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Ethics in Strategy Gaming, Part 1: Panzer General

61 points by doppp 6y ago

dash2 6y ago
This little chunk seems questionable: 'Hart befriended many of the surviving German generals — often by visiting them in their prison cells — and bolstered his case via a tacit quid pro quo that would have gone something like this if anyone had dared to speak it aloud: “Say that you developed Blitzkrieg warfare by reading my old texts, and I’ll use my influence to promote the position that you were only a soldier following orders and don’t deserve to die in prison.”' If it was tacit, how do we know it happened?
- mcguire 6y ago
  IIRC, little things like German generals, in their autobiographies, saying things like "if the Brits and French had listened to Liddell Hart, they wouldn't have lost to us in 1940" or "our tactics were based on reading Liddell Hart's early infantry tactics work" when there is little to no chance that they could have known who he was at the time and most of his writings prior to WWII were based on the ide that "blitzkrieg" was impossible. In turn, he wrote several books along the lines of the "clean Wehrmacht" and that German generals were brilliant---specifically, most of the German generals you've ever heard of. See *Liddell Hart and the Weight of History" by John J. Mearsheimer.
  - dash2 6y ago
    That doesn't sound like evidence for the claim. It's like saying that Chevron was behind 9/11 because they gained from the consequences. Also, it seems weird to think the German generals wouldn't have heard of Liddell Hart - he was a major historian of WWI. Indeed, this article provides evidence that Rommel, for one, had heard of him: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a515920.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a515920.pdf
    - mcguire 6y ago
      That's an interesting review! "One visitor was Major General F. W. von Mellenthin, a former General Staff officer on Rommel's staff in North Africa. Since Liddell Hart rarely if ever deviated from his established schedule, it was my responsibility to entertain the general for several hours, which provided the opportunity to inquire whether Rommel had in fact ever mentioned Liddell Hart in his presence. "Oh yes," he assured me, "many times. He had a good opinion of his writings. That is why I have come from South Africa to meet him." This of course does not make Rommel a pupil, except perhaps in the eyes-and books-'--Of Liddell Hart. But Rommel was familiar with his theories, and there is no doubt that other serious military readers found many of his ideas worth thinking about." I'll stand corrected! (Although the little cynic that lives inside me wants to point out that this conversation seems to have occurred well into the cold war. And then, there's "If I was being "used" I was not aware of it, although when he read proofs to a book I was about to publish he did insist that I insert the word "deep" before "strategic penetration" in a part characterizing some past writings of his own. I could not understand why the point seemed so important, and when I retorted that this was not the way it was worded in his analysis of the Mongol campaigns, he replied that it should have been obvious from the context that it was what he had meant. I conceded the point, but wondered at the time why he was being such a stickler about it." which is essentially the behavior Meersheimer is describing.) On the other hand, this quote makes it seem like a character trait rather than a devious plot: "One day I found in his files a copy of one of General Douglas MacArthur's reports to the Secretary of War when he was Chief of Staff in the early 1930s. Liddell Hart had underlined numerous passages and marked in the margins which of his own works a specific idea or phrase had come from. It was an old file, so this had nothing to do with rebuilding a "badly stained reputation." To Liddell Hart these passages signified that MacArthur, who later demonstrated brilliant applications of the indirect approach in New Guinea and the Philippines, was familiar with his books." Anyway, the history of Liddell Hart's thought as I understand it is, in the last year of WW1 and shortly after the war, he was involved in the development of the British version of what would be come to be called "stormtrooper tactics"; attacking at a single point to create a breach in the front lines which could then be expanded. This period also included his collaboration with JFC Fuller (who was all "Tanks you very much!"). Then, through the 20s, he wrote about the "indirect approach", which may or may not have been a conceptual predecessor or possibly even influential on "blitzkrieg" (which wasn't a solid doctrine or plan to the Germans in 1939-40). However, through the 30s he became convinced that, tactically and operationally, the defense was much stronger than the offense (which was largely the guiding wisdom in Britain and France in the late 30s and early 1940. As a result, his indirect approach became more and more indirect until he became a strong proponent of "the British way of war": maintaining a strong blockade and giving the French money, not soldiers. By the late 30s, he was strongly against putting British soldiers in continental Europe and is on record as supporting appeasement to at least some extent. As a result, in the 40s his name was mud, at least in military circles, and his interactions with German generals and the white-washing of the Wehrmacht was very important to the recovery of his reputation, whether that was a grand scheme or no. In any case, here's another detailed take on Liddell Hart and the German generals, from the standpoint of his and their participation in German rearmament for the cold war. "A Very Special Relationship: Basil Liddell Hart, Wehrmacht Generals and the Debate on West German Rearmament, 1945-1953" by Alaric Searle. http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/30779/1/War_In_History-1998-Searle-327-57.pdf http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/30779/1/War_In_History-1... "Bywayofconclusion, ifoneseekstoputtheveryspecialrelationshipwhichexistedbetweenLiddellHartandWehrmachtgeneralsintotheoverallcontextoftheformer'scareer, anumberofobservationscanbemade. Firstofall, undoubtedlyLiddellHartbenefitedgreatlyasawriterfromhiscontactswiththegenerals; ontheonehandasasourceofinformationforhishistoricalwritingandontheotherforsupportintheeffortshewasmakingtoadvertisethe'influence'ofhistheoriesinGermanyintheinterwarperiod. However, thecentralmotivatingforceinthealliancebetweenLiddellHartandthemostprominentGermangeneralswasnothistoricalresearch, butrathertheexigenciesofthecampaignforrearmament; arehabilitationofthetopgeneralswasseenasacrucialcomponentofthepublicrelationscampaignwhichhadtobewaged." [Yeah, cut-n-paste from PDF is probelmatic.]
