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> 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 th

> 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?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I'm not necessarily saying Panzer General should have been designed any differently. What I guess I am saying is that it might not be the best idea, as a player, to disengage entirely from the real horrors of the history the game was based on.
- tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
  I think there's room for some middle ground here. There are two examples I can think of that demonstrate this middle ground (although I can't remember the names of either game). In game 1, there was a scene where you had infiltrated a terrorist cell as an undercover agent, and were accompanying them in an attack on an airport. You were involved in this massacre of innocent people, and you could choose to either participate in the shooting or not. It was very controversial but I think it was an interesting psychological experiment to play on players. In the second case, another war-type game, you were a general who had to make a call whether to use white phosphorous bombs against a group of enemies. After it was over, you have to walk through the scene and see up close the destruction and horror that you inflicted. Both of those, I think, are interesting ways to engage with evil, because they both prompted thought. I don't see any evidence that Panzer has any depth or thought in their treatment of this dilemma.
- kazagistar 6y ago
  Whats the point of setting it in a real war with real consequences if you are just going to erase all those realities? So many games seem set up so people can play war without consequences, but if you do that at least do it in a setting where you aren't insulting the real victims.
  - CapricornNoble 6y ago
    >>>Whats the point of setting it in a real war with real consequences if you are just going to erase all those realities? Because these games are first and foremost a form of recreation? Certain things are abstracted because most people don't want to be bothered with them in their entertainment. Nobody would play wargames if they had to write a 5-paragraph operations order or FRAGO at the start of every turn either. >>>but if you do that at least do it in a setting where you aren't insulting the real victims. Short answer: ego. People want to think that, if given the opportunity, they would make better military decisions than the real-world leaders. "Yeah, Manstein won the Third Battle of Kharkov but I would have accomplished it with FAR fewer casualties." To exercise that, you need context and data that only comes from the accuracy of a real setting. Do you attack on the 19th of February, or a week later? How many kilometers is it to Kharkov? Do you want the culminating point of your attack to reach the objective with full lunar illumination, or none at all? What if there was one less Soviet mechanized corps due to an orders mixup? It's easy to cover all those different what-ifs by digging through the available historical records. To do that in a fake setting requires extremely laborious world-building that most people aren't willing to invest the time to execute. Also, who says the "real victims" are insulted by sanitized wargames anyway? I know we have a large contingent of Eastern European members on HN, I'd love to hear their thoughts.

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?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I'm not necessarily saying Panzer General should have been designed any differently. What I guess I am saying is that it might not be the best idea, as a player, to disengage entirely from the real horrors of the history the game was based on.
tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
I think there's room for some middle ground here. There are two examples I can think of that demonstrate this middle ground (although I can't remember the names of either game). In game 1, there was a scene where you had infiltrated a terrorist cell as an undercover agent, and were accompanying them in an attack on an airport. You were involved in this massacre of innocent people, and you could choose to either participate in the shooting or not. It was very controversial but I think it was an interesting psychological experiment to play on players. In the second case, another war-type game, you were a general who had to make a call whether to use white phosphorous bombs against a group of enemies. After it was over, you have to walk through the scene and see up close the destruction and horror that you inflicted. Both of those, I think, are interesting ways to engage with evil, because they both prompted thought. I don't see any evidence that Panzer has any depth or thought in their treatment of this dilemma.
kazagistar 6y ago
Whats the point of setting it in a real war with real consequences if you are just going to erase all those realities? So many games seem set up so people can play war without consequences, but if you do that at least do it in a setting where you aren't insulting the real victims.
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  >>>Whats the point of setting it in a real war with real consequences if you are just going to erase all those realities? Because these games are first and foremost a form of recreation? Certain things are abstracted because most people don't want to be bothered with them in their entertainment. Nobody would play wargames if they had to write a 5-paragraph operations order or FRAGO at the start of every turn either. >>>but if you do that at least do it in a setting where you aren't insulting the real victims. Short answer: ego. People want to think that, if given the opportunity, they would make better military decisions than the real-world leaders. "Yeah, Manstein won the Third Battle of Kharkov but I would have accomplished it with FAR fewer casualties." To exercise that, you need context and data that only comes from the accuracy of a real setting. Do you attack on the 19th of February, or a week later? How many kilometers is it to Kharkov? Do you want the culminating point of your attack to reach the objective with full lunar illumination, or none at all? What if there was one less Soviet mechanized corps due to an orders mixup? It's easy to cover all those different what-ifs by digging through the available historical records. To do that in a fake setting requires extremely laborious world-building that most people aren't willing to invest the time to execute. Also, who says the "real victims" are insulted by sanitized wargames anyway? I know we have a large contingent of Eastern European members on HN, I'd love to hear their thoughts.