of models strewn about the place and would combust (as the theory goes) if they ever actually got them all painted.

Now in the past I have seen some of these elusive girl gamers.  I have even been in clubs who have female members.  One of them was actually very good at gaming.  If you go to any of the big tournaments you will always see the odd one or two in amongst the beer guts and sweaty neckbeards.  It is still a massively male dominated hobby.

Now I have some ideas as to why that may be…  Young boys often get given some military themed dolls as toys.  Toy plastic soldiers, GI Joes, and Action Man (who could pwn all the GI Joes with his badass scars, buzzcut and one glance of his moving eagle eye stare).  Naturally these toys lend themselves well to playing war.  Get a stick, hide in some mud, put a headband on and spend the day pretending you are Rambo deep behind enemy lines.  Avoiding your neighbours (the enemy) until you and your mates are in position to complete your dangerous mission of stuffing grass into the washing on the line in number 3’s garden without being seen or taken prisoner.  Other popular toys for boys include model kits.  No other toy has the anarchic possibilities of a Revell Mirage 2000 jet fighter.  Firstly, there’s glue that makes you dizzy if you sniff it.  You can stick things to other things, curtains, carpets, the dog.  You can stick your fingers together and spend hours of fun peeling it off.  Then theres the paint.  Paint your jet, and your face, and your door.  Practise your mad graffitti skills before you are old enough to buy spray paint.  Once your model is complete you can spend hours running around going ‘Neeeeaaaaaaawwwwwwooooooooo’, jet in hand as you buzz your mum and practise strafing runs on your sister’s Barbie dolls.

Anyway, boys grow up, they get jobs and disposable income, but are too old to run around outside and too respectable to make machine gun noises while pointing a stick at next door’s cat.  So they combine all of their childhood hobbies and begin gaming.  Many people begin gaming in their childhood, but the difference I’ve found as an adult gamer is that when I get beaten by a twelve year old I can simply just buy an upgrade for my force, new model or whatever, and continue to do so until victory is mine.  Take that, youngsters.

So how do girls get into gaming?  Why do they do it and are there truly any hardcore girl gamers?

Conventions in Gaming – The Female of the Species

This was always going to be something that came up, however, we may not be discussing what you think we are. I could also start by saying that all three authors here at 6 Inch Move are involved with members of the opposite sex, two of us being married for a number of years. My intent here today is not to discuss the abject look of horror that crosses most ladies faces if they have to step foot in their local Games Workshop while every face stares at them in confusion as to what this figure is that has invaded their sacrosanct domain. No, more about the way in which the female form is represented through various mediums in game terms. We’re going to touch on stereotypes for sure, it would be difficult not to considering the genre and the male bias that our hobby most definitely caters for.

As you are more than likely aware if you check out any of the plethora of Fantasy movies that came out during the 80s (to be honest, probably the only good things to come out of the 80s were a lot of sci-fi/fantasy movies) women are portrayed in one of only a couple of ways. These include; being draped over some (no doubt well paying) gent, a girl who has no idea of the outside world and is therefore completely dependant on the hero (normally she’ll end up naked at some point too) and the warrior women that can kick anybody’s butt and normally does it while half naked and without getting so much as a scratch on her. OK, I’ll admit that Conan doesn’t wear much but if you read Howard’s work it fits the background, although in most of the stories the chicks are the second type listed and they pretty much are all naked half the time.

You may notice a theme developing here, this is no doubt down to the fact that products in the Fantasy realm are normally aimed at the male half of the population and are also created in the majority by those men. Now, I’m not dumb enough to postulate that these characters fulfill the whims and lusts of the creators who have a lack of experience in dealing with the female half… I don’t think that’s it at all, even though we can all picture a stereotypical gamer locked in his parents basement fantasising about conquests with amazingly hot women. We’ve all been teenagers after all. Yet, being in my third decade upon God’s Earth I obviously have different sensibilities than when I was younger and still, even though I know a large portion of gamers exists these days that are not in their teens, many have even left the confines of parental subterranean domiciles, we find that a large proportion of models showing females are less protected than might otherwise be reasonably expected. Whether this is a mere continuation of something that has existed since gaming first crept from the fiery chasm whence it came or a deliberate design philosophy is not something I am in a position to declare, but in Fantasy in particular, this theme occurs again and again. I know of a great many companies that make astoundingly detailed models and yet when you get down to representations of women, well, they must spend a lot of the time a little on the chilly side. My wife tends to be cold when we set our central heating to “African Summer” so I can only imagine what these poor model ladies go through if their physiology matches that of my wife and other ladies I know.

In Sci-fi things get a little better. The Sisters of Battle for 40k are equipped in the same kind of armour that protects perennial GW favourites the Space Marines, but even here we have a unit of silk shrouded lunatic chainsaw-wielders in the form of the Sisters Repentia. Filling a stereotypical need? Maybe, the models are good but the rules suck so you don’t often see them. Privateer Presses Iron Kingdoms universe with its Steampunk theme also means that we get women who wear a little more, however, as anyone who plays Cryx knows, that doesn’t hold true for all factions. Most of the Cryxian Warcasters are a little less armoured than other factions and we even have a triumvirate of teenagers with side-boob capacity the envy of women twice their age.