jbob2000 6y ago
It'll be interesting to read his thoughts about Company of Heroes, should he ever get to that game. The developers naively implemented the Nazis, Allies, and the Soviets as historically faithful as they could - which made the Nazis incredibly overpowered.
- panzagl 6y ago
  If it were historically faithful the German player would never know how many of his forces were going to never show up because of mechanical failure and air interdiction.
  - jbob2000 6y ago
    There is a campaign mission where you have to hobble a broken Panzer through a bunch of Allied territory. The voiceovers for the infantry can be heard sarcastically commenting about the quality of German engineering.
- galkk 6y ago
  And this is shit - https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/25/4553536/is-company-of-heroes-2-anti-russian https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/25/4553536/is-company-of-hero... Whatever they tried to portrait Soviets, it's not historically accurate
Rompect 6y ago
Feeling bad about a game is pathetic. I play Hearts of Iron 4 (with original flags, so a nazi flag) and the number of soviets that I have killed combined from all games as germany must be more than 100 million. It really is so much fun.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  While it may or may not justify feeling bad, there are major moral theories (in particular virtue ethics and deontology, as well as metaethical-agnostic views) which easily accommodate discussion of virtual actions from moral points of view, and explain why they matter (in contrast to "it's just a game"). Fun alone (or the good feelings of playing such games with friends) does not excuse wrongful behaviour, in the same sense that ganging up with friends and bullying someone for fun does not excuse the moral weight of the action. There is also the need to explain why many people do feel moral sentiment or even guilt after playing some games, and the moral intuition that some virtual actions are widely regarded as morally wrongful, such as virtual child abuse (and in contrast, why virtual murder would be okay, or at least better). Gary Young in particular investigates an empirically-minded approach to the problem. It's often inconvenient for people who spend a lot of time playing games to even begin to question their actions in game, and unfortunately a lot of such thought is dismissed as moral pearl-clutching, but from what I can tell of the philosophical literature, there are good arguments from many points of view. It's very similar to the way in which even the discussion of the morality of killing animals was (and often still is) dismissed by people ignorant of the philosophical research because meat is just so tasty. Here are some starters in the growing literature on the significance of actions in video games and virtual worlds generally: Moral License in Video Games: When Being Right Can Mean Doing Wrong https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2014.0599 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2014.0599 Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time by Christopher Bartel (2020) Defending the morality of violent video games by Marcus Schulzke (2010) Violent video games and morality: A meta-ethical approach by Gary Young (2015) The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation by Sebastian Ostritsch (2017) Getting away with murder: why virtual murder in MMORPGs can be wrong on Kantian grounds by Helen Ryland (2019)
  - 6y ago
tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
I think he makes a subtle but fairly critical mistake right out of the gate, in the third paragraph: > I should note here that my intention isn’t to condemn those people whose tolerance for moral ambiguity allows them to enjoy Panzer General in the spirit which SSI no doubt intended I know he's trying to come off as non-judgmental here, but he still makes an error in assuming that people who enjoy this game are "tolerating moral ambiguity." Imagining yourself in the shoes of an evil person is a fundamental part of fiction. Just read The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. Engaging in such fantasies is in no way, shape, or form an act of tolerance towards moral ambiguity; it's one of the few ways one can safely explore the darker parts of their own psyche and wrestle with them.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  This is right on the money. To have a society that will not repeat darker sides of history and behaviour, we need to seriously engage with it. Not sensor them in a fit of moral panic. You could argue that this game is not qualified as serious engagement, but that's a sloghtly different discussion
  - definetheword 6y ago
    I think this is an unrealistic expectation for a game. I've never played Panzer General, but I've played other strategies games and boardgames. When I choose to play the Axis, I play to understand the dynamics or limitations of the battalions/dynamics/offense/defense of the Germans in ww1 or ww2, not participate in the political realm Imagine you ask your friend to play as the Axis so you can play the Allies, and they refuse saying "No, I don't want to play the Axis because the game rules require me to be berated with a history of evil". It's not something you expect in a boardgame, so why expect it in a computer game
