3 ms·

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 warg

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.
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  History is written by the victors, and water is wet. As another poster in this thread alludes to, if we go down the rabbit-hole of digging up the crimes against humanity of every military ever and arguing that we shouldn't play games based around those armed forces.....well, the only thing we'd be left with is Farmville. Do we have to receive lectures on Roman brutality before we play Rome: Total War, or I can just enjoy my endless ranks of lorica segmenta? Do I really need to be told that $famousauthorname was a Roman apologist and the Roman Legions shouldn't be "tolerated"? Are these issues not being discussed in a mature and thoughtful manner in high school these days? I realize education in the US is a dumpster fire but I find it hard to believe things have fallen off the cliff since I graduated in 2001.
  - panzagl 6y ago
    The Romans weren't particularly brutal given their time- being beaten by the Celts and being beaten by the Romans would be a similar experience. What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. When I last donned a lorica and hefted a scutum the most political thing we debated was whether Keens looked enough like caligae to be allowed on the field. Time also plays a factor in these things- I've never known anyone who fought the Romans. If I had a great-uncle Camulos telling me what bastards they were, maybe I'd write an article lambasting Great Battles of Caesar. I graduated 10 years before you, so no idea how history is taught now.
    - CapricornNoble 6y ago
      >>>What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. Doesn't that boil down to skewed perceptions re: the nature of war as much as anything? That's a question for HN writ large, not you specifically, as I think you capture understanding of that with your quotation marks. WW2's death toll was in the same order of magnitude as WW1's, which should have already shattered misconceptions of clean wars. However, I think WW1 had a higher ratio of combatant casualties vis-a-vis noncombatants. WW2 being a "regression to the mean" so to speak with regards to brutalizing civilians, combined with the growth of media dissemination, may be why it's made such a socio-psychological mark. >>>And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. Communists are a thing, and they're not nice. There's a lot of reasons we never had mass-market video games singing the praises of Konstantin Rokossovsky (the only Soviet war hero I can think of as photogenic as Rommel), and the virtuousness of the ideology and/or its adherents isn't the deciding factor IMO. We also don't spend anywhere near as much time and energy, as a society, highlighting the sole modern ideology with the dubious distinction of a larger 8-figure excess death count than national socialism/fascism. But I digress... Agreed that the time scale of Romans vs Germans is an issue. I don't know how we can consistently get people to "zoom out" and look at things with a larger, multi-generational timescale in mind and see that the things they are taking exception to are closer to "business as usual" than they realize.

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.

CapricornNoble 6y ago
History is written by the victors, and water is wet. As another poster in this thread alludes to, if we go down the rabbit-hole of digging up the crimes against humanity of every military ever and arguing that we shouldn't play games based around those armed forces.....well, the only thing we'd be left with is Farmville. Do we have to receive lectures on Roman brutality before we play Rome: Total War, or I can just enjoy my endless ranks of lorica segmenta? Do I really need to be told that $famousauthorname was a Roman apologist and the Roman Legions shouldn't be "tolerated"? Are these issues not being discussed in a mature and thoughtful manner in high school these days? I realize education in the US is a dumpster fire but I find it hard to believe things have fallen off the cliff since I graduated in 2001.
- panzagl 6y ago
  The Romans weren't particularly brutal given their time- being beaten by the Celts and being beaten by the Romans would be a similar experience. What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. When I last donned a lorica and hefted a scutum the most political thing we debated was whether Keens looked enough like caligae to be allowed on the field. Time also plays a factor in these things- I've never known anyone who fought the Romans. If I had a great-uncle Camulos telling me what bastards they were, maybe I'd write an article lambasting Great Battles of Caesar. I graduated 10 years before you, so no idea how history is taught now.
  - CapricornNoble 6y ago
    >>>What the Germans and Japanese did was of a scale and brutality that had not been inflicted in 'civilized' warfare for centuries. Doesn't that boil down to skewed perceptions re: the nature of war as much as anything? That's a question for HN writ large, not you specifically, as I think you capture understanding of that with your quotation marks. WW2's death toll was in the same order of magnitude as WW1's, which should have already shattered misconceptions of clean wars. However, I think WW1 had a higher ratio of combatant casualties vis-a-vis noncombatants. WW2 being a "regression to the mean" so to speak with regards to brutalizing civilians, combined with the growth of media dissemination, may be why it's made such a socio-psychological mark. >>>And neo-nazis are a thing now, and they're not nice. Communists are a thing, and they're not nice. There's a lot of reasons we never had mass-market video games singing the praises of Konstantin Rokossovsky (the only Soviet war hero I can think of as photogenic as Rommel), and the virtuousness of the ideology and/or its adherents isn't the deciding factor IMO. We also don't spend anywhere near as much time and energy, as a society, highlighting the sole modern ideology with the dubious distinction of a larger 8-figure excess death count than national socialism/fascism. But I digress... Agreed that the time scale of Romans vs Germans is an issue. I don't know how we can consistently get people to "zoom out" and look at things with a larger, multi-generational timescale in mind and see that the things they are taking exception to are closer to "business as usual" than they realize.