Is it purely down to male flights of fancy that all these female figures are defined by a pretty standard set of guidelines. They are invariably thing with large chests, many of these bosoms on display as part of the model, sometimes even fully exposed rather than just a prodigious cleavage. Is there a need for it? I don’t think so, I am sure that sales of female figures would not dramatically decrease if we suddenly saw a reduction in the output of such things. Do we want to see fat chicks modelled? Well, probably not, we play in a stylised environment that is heavily male dominated. Male figures with wang all over the place would not be nearly as endearing to the female audience as busty beauties are to men. We use these games as an escape from our humdrum every day lives and therefore having scantily clad babes all over the place caters to the most base of male instincts. It’s amusing that a hobby that has matured over the years still sticks with those themes that may have piqued the interests of those of us who still play during those formative teenage years. Things probably haven’t changed to entice a new generation of players. It amuses me though that we can still stick to these things that inevitably draw criticism from other quarters regarding the portrayal of these characters. Now, it may be that women in the universes we play in are happy with their lot but if we want to encourage ladies to engage in our hobby and not feel objectified as soon as they step into a store perhaps we need to change how they are portrayed upon the tabletop?

Conventions In Gaming – Sportsmanship

You can’t really discuss gaming without, at some point, ending up talking about what this post is all aboot. (See what I did thar?) This topic can bring up  a lot of disagreement as well as a lot of sagely nodding of heads and “hear hears” from those of us who have been around long enough to think of our gaming groups in a similar vein to gentleman’s clubs, just without the sitting around in silk smoking jackets with a cigar in one hand and a brandy in the other.

So, if this topic can bring up interesting debate, from what angle am I going to approach writing this post? Exactly the same way I approach all my posts, with reference to my own history and those people that I choose to spend my time gaming with. But we should perhaps try and start with a definition of sportsmanship, to avoid confusion let’s copy/pasta an official definition;

sportsman

(or sportswoman)

• noun 1 a person who takes part in a sport, especially as a professional. 2 a person who behaves sportingly.

— DERIVATIVES sportsmanlike adjective sportsmanship noun.

Hmmm, still  leaves a lot open to interpretation doesn’t it? So, let’s try again;

sporting

• adjective 1 connected with or interested in sport. 2 fair and generous in one’s behaviour.

— DERIVATIVES sportingly adverb.

That certainly helps to clear things up, when we play games we should be “fair and generous” in our behaviour. My own personal definition relating to Sportsmanship is that players on both sides of the table should both be able to have an enjoyable game whereby both parties profit from the experience and time spent together. Slightly different but nonetheless a valid extension of the official definition. Why is this aspect of gaming important? Well, if both players are not sporting then normally the game ends up with at least one of the players feeling like they’ve wasted their time and could have better spent it doing something else. Games are meant to be fun for both players and no-one wants to spend a couple of hours with their opponent bad mouthing them or telling them just how much fail their army list is composed of because they have taken sub-optimal units. Tournaments even tend towards having a Sportsmanship award these days to encourage people to be more sporting. Yet, if this behaviour is encouraged, what are some examples of sporting behaviour? Let’s have a look and then go on into a further discussion about how I see Sportsmanship, how I apply it in games I play and how I see it being applied.

Obvious examples of sporting behaviour is reminding your opponent that he forgot something, for instance “are you sure you want to move that unit before you declare charges?” or “I know you have no shooting but do you really want to go straight to the combat phase before casting any spells?” Both are mistakes I have made in the past few months, what can I say? I get excited when things get up close and personal. This isn’t the only aspect of it though, I am sure we have all been there when a unit has charged into combat to come up a millimetre short, in these cases it should be easy enough to let them charge on in anyway rather than failing. I have a comical image in my head related to this as I imagine this rampaging group of barbarians throwing themselves at an enemy just to stop within axe swinging distance and then having to walk back a few feet because their charge didn’t quite reach. I know that’s a rather simplistic view of the way the rules for Warhammer Fantasy are (after all each turn is just a segment of time) but I think it highlights the point I am trying to make.

Yet, should this be our behaviour all the time? I am not a tournament player and I can imagine a situation whereby a failed charge (even by that millimetre) could allow you a counter charge in your next turn that could turn a disadvantageous situation into an advantageous one. In real battle capitalizing on your opponent’s mistakes is going to help to achieve victory and simulated battles are no different. I reckon that all players, like myself, can come up with a lot of stories whereby they have achieved victory through a mistake an opponent has made, knowingly or unwittingly, but surely, by the letter of a sporting behaviour law we should offer advice and assistance to let them know what is going on?

This leads me to how I deal with Sportsmanship in my own games and with my friends. For me, it all depends on how familiar we are with the game. I have an abhorrence of cheating, it devalues a game for all that play it and getting one up on someone through playing outside the rules, well, you might as well not even bother playing the game in my opinion. Yet, when I am learning a new game it is inevitable that mistakes creep in as we familiarise ourselves with the rules, I normally kick myself after such games where I’ve done something wrong after going over the game in my head or even when I’ve forgotten something that could have saved my bacon. So, when we are learning something new (like Space Hulk and Uncharted Seas at the moment) I give and expect to be given some leeway in how we do things and a less rigid application of the ruleset as we get used to things. This is of course vastly different to how Gribblin and I play our Fantasy games. We have gotten to the point now where if I forget to declare a charge I have to live with it, if I skip a phase, that’s my error and the same is applied. This means our games probably come over as a little more competitive and they are, but regardless of the outcome we both enjoy ourselves and also end up having to remember and learn from the mistakes we make so that we do not make them again.

There is also normally some good natured trash talking going on during the game and always once we are finished we will review each other’s performances and offer suggestions on what went well and what didn’t, where we went wrong and how we could have done things differently. Normally, one of us blames some dodgy dice (me more than anyone else at the moment). I cannot recall any bitterness coming out of any of our games and therefore I feel that we have a pretty sporting thing going on. We all enjoy ourselves even come the points when we lose, if everyone has fun then it’s a win all around really. So I believe that you can still be sporting without giving your opponent free advice, sure if they are new then you’re going to give them some leeway and be helpful during a game, crushing someone who has their first game against you isn’t going to endear them to the hobby nor the people that play. However, any of us old hands can take things a bit more seriously and still find ourselves having fun, sporting and competitive games.