    - watwut 6y ago
      I find the idea of people attempting to learn history lessons from those scary. They were not meant for that. Anyway, you can't really divorce army movements from the goals the army had. Which were profoundly political, including ethnical cleansing.
RandomNick 6y ago
"For your actions in Panzer General will also lead to the deaths of millions, at only one more degree of remove at best." No, my actions won't lead to a single death, no matter how many degrees you move away. It's just moving bits around in a computer. "Or am I hopelessly overthinking it? Is Panzer General just a piece of harmless entertainment that happens to play with a subset of the stuff of history?" The answer is an emphatic yes, you are really overthinking this.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I feel like you have taken that argument out of context. This appears just before it: "What sorts of subject matter are appropriate for a game? Before you rush to answer, ask yourself how you would feel about, say, a version of Transport Tycoon where you have to move Jews from the cities where they live to the concentration camps where they will die." If one feels completely comfortable with that, then the argument afterward can be disregarded. However, the author makes that argument on the assumption that you will feel uncomfortable with the above (as I'm sure a lot of us would) and posits that Panzer General should make you equally uncomfortable. Further, I think it is unwise to brush aside any argument that the nature of the media we consume does not affect how we interact with the real world without consideration. Just because it turns out that old 90s arguments about DOOM turning us all into violent murderers was wrong doesn't mean that there aren't effects that might be harmful.
  - RandomNick 6y ago
    That previous section doesn't alter the context and doesn't change the fact that nothing I or the author or any other player does in a game like this leads to a single death, let alone millions. If the author is uncomfortable taking on the role of a "German general goose-stepping and kowtowing to his Führer" then he should feel equally uncomfortable acting as a Soviet general goose-stepping for a dictator who imprisoned, tortured and starved millions of his own citizens. Or for that matter the U.S. or Britain. Forget anything based on ancient Greece or Rome as well. Might as well stick to Farmville or Mario Kart if you're going to continue down that road. "Further, I think it is unwise to brush aside any argument that the nature of the media we consume does not affect how we interact with the real world without consideration. Just because it turns out that old 90s arguments about DOOM turning us all into violent murderers was wrong doesn't mean that there aren't effects that might be harmful." I did not brush it aside, I read the entire rambling article, most of which had very little to do with any potential harmful effects and gave it a lot more consideration than it truly deserved. It was in no way compelling, nor did it contain any real insights. I stand by my earlier statement, he is really overthinking this.
golergka 6y ago
All other great points in these comments aside, empathy (not simpathy!) with the enemy is a great tool to defeat him.
pcthrowaway 6y ago
I was really fascinated by this article, but ultimately a bit disappointed by the conclusion. This isn't about the ethics of gaming at all, but the author's drawn conclusion about the ethics of a specific game (with a brilliant long-form exploration of the historical context behind the game). Why enjoying a Nazi-general-commander game is less justifiable than, say, Postal (where you play a distraught postal worker going on a senseless killing rampage), or Grand Theft Auto is not explored at all. Also, the Milgram experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) is highly relevant when vilifying people for taking orders even if they understand that the orders may be immoral.
- djur 6y ago
  Well, it's "Part 1", and it's specifically about strategy gaming. The author recently wrote a critical piece about DOOM as well: https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-5-narratives-of-doom/ https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-5-na...
- mcguire 6y ago
  I thought the Milgram experiment was problematic, science-wise.
panzagl 6y ago
I came to this article prepared to defend games where you play general, but this is not about that. The moral ambiguity described is playing a game where you are specifically playing a nazi general, and the 'Good German' myth promulgated by the Cold War that has made that palatable. So like I told my wife when we watched "The Book Thief"- I was not expecting this to have a happy ending
CapricornNoble 6y ago
You can skip almost this whole hand-wringing article as the "why" is articulated right here: "the focus on Rommel and more generally the German side (many wargames feature prominent German military motifs and use German military nomenclature) cater to a genre that customarily finds more interest in playing the underdog, relying on [the player’s] brains rather than overwhelming force, and accepting the challenge of reversing the historical result." Combine that appeal with uniforms designed by Hugo Boss and it's a no-brainer why the Germans are the most popular force to play in wargames. There are some VERY interesting tactical/operational challenges for the Japanese and the Soviets, depending on where you look in the war, but neither force is quite so well-dressed as the Waffen SS. This article is like an extremely-long-form version of Twitter outrage...the same mentality that is targeting otherwise-fun-looking content (Ghosts of Tsushima, Cyberpunk 2077) and wants to beat us all over the head with how bad we are as people for enjoying it. It's tiresome. "What sorts of subject matter are appropriate for a game? Before you rush to answer, ask yourself how you would feel about, say, a version of Transport Tycoon