Journal #8937
Posted 5 years ago2018-05-25 12:41:54 UTC
I remember once, when I was young, my Grandfather was telling me stories about the war. He told me one story that always stuck with me.
One day, in the midst of the European invasion, he had leapt into a Spitfire and flown over enemy lines. He had then jumped out of his plane and parachuted down to a flag held by the Germans. He took out the four man squad single handed and then defended the flag is it gradually crept down the flagpole, turned into a British Union Jack and then started to climb slowly back up.
Unfortunately, he was then shot and killed by a German sniper who had run up to him, jumped into the air, span around and shot him without looking down his scope.
When my Grandfather respawned, he was surprised to find that he was now figthing for the Germans, as the battle had been pretty unbalanced up to that point. He leapt into a German Tiger tank and got back into the fray.
I'm sure by this point you have figured out that this is not a true story. However, a couple of days ago, EA and DICE released the Battlefield V trailer. The trailer features, most notably, a British female soldier, with a prosthetic arm, fighting on the front lines. Naturally, everyone reacted to this in a perfectly reasonable and level headed manner.
DID THEY BOLLOCKS!
The amount of bile I have seen surrounding the content of the trailer almost makes me ashamed to be a gamer... Countless people have slated the footage for not being historically accurate, which is what the Battlefield franchise is known for (There is a game in the series that includes bipedal robo tanks... but let's gloss over that for now)
There are literally zero videogames that offer an authentic World War One/Two experience because it would be fucking MISERABLE. But the idea that including female soldiers with prosthetic limbs fighting on the front lines is offensive and disrespectful is a fucking joke! It's a VIDEOGAME for fuck's sake, not a DOCUMENTARY! It's supposed to be entertaining! Not historically accurate.
One day, in the midst of the European invasion, he had leapt into a Spitfire and flown over enemy lines. He had then jumped out of his plane and parachuted down to a flag held by the Germans. He took out the four man squad single handed and then defended the flag is it gradually crept down the flagpole, turned into a British Union Jack and then started to climb slowly back up.
Unfortunately, he was then shot and killed by a German sniper who had run up to him, jumped into the air, span around and shot him without looking down his scope.
When my Grandfather respawned, he was surprised to find that he was now figthing for the Germans, as the battle had been pretty unbalanced up to that point. He leapt into a German Tiger tank and got back into the fray.
I'm sure by this point you have figured out that this is not a true story. However, a couple of days ago, EA and DICE released the Battlefield V trailer. The trailer features, most notably, a British female soldier, with a prosthetic arm, fighting on the front lines. Naturally, everyone reacted to this in a perfectly reasonable and level headed manner.
DID THEY BOLLOCKS!
The amount of bile I have seen surrounding the content of the trailer almost makes me ashamed to be a gamer... Countless people have slated the footage for not being historically accurate, which is what the Battlefield franchise is known for (There is a game in the series that includes bipedal robo tanks... but let's gloss over that for now)
There are literally zero videogames that offer an authentic World War One/Two experience because it would be fucking MISERABLE. But the idea that including female soldiers with prosthetic limbs fighting on the front lines is offensive and disrespectful is a fucking joke! It's a VIDEOGAME for fuck's sake, not a DOCUMENTARY! It's supposed to be entertaining! Not historically accurate.
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10 Comments
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If you look hard enough you'll find idiots on the internet having a whinge about any completely ridiculous thing you could imagine. Who cares what they think.
In some (surprisingly unheated!) discussion on twitter I pointed out that since there was historical precedent for female combatants in WWII, and the trailer was obviously meant to be for the multiplayer, it should be a non-issue even if someone genuinely cared about the historical accuracy. (putting up the example of the Hellriegel from Battlefield One, of which maybe up to 5 were made period, being a main SMG in multiplayer without complaints about "but historical accuracy!")
I got a response to this, and this is a quote, being "It never was, until it became a tidal wave of progressivism & Marxism"
I tried to get him to explain just what any of this had to do with communism but he wouldn't elaborate, making me think he doesn't quite know what that word "Marxism" means.
So yeah, people are being very vocal in their condemnation of the people who are complaining about women existing, but only because those jokers started with it right out the gate and they need to be shown that sexism is not acceptable behavior.
From what I’ve seen, it can be divided into two camps: firstly, the it’s-not-historically-accurate camp, which... well, 1: From what I understand, it’s not historically inaccurate. Even just going off of the debates I keep seeing, about the only part of the war in which women were absent was the British frontline, which would be quite some minutia to get hung up on, since 2: As Urby grandly pointed out, Battlefield’s realism is skin-deep at best. To call it completely realistic would be to ignore vast amounts of what is going on in those games. 3: Pretending women weren’t a part of the war is some serious erasure of the part they played, and either takes some brazen ignorance or brazen sexism. It’s hard to tell the proportions of both.
The second camp are people who are just straight up angry that there’s women in their video games. Emphasis on their. The kind of folk who believe video games are made for people like them and thus don’t need to cater to any other group, and in turn feel whenever that representation rears its ugly head, the design team must have been forced or coerced by feminists or liberals or whatever. I don’t even know how someone gets into this kind of mindset. The design teams for games like this are huge and there’s no chance there’s no diversity in said teams. You can bet top dollar that a lot of those people fight tooth and nail for any kind of ideal representation in AAA works, since management knows that as soon as you start rocking the boat (which should be an exaggeration) people like this come out of the woodwork.
People who say there’s too many X in any given media - women, queer folk, etc - they don’t want one or two less. They want none.
I think more what's happening is that people are so polarized and self-masturbatory that they'll find anything to complain about. The fact that many women didn't fight in WWII is how they're justifying their complaints, despite Battlefield being a pretty fantastical series that doesn't care about being a documentary.
Similarly, a few years ago lotsa people used to complain about the lack of women in these games, and I don't really care about that, either.
I tried to get him to explain just what any of this had to do with communism but he wouldn't elaborate, making me think he doesn't quite know what that word "Marxism" means.
Not to open the doors to a huge debate, but Marxism is the deconstruction of social roles -- specifically classes. Neo-Marxism takes this deconstructive approach to many societal identities, like gender roles, which is what you do to an extent when you put a female in a traditionally masculine role. But complaining about characters' genders in art is dumb no matter what side you're on, IMO.
[EDIT]
Unrelated, but I did see one instance of this happening where the dev team might have actually gone too far in trying to be inclusive. Remember in that CoD WWII game where you could fight black female Nazis?
As far as I know about battlefield V, I have no problems with the new character, but I understand why people get annoyed with it, though I don't believe they should.
Many people are fed up with feminism. potatis calls it "a flavour of feminism", but I think this flavour can be called mainstream feminism. It's already been discussed here, but it's taking enormous proportions literally everywhere, to the point where it seems to be the norm. People are completely right to be angry about this flavour, but I don't think that's a problem with Battlefield V.
This.
Thiiiiiis. This.
"Futuristic combat not agaaaaaain!"
On the other hand, I recall Call of Duty 2 Russian campaign featured female squad mates and I don't recall people making a fuss (and that was historically correct for WW2)
Ahhh back in those days you could only read like one persons opinion of a game in a a PC magazine or you would have decide if you were going to purchase the game based on if you liked the screenshots on the back of box.
You might think its not that big of an issue, but sjw's have in the past caused games to be pulled off shelves or prevented you from being able to play them. I think that's a problem, some minority group should not decide whats available to the general public or not. Just dont buy it if u dont like it.