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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 th

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.
- mcguire 6y ago
  Is there a clear dividing line between engagement and celebration?
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> Imagining yourself in the shoes of an evil person is a fundamental part of fiction. However, as mentioned, Panzer General takes pains to completely ignore the evil present in the actual history. You're not asked to engage with the darker parts of your psyche at all, it has been cleaned away from the final product.
- jjk166 6y ago
  And the actual panzer generals took great pains to ignore that very same evil. Evil people don't imagine themselves to be evil. You wouldn't really be imagining yourself in their shoes if the game forced you to act as a cartoon villain.
  - falcor84 6y ago
    There's a difference between taking pains to ignore a reality that's there, and hiding the reality entirety. With that evil reality being all around them (as described in the post), I'd be very surprised if these people did not have any "Are we the baddies?" moments.
- tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
  That's a good point. In the case of Poe's writing, the approach is at least thoughtful. In the Panzer case, it seems to just blithely throw players into the ranks of Nazism with no interest in exploring what that means. You could argue that games are more of a blank slate than literature, onto which people can project several experiences orthogonal to the authors/developers intent, but I think that's probably being too generous.
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  >>>Panzer General takes pains to completely ignore the evil present in the actual history. You're not asked to engage with the darker parts of your psyche at all What is the alternative, from a game design perspective? Every time one of your units takes a Victory Point on a town, a window pops up: "You captured $townname! Do you want to execute all of the civilians here? [Yes/No]" If you click YES, it shows you a real image of a mass execution from WW2? Can you imagine the uproar THAT would cause? I suspect that players would either click YES on all of them, or click NO on all of them, so as a mechanic it adds no meaningful choices. If you just want to force exposure to the brutality, you could throw in a random "You clicked 'NO' but your soldiers disobeyed orders and killed everyone anyway" and display some shocking content, but all that will accomplish is to turn off some segment of your customer base. The point was to sell a product, after all. If people really want to understand the nastiness that happens during a conflict, they'll find it via other mediums anyway (VHS snuff films before the Internet, BestGore et al. now). Rome: Total War doesn't let me grapple with the moral issues of crucifying Christians and Jews. Is that omission also a problem? Why/why not?
CapricornNoble 6y ago
>>>he still makes an error in assuming that people who enjoy this game are "tolerating moral ambiguity." That's a good catch that I skimmed over. One of the things taught at The Basic School is to "turn the map around"; in other words, to approach the tactical situation from your adversary's perspective, come up with a sensible plan for the enemy, and then use that to drive your own planning for how to defeat them. You have to know how they might solve THEIR tactical problems in order to solve YOUR tactical problems. Gaming out the bad guys' Courses of Action is an essential part of military planning and wargaming's role in planning. It has no moral endorsement attached to it at all. Why would the author even think otherwise? That's such a bizarre and huge leap in logic. Nobody here, for example, is morally tolerant of the CCP or DPRK: https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/how-does-the-next-great-power-conflict-play-out-lessons-from-a-wargame/ https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/how-does-the-next-great-po...
- djur 6y ago
  The author distinguishes the experience of playing Panzer General from traditional wargames later on: > It’s a judgment call that’s personal to each of us. For my part, I can play the German side in a conventional wargame easily enough if I need to, although I would prefer to take the Allied side. But Panzer General, with its eagerness to embed me in the role of a German general goose-stepping and kowtowing to his Führer, is a bridge too far for me. The "ethics" in the title seemed to me to be referring less to the personal ethics involved in playing the game than to the ethics of reinforcing the "clean Wehrmacht" myth.
zeteo 6y ago
>Imagining yourself in the shoes of an evil person is a fundamental part of fiction. As long as it's fiction, and you know they're evil. While I've personally greatly enjoyed Panzer General and its sequels, on a moral level the game differs very little from questionable post-war spin and propaganda. There is particularly an entire genre of problematic, self-serving Nazi general memoirs with themes such as: - Minimizing, or even completely ignoring, the Wehrmacht's essential contribution to war crimes and the Holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht#Criminal_and_genocidal_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht#Criminal_and_genocid... - Effectively promoting the myth of the superhuman Aryan soldier defeating vast hordes of subhumans. The original Panzer General takes this to a new extreme by making German units vastly superior throughout the war, down to the point where it's practically impossible to win the Battle of Berlin scenario as the Allies. - Generally treating the entire war as an abstract Kriegsspiel that they'd have won through superior strength of intellect - if it wasn't for that bumbling incompetent at the top. PG is an ultimate fantasy in this regard, with Hitler being hardly mentioned and almost inconsequential (spend a little prestige and you'll easily get over his "bad" decisions at Kiev and Gibraltar). It is actually possible to do better in a computer game. For instance, I've heard good things about Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa. Apparently it lets you stand up to Hitler about war crimes at risk of losing essential resources and/or being dismissed, or choose to be complicit; and, at the end, runs you through the Nuremberg trials accordingly.
bjourne 6y ago
To play the Devil's advocate here: what's the difference between Panzer General and KZ Manager? A valid answer is "no difference!" But if you think there is a difference, you need to articulate that.