where you have to move Jews from the cities where they live to the concentration camps where they will die." Man, I hope this guy never finds out what sorts of sociopathic stuff Rimworld players get into... "If, as I dearly hope, you would prefer not to play such a game, ask yourself what the difference between Panzer General and that other game really are. For your actions in Panzer General will also lead to the deaths of millions, at only one more degree of remove at best." See what I mean? The next thing you know, he'll be writing about how we shouldn't play a real-world map in Civilization as the Europeans, because their explorations led to millions of deaths from colonialism. Slavery shouldn't be a featured game mechanic either, for the same reason. If you play as the Spanish/English/French/Germans and you research Slavery, then you are a BAD HUMAN BEING. Maybe games should send a message to a centralized server, alerting Big Tech so your media accounts can be flagged, and your bank account terminated? I have ancestors who survived genocide, and ancestors who survived chattel slavery. I enjoy wargames, in all of their varying degrees of focus, without the ridiculous navel-gazing.
- panzagl 6y ago
  There's more to this article than SJW outrage- after WWII the allies (well, US and UK) tended to sweep German atrocities under the rug in order to use them against the Soviets in the Cold War. This has made the semi-fetishism of the nazi military more acceptable in many domains (film, games, model building, re-enacting, etc) than would otherwise be tolerable in society at large.
jjk166 6y ago
Games are works of entertainment, in the same camp as literature and movies. Imagine if someone said they could not read a book if it included chapters from a Nazi's perspective. Some people may simply not enjoy such works, but to say that such passages are inappropriate is going down a dangerous path. As the author notes, there is nothing closer in most of our minds to pure evil than the Nazis. It is easy for us to treat them as monsters - inherently irredeemable demons in human form who committed atrocities that we never could. The idea of even trying to humanize such villains seems like an insult to their victims. But those who did such monstrous things were not monsters but men. There was neither some mass delusion which overcame the german people for over a decade while a small cabal of evil beings were in power, nor some tragic fault built into these people that is absent in all the rest of the world. People exactly like you and me were convinced that their compliance with this system was, if not explicitly good, at least acceptable. The author wonders why someone might want to play a game as a proud german general on their way to conquering great britain, the soviet union, and eventually the united states; the answer to which should be self evident when one considers how desirable this position was to real people in real life. The same desire for victory and glory which motivated war criminals in the wehrmacht also lives in most everyone else. The willingness not to ask what that victory means for the hidden jewish populations of the conquered is common to both camps too. The author brings up a terrifying game idea to demonstrate their point: an Auschwitz Transport Tycoon. Of course the very idea seems revolting. But for all those who have played train simulators: have you seriously asked what your cargo was and what it was being transported for? Or did you simply accept that your job was to get it between points and thus satisfy some arbitrary requirement from an unquestioned authority. Our default assumption is that we're supposed to play the game according to the rules and that achieving the stated objectives is a good thing in and of itself. No one sees themselves as the villains of history. When you must decide whether your orders are just, they most likely won't be coming from someone with a skull on their cap. We must understand that being a villain feels just the same as being a hero, the only difference is the lack of honest introspection. Seeing things from the bad guy's perspective is important for reminding us to question our own. More generally, the idea that we should avoid putting ourselves in someone else's shoes because that makes us confront uncomfortable realities is anathema to the sort of liberal culture the Nazis tried so hard to stamp out.
polotics 6y ago
Frankly why waste time on Panzer General's ethics when the most excellent Panther Games Command Ops 2 is waiting on Steam to teach you about reality! When your troops start to rout, flee, fatigue and disobey and you're overwhelmed by your own micro-management... Then you realise how much of the damage is done by distant artillery (more than half of casualties in WW2, true fact) The ethics is clear: being the commander, on any side, you have to be evil.
sorokod 6y ago
I think that generally speaking the ambiguity increases as time goes by. Is a 9/11 simulator premature? How about Vietnam war strategy game? Should I think of Wernher Von Braun (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun) every time I see a liftoff from Cape Canaveral? Is playing the character of Genghis Khan morally acceptable?
- mcguire 6y ago
  "Should I think of Wernher Von Braun (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun) every time I see a liftoff from Cape Canaveral?" You mean SS Sturmbahnfurher von Braun? Yes, actually. Although the von Braun building (and a very nice one it is) is on the Army part of Redstone Arsenal rather than Marshall Space Flight Center. There's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance here in north Alabama.
  - sorokod 6y ago
    I sometimes think of him looking and the shrapnel marks on the building of the V&A museum in London. More here: https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-rocket-attacks-map/ https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-r...
gvv 6y ago
Guess I need to be charged as a war criminal for the thousands I slaughtered in Call of Duty...talk about overreacting.

61 points by doppp 6y ago

This little chunk seems questionable: 'Hart befriended many of the surviving German generals — often by visiting them in their prison cells — and bolstered his case via a tacit quid pro quo that would have gone something like this if anyone had dared to speak it aloud: “Say that you developed Blitzkrieg warfare by reading my old texts, and I’ll use my influence to promote the position that you were only a soldier following orders and don’t deserve to die in prison.”' If it was tacit, how do we know it happened?

mcguire 6y ago
IIRC, little things like German generals, in their autobiographies, saying things like "if the Brits and French had listened to Liddell Hart, they wouldn't have lost to us in 1940" or "our tactics were based on reading Liddell Hart's early infantry tactics work" when there is little to no chance that they could have known who he was at the time and most of his writings prior to WWII were based on the ide that "blitzkrieg" was impossible. In turn, he wrote several books along the lines of the "clean Wehrmacht" and that German generals were brilliant---specifically, most of the German generals you've ever heard of. See *Liddell Hart and the Weight of History" by John J. Mearsheimer.
- dash2 6y ago
  That doesn't sound like evidence for the claim. It's like saying that Chevron was behind 9/11 because they gained from the consequences. Also, it seems weird to think the German generals wouldn't have heard of Liddell Hart - he was a major historian of WWI. Indeed, this article provides evidence that Rommel, for one, had heard of him: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a515920.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a515920.pdf
  - mcguire 6y ago
    That's an interesting review! "One visitor was Major General F. W. von Mellenthin, a former General Staff officer on Rommel's staff in North Africa. Since Liddell Hart rarely if ever deviated from his established schedule, it was my responsibility to entertain the general for several hours, which provided the opportunity to inquire whether Rommel had in fact ever mentioned Liddell Hart in his presence. "Oh yes," he assured me, "many times. He had a good opinion of his writings. That is why I have come from South Africa to meet him." This of course does not make Rommel a pupil, except perhaps in the eyes-and books-'--Of Liddell Hart. But Rommel was familiar with his theories, and there is no doubt that other serious military readers found many of his ideas worth thinking about." I'll stand corrected! (Although the little cynic that lives inside me wants to point out that this conversation seems to have occurred well into the cold war. And then, there's "If I was being "used" I was not aware of it, although when he read proofs to a book I was about to publish he did insist that I insert the word "deep" before "strategic penetration" in a part characterizing some past writings of his own. I could not understand why the point seemed so important, and when I retorted that this was not the way it was worded in his analysis of the Mongol campaigns, he replied that it should have been obvious from the context that it was what he had meant. I conceded the point, but wondered at the time why he was being such a stickler about it." which is essentially the behavior Meersheimer is describing.) On the other hand, this quote makes it seem like a character trait rather than a devious plot: "One day I found in his files a copy of one of General Douglas MacArthur's reports to the Secretary of War when he was Chief of Staff in the early 1930s. Liddell Hart had underlined numerous passages and marked in the margins which of his own works a specific idea or phrase had come from. It was an old file, so this had nothing to do with rebuilding a "badly stained reputation." To Liddell Hart these passages signified that MacArthur, who later demonstrated brilliant applications of the indirect approach in New Guinea and the Philippines, was familiar with his books." Anyway, the history of Liddell Hart's thought as I understand it is, in the last year of WW1 and shortly after the war, he was involved in the development of the British version of what would be come to be called "stormtrooper tactics"; attacking at a single point to create a breach in the front lines which could then be expanded. This period also included his collaboration with JFC Fuller (who was all "Tanks you very much!"). Then, through the 20s, he wrote about the "indirect approach", which may or may not have been a conceptual predecessor or possibly even influential on "blitzkrieg" (which wasn't a solid doctrine or plan to the Germans in 1939-40). However, through the 30s he became convinced that, tactically and operationally, the defense was much stronger than the offense (which was largely the guiding wisdom in Britain and France in the late 30s and early 1940. As a result, his indirect approach became more and more indirect until he became a strong proponent of "the British way of war": maintaining a strong blockade and giving the French money, not soldiers. By the late 30s, he was strongly against putting British soldiers in continental Europe and is on record as supporting appeasement to at least some extent. As a result, in the 40s his name was mud, at least in military circles, and his interactions with German generals and the white-washing of the Wehrmacht was very important to the recovery of his reputation, whether that was a grand scheme or no. In any case, here's another detailed take on Liddell Hart and the German generals, from the standpoint of his and their participation in German rearmament for the cold war. "A Very Special Relationship: Basil Liddell Hart, Wehrmacht Generals and the Debate on West German Rearmament, 1945-1953" by Alaric Searle. http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/30779/1/War_In_History-1998-Searle-327-57.pdf http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/30779/1/War_In_History-1... "Bywayofconclusion, ifoneseekstoputtheveryspecialrelationshipwhichexistedbetweenLiddellHartandWehrmachtgeneralsintotheoverallcontextoftheformer'scareer, anumberofobservationscanbemade. Firstofall, undoubtedlyLiddellHartbenefitedgreatlyasawriterfromhiscontactswiththegenerals; ontheonehandasasourceofinformationforhishistoricalwritingandontheotherforsupportintheeffortshewasmakingtoadvertisethe'influence'ofhistheoriesinGermanyintheinterwarperiod. However, thecentralmotivatingforceinthealliancebetweenLiddellHartandthemostprominentGermangeneralswasnothistoricalresearch, butrathertheexigenciesofthecampaignforrearmament; arehabilitationofthetopgeneralswasseenasacrucialcomponentofthepublicrelationscampaignwhichhadtobewaged." [Yeah, cut-n-paste from PDF is probelmatic.]