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.
mcguire 6y ago
Is there a clear dividing line between engagement and celebration?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

> Imagining yourself in the shoes of an evil person is a fundamental part of fiction. However, as mentioned, Panzer General takes pains to completely ignore the evil present in the actual history. You're not asked to engage with the darker parts of your psyche at all, it has been cleaned away from the final product.

jjk166 6y ago
And the actual panzer generals took great pains to ignore that very same evil. Evil people don't imagine themselves to be evil. You wouldn't really be imagining yourself in their shoes if the game forced you to act as a cartoon villain.
- falcor84 6y ago
  There's a difference between taking pains to ignore a reality that's there, and hiding the reality entirety. With that evil reality being all around them (as described in the post), I'd be very surprised if these people did not have any "Are we the baddies?" moments.
tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
That's a good point. In the case of Poe's writing, the approach is at least thoughtful. In the Panzer case, it seems to just blithely throw players into the ranks of Nazism with no interest in exploring what that means. You could argue that games are more of a blank slate than literature, onto which people can project several experiences orthogonal to the authors/developers intent, but I think that's probably being too generous.
CapricornNoble 6y ago
>>>Panzer General takes pains to completely ignore the evil present in the actual history. You're not asked to engage with the darker parts of your psyche at all What is the alternative, from a game design perspective? Every time one of your units takes a Victory Point on a town, a window pops up: "You captured $townname! Do you want to execute all of the civilians here? [Yes/No]" If you click YES, it shows you a real image of a mass execution from WW2? Can you imagine the uproar THAT would cause? I suspect that players would either click YES on all of them, or click NO on all of them, so as a mechanic it adds no meaningful choices. If you just want to force exposure to the brutality, you could throw in a random "You clicked 'NO' but your soldiers disobeyed orders and killed everyone anyway" and display some shocking content, but all that will accomplish is to turn off some segment of your customer base. The point was to sell a product, after all. If people really want to understand the nastiness that happens during a conflict, they'll find it via other mediums anyway (VHS snuff films before the Internet, BestGore et al. now). Rome: Total War doesn't let me grapple with the moral issues of crucifying Christians and Jews. Is that omission also a problem? Why/why not?

CapricornNoble 6y ago

>>>he still makes an error in assuming that people who enjoy this game are "tolerating moral ambiguity." That's a good catch that I skimmed over. One of the things taught at The Basic School is to "turn the map around"; in other words, to approach the tactical situation from your adversary's perspective, come up with a sensible plan for the enemy, and then use that to drive your own planning for how to defeat them. You have to know how they might solve THEIR tactical problems in order to solve YOUR tactical problems. Gaming out the bad guys' Courses of Action is an essential part of military planning and wargaming's role in planning. It has no moral endorsement attached to it at all. Why would the author even think otherwise? That's such a bizarre and huge leap in logic. Nobody here, for example, is morally tolerant of the CCP or DPRK: https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/how-does-the-next-great-power-conflict-play-out-lessons-from-a-wargame/ https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/how-does-the-next-great-po...

djur 6y ago
The author distinguishes the experience of playing Panzer General from traditional wargames later on: > It’s a judgment call that’s personal to each of us. For my part, I can play the German side in a conventional wargame easily enough if I need to, although I would prefer to take the Allied side. But Panzer General, with its eagerness to embed me in the role of a German general goose-stepping and kowtowing to his Führer, is a bridge too far for me. The "ethics" in the title seemed to me to be referring less to the personal ethics involved in playing the game than to the ethics of reinforcing the "clean Wehrmacht" myth.

zeteo 6y ago

>Imagining yourself in the shoes of an evil person is a fundamental part of fiction. As long as it's fiction, and you know they're evil. While I've personally greatly enjoyed Panzer General and its sequels, on a moral level the game differs very little from questionable post-war spin and propaganda. There is particularly an entire genre of problematic, self-serving Nazi general memoirs with themes such as: - Minimizing, or even completely ignoring, the Wehrmacht's essential contribution to war crimes and the Holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht#Criminal_and_genocidal_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht#Criminal_and_genocid... - Effectively promoting the myth of the superhuman Aryan soldier defeating vast hordes of subhumans. The original Panzer General takes this to a new extreme by making German units vastly superior throughout the war, down to the point where it's practically impossible to win the Battle of Berlin scenario as the Allies. - Generally treating the entire war as an abstract Kriegsspiel that they'd have won through superior strength of intellect - if it wasn't for that bumbling incompetent at the top. PG is an ultimate fantasy in this regard, with Hitler being hardly mentioned and almost inconsequential (spend a little prestige and you'll easily get over his "bad" decisions at Kiev and Gibraltar). It is actually possible to do better in a computer game. For instance, I've heard good things about Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa. Apparently it lets you stand up to Hitler about war crimes at risk of losing essential resources and/or being dismissed, or choose to be complicit; and, at the end, runs you through the Nuremberg trials accordingly.

bjourne 6y ago

To play the Devil's advocate here: what's the difference between Panzer General and KZ Manager? A valid answer is "no difference!" But if you think there is a difference, you need to articulate that.