jbob2000 6y ago

It'll be interesting to read his thoughts about Company of Heroes, should he ever get to that game. The developers naively implemented the Nazis, Allies, and the Soviets as historically faithful as they could - which made the Nazis incredibly overpowered.

panzagl 6y ago
If it were historically faithful the German player would never know how many of his forces were going to never show up because of mechanical failure and air interdiction.
- jbob2000 6y ago
  There is a campaign mission where you have to hobble a broken Panzer through a bunch of Allied territory. The voiceovers for the infantry can be heard sarcastically commenting about the quality of German engineering.
galkk 6y ago
And this is shit - https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/25/4553536/is-company-of-heroes-2-anti-russian https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/25/4553536/is-company-of-hero... Whatever they tried to portrait Soviets, it's not historically accurate

Rompect 6y ago

Feeling bad about a game is pathetic. I play Hearts of Iron 4 (with original flags, so a nazi flag) and the number of soviets that I have killed combined from all games as germany must be more than 100 million. It really is so much fun.

claudiawerner 6y ago
While it may or may not justify feeling bad, there are major moral theories (in particular virtue ethics and deontology, as well as metaethical-agnostic views) which easily accommodate discussion of virtual actions from moral points of view, and explain why they matter (in contrast to "it's just a game"). Fun alone (or the good feelings of playing such games with friends) does not excuse wrongful behaviour, in the same sense that ganging up with friends and bullying someone for fun does not excuse the moral weight of the action. There is also the need to explain why many people do feel moral sentiment or even guilt after playing some games, and the moral intuition that some virtual actions are widely regarded as morally wrongful, such as virtual child abuse (and in contrast, why virtual murder would be okay, or at least better). Gary Young in particular investigates an empirically-minded approach to the problem. It's often inconvenient for people who spend a lot of time playing games to even begin to question their actions in game, and unfortunately a lot of such thought is dismissed as moral pearl-clutching, but from what I can tell of the philosophical literature, there are good arguments from many points of view. It's very similar to the way in which even the discussion of the morality of killing animals was (and often still is) dismissed by people ignorant of the philosophical research because meat is just so tasty. Here are some starters in the growing literature on the significance of actions in video games and virtual worlds generally: Moral License in Video Games: When Being Right Can Mean Doing Wrong https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2014.0599 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2014.0599 Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time by Christopher Bartel (2020) Defending the morality of violent video games by Marcus Schulzke (2010) Violent video games and morality: A meta-ethical approach by Gary Young (2015) The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation by Sebastian Ostritsch (2017) Getting away with murder: why virtual murder in MMORPGs can be wrong on Kantian grounds by Helen Ryland (2019)
- 6y ago

tenaciousDaniel 6y ago

I think he makes a subtle but fairly critical mistake right out of the gate, in the third paragraph: > I should note here that my intention isn’t to condemn those people whose tolerance for moral ambiguity allows them to enjoy Panzer General in the spirit which SSI no doubt intended I know he's trying to come off as non-judgmental here, but he still makes an error in assuming that people who enjoy this game are "tolerating moral ambiguity." Imagining yourself in the shoes of an evil person is a fundamental part of fiction. Just read The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. Engaging in such fantasies is in no way, shape, or form an act of tolerance towards moral ambiguity; it's one of the few ways one can safely explore the darker parts of their own psyche and wrestle with them.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
This is right on the money. To have a society that will not repeat darker sides of history and behaviour, we need to seriously engage with it. Not sensor them in a fit of moral panic. You could argue that this game is not qualified as serious engagement, but that's a sloghtly different discussion
- definetheword 6y ago
  I think this is an unrealistic expectation for a game. I've never played Panzer General, but I've played other strategies games and boardgames. When I choose to play the Axis, I play to understand the dynamics or limitations of the battalions/dynamics/offense/defense of the Germans in ww1 or ww2, not participate in the political realm Imagine you ask your friend to play as the Axis so you can play the Allies, and they refuse saying "No, I don't want to play the Axis because the game rules require me to be berated with a history of evil". It's not something you expect in a boardgame, so why expect it in a computer game
  - watwut 6y ago
    I find the idea of people attempting to learn history lessons from those scary. They were not meant for that. Anyway, you can't really divorce army movements from the goals the army had. Which were profoundly political, including ethnical cleansing.

RandomNick 6y ago

"For your actions in Panzer General will also lead to the deaths of millions, at only one more degree of remove at best." No, my actions won't lead to a single death, no matter how many degrees you move away. It's just moving bits around in a computer. "Or am I hopelessly overthinking it? Is Panzer General just a piece of harmless entertainment that happens to play with a subset of the stuff of history?" The answer is an emphatic yes, you are really overthinking this.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I feel like you have taken that argument out of context. This appears just before it: "What sorts of subject matter are appropriate for a game? Before you rush to answer, ask yourself how you would feel about, say, a version of Transport Tycoon where you have to move Jews from the cities where they live to the concentration camps where they will die." If one feels completely comfortable with that, then the argument afterward can be disregarded. However, the author makes that argument on the assumption that you will feel uncomfortable with the above (as I'm sure a lot of us would) and posits that Panzer General should make you equally uncomfortable. Further, I think it is unwise to brush aside any argument that the nature of the media we consume does not affect how we interact with the real world without consideration. Just because it turns out that old 90s arguments about DOOM turning us all into violent murderers was wrong doesn't mean that there aren't effects that might be harmful.
- RandomNick 6y ago
  That previous section doesn't alter the context and doesn't change the fact that nothing I or the author or any other player does in a game like this leads to a single death, let alone millions. If the author is uncomfortable taking on the role of a "German general goose-stepping and kowtowing to his Führer" then he should feel equally uncomfortable acting as a Soviet general goose-stepping for a dictator who imprisoned, tortured and starved millions of his own citizens. Or for that matter the U.S. or Britain. Forget anything based on ancient Greece or Rome as well. Might as well stick to Farmville or Mario Kart if you're going to continue down that road. "Further, I think it is unwise to brush aside any argument that the nature of the media we consume does not affect how we interact with the real world without consideration. Just because it turns out that old 90s arguments about DOOM turning us all into violent murderers was wrong doesn't mean that there aren't effects that might be harmful." I did not brush it aside, I read the entire rambling article, most of which had very little to do with any potential harmful effects and gave it a lot more consideration than it truly deserved. It was in no way compelling, nor did it contain any real insights. I stand by my earlier statement, he is really overthinking this.

golergka 6y ago

All other great points in these comments aside, empathy (not simpathy!) with the enemy is a great tool to defeat him.

pcthrowaway 6y ago

I was really fascinated by this article, but ultimately a bit disappointed by the conclusion. This isn't about the ethics of gaming at all, but the author's drawn conclusion about the ethics of a specific game (with a brilliant long-form exploration of the historical context behind the game). Why enjoying a Nazi-general-commander game is less justifiable than, say, Postal (where you play a distraught postal worker going on a senseless killing rampage), or Grand Theft Auto is not explored at all. Also, the Milgram experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) is highly relevant when vilifying people for taking orders even if they understand that the orders may be immoral.

djur 6y ago
Well, it's "Part 1", and it's specifically about strategy gaming. The author recently wrote a critical piece about DOOM as well: https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-5-narratives-of-doom/ https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-5-na...
mcguire 6y ago
I thought the Milgram experiment was problematic, science-wise.

panzagl 6y ago

I came to this article prepared to defend games where you play general, but this is not about that. The moral ambiguity described is playing a game where you are specifically playing a nazi general, and the 'Good German' myth promulgated by the Cold War that has made that palatable. So like I told my wife when we watched "The Book Thief"- I was not expecting this to have a happy ending

CapricornNoble 6y ago

You can skip almost this whole hand-wringing article as the "why" is articulated right here: "the focus on Rommel and more generally the German side (many wargames feature prominent German military motifs and use German military nomenclature) cater to a genre that customarily finds more interest in playing the underdog, relying on [the player’s] brains rather than overwhelming force, and accepting the challenge of reversing the historical result." Combine that appeal with uniforms designed by Hugo Boss and it's a no-brainer why the Germans are the most popular force to play in wargames. There are some VERY interesting tactical/operational challenges for the Japanese and the Soviets, depending on where you look in the war, but neither force is quite so well-dressed as the Waffen SS. This article is like an extremely-long-form version of Twitter outrage...the same mentality that is targeting otherwise-fun-looking content (Ghosts of Tsushima, Cyberpunk 2077) and wants to beat us all over the head with how bad we are as people for enjoying it. It's tiresome. "What sorts of subject matter are appropriate for a game? Before you rush to answer, ask yourself how you would feel about, say, a version of Transport Tycoon where you have to move Jews from the cities where they live to the concentration camps where they will die." Man, I hope this guy never finds out what sorts of sociopathic stuff Rimworld players get into... "If, as I dearly hope, you would prefer not to play such a game, ask yourself what the difference between Panzer General and that other game really are. For your actions in Panzer General will also lead to the deaths of millions, at only one more degree of remove at best." See what I mean? The next thing you know, he'll be writing about how we shouldn't play a real-world map in Civilization as the Europeans, because their explorations led to millions of deaths from colonialism. Slavery shouldn't be a featured game mechanic either, for the same reason. If you play as the Spanish/English/French/Germans and you research Slavery, then you are a BAD HUMAN BEING. Maybe games should send a message to a centralized server, alerting Big Tech so your media accounts can be flagged, and your bank account terminated? I have ancestors who survived genocide, and ancestors who survived chattel slavery. I enjoy wargames, in all of their varying degrees of focus, without the ridiculous navel-gazing.

panzagl 6y ago
There's more to this article than SJW outrage- after WWII the allies (well, US and UK) tended to sweep German atrocities under the rug in order to use them against the Soviets in the Cold War. This has made the semi-fetishism of the nazi military more acceptable in many domains (film, games, model building, re-enacting, etc) than would otherwise be tolerable in society at large.

jjk166 6y ago

Games are works of entertainment, in the same camp as literature and movies. Imagine if someone said they could not read a book if it included chapters from a Nazi's perspective. Some people may simply not enjoy such works, but to say that such passages are inappropriate is going down a dangerous path. As the author notes, there is nothing closer in most of our minds to pure evil than the Nazis. It is easy for us to treat them as monsters - inherently irredeemable demons in human form who committed atrocities that we never could. The idea of even trying to humanize such villains seems like an insult to their victims. But those who did such monstrous things were not monsters but men. There was neither some mass delusion which overcame the german people for over a decade while a small cabal of evil beings were in power, nor some tragic fault built into these people that is absent in all the rest of the world. People exactly like you and me were convinced that their compliance with this system was, if not explicitly good, at least acceptable. The author wonders why someone might want to play a game as a proud german general on their way to conquering great britain, the soviet union, and eventually the united states; the answer to which should be self evident when one considers how desirable this position was to real people in real life. The same desire for victory and glory which motivated war criminals in the wehrmacht also lives in most everyone else. The willingness not to ask what that victory means for the hidden jewish populations of the conquered is common to both camps too. The author brings up a terrifying game idea to demonstrate their point: an Auschwitz Transport Tycoon. Of course the very idea seems revolting. But for all those who have played train simulators: have you seriously asked what your cargo was and what it was being transported for? Or did you simply accept that your job was to get it between points and thus satisfy some arbitrary requirement from an unquestioned authority. Our default assumption is that we're supposed to play the game according to the rules and that achieving the stated objectives is a good thing in and of itself. No one sees themselves as the villains of history. When you must decide whether your orders are just, they most likely won't be coming from someone with a skull on their cap. We must understand that being a villain feels just the same as being a hero, the only difference is the lack of honest introspection. Seeing things from the bad guy's perspective is important for reminding us to question our own. More generally, the idea that we should avoid putting ourselves in someone else's shoes because that makes us confront uncomfortable realities is anathema to the sort of liberal culture the Nazis tried so hard to stamp out.

polotics 6y ago

Frankly why waste time on Panzer General's ethics when the most excellent Panther Games Command Ops 2 is waiting on Steam to teach you about reality! When your troops start to rout, flee, fatigue and disobey and you're overwhelmed by your own micro-management... Then you realise how much of the damage is done by distant artillery (more than half of casualties in WW2, true fact) The ethics is clear: being the commander, on any side, you have to be evil.

sorokod 6y ago

I think that generally speaking the ambiguity increases as time goes by. Is a 9/11 simulator premature? How about Vietnam war strategy game? Should I think of Wernher Von Braun (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun) every time I see a liftoff from Cape Canaveral? Is playing the character of Genghis Khan morally acceptable?

mcguire 6y ago
"Should I think of Wernher Von Braun (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun) every time I see a liftoff from Cape Canaveral?" You mean SS Sturmbahnfurher von Braun? Yes, actually. Although the von Braun building (and a very nice one it is) is on the Army part of Redstone Arsenal rather than Marshall Space Flight Center. There's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance here in north Alabama.
- sorokod 6y ago
  I sometimes think of him looking and the shrapnel marks on the building of the V&A museum in London. More here: https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-rocket-attacks-map/ https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-r...

gvv 6y ago

Guess I need to be charged as a war criminal for the thousands I slaughtered in Call of Duty...talk about overreacting.