Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?

he ICRC is suggesting that as in real life, these games should include virtual consequences for people's actions and decisions. Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes.

Our intention is not to spoil player's enjoyment by for example, interrupting the game with pop-up messages listing legal provisions or lecturing gamers on the law of armed conflict. We would like to see the law of armed conflict integrated into the games so that players have a realistic experience and deal first-hand with the dilemmas facing real combatants on real battlefields.

Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?

Should we implement this into the gaming industry?

There are already games out there that penalizes you with health or points if you shoot a civ.

But brining this into any game that the Red Cross believes is to realistic?

Is this a slippery slope to background checks and drug screening to buy the latest games?

I can actually see how it could be fun, for the gamers who are all about reality when it comes to there games.

Although I thought people play games to escape reality?

But again I can see why.

I'm honestly flip flopping, not being a gamer I don't have a firm grasp on my long term reactions to realistic game play.

Please respond I want to hear other opinions on this

How do you move beyond the simple message, "Mission failed, you have broken international law and will spend the next ten years in prison. Re-start mission?"

I think some people in this world take themselves and life far far more seriously than is healthy for either one.

It's a G A M E .... Make believe.. Fantasy ... Un-reality. If it were accurate to life, we'd call it America's Army and refer to it for what it was. Virtual Combat Training packaged as a harmless free game.

hknudzkknexnt

he ICRC is suggesting that as in real life, these games should include virtual consequences for people's actions and decisions. Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes.

Our intention is not to spoil player's enjoyment by for example, interrupting the game with pop-up messages listing legal provisions or lecturing gamers on the law of armed conflict. We would like to see the law of armed conflict integrated into the games so that players have a realistic experience and deal first-hand with the dilemmas facing real combatants on real battlefields.

Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?

Should we implement this into the gaming industry?

There are already games out there that penalizes you with health or points if you shoot a civ.

But brining this into any game that the Red Cross believes is to realistic?

Is this a slippery slope to background checks and drug screening to buy the latest games?

I can actually see how it could be fun, for the gamers who are all about reality when it comes to there games.

Although I thought people play games to escape reality?

But again I can see why.

I'm honestly flip flopping, not being a gamer I don't have a firm grasp on my long term reactions to realistic game play.

Please respond I want to hear other opinions on this

How do you move beyond the simple message, "Mission failed, you have broken international law and will spend the next ten years in prison. Re-start mission?"

it get's more absurd as time goes on.In my opinion the whole world is going down the toilet,thanks to leaders like we have,they are speeding it up.what a bunch of crap.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


What rules of Warfare? You mean the ones that no one takes any notice of.

Change the name of the enemy soldier to Terrorist and all those rules vanish! The truth is that the rules of warfare no longer exist and have not for a long time. The only people that get tried for war crimes are those that lose the war! It has been this way for a very long time.

In WW2 both sides played the same game. The carpet bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, London, Coventry and Berlin to name a few were all aimed at civilians let alone Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, who was prosecuted? It has always been this way. Occasionally the victors have to hang some one out to dry due to international pressure but that is the exception rather than the rule.

Warfare has no rules, never has. The Geneva convention on warfare is worth less than the paper it was written on.

P

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt

No - that's ridiculous.

A few years ago I played Mario Cart for about a week. I took great pleasure in blasting the crap out of everything in my path and taking all the loot I could find.

That's the extent of my gaming prowess - and I am still proud of my kick-ass achievements.

Jump on a pushy or go kick a footy - way more satisfying.

I'm glad my kids have no desire for video games......

reply to post by pheonix358


You're right in general terms. I think World War II was the last time any sense of 'rules' for war were followed and that was ..spotty. I will say the Germans had POW camps that sustained the prisoners anyway ... some of them.. (Don't ask the Russians who survived it..lol). Since then? Well, Rules?! They don't need no stinkin' rules!


I was thinking of the actual game "America's Army" which is produced under authorization of Congress as a product of the U.S. Army. It holds it's own among the top games in terms of game play tech and form ...at least when I last loaded it to play last year. 100% free and developed by the Army as a training and recruiting tool for the masses. I'm really surprised more people don't talk about it for being that.

Anyway..... Every time I've tried to play that game, I end up in the stockade on moments for friendly fire or shooting someone else that didn't need shot.

What can I say? The stupid game is too realistic. We're supposed to have bright little icons over the heads of the enemy or friendlies or one of them anyway. Just like real life, right? How else can I avoid shooting my own lieutenant in the head while clearing a basement? (I got ejected off that server....and really! It was mistaken identity! He LOOKED hostile!).

Stupid Geneva Convention. Bah! Where did a bunch of people in Geneva come up with saying I couldn't shoot the guy, anyway? He led me into that rotten basement in the first place.

Not setting aside the fact that games do infact, to some degree, influence kids these days and sometimes even change the way they act, be it a game or real life I think boundries and limits should be set. Be it with rating, with in-game censoring etc. I have never once believed that games caused serious violence but i'm not dumb enough to believe they had no part in influencing somethings.

reply to post by pheonix358


The only rule of warfare that realistically applies is the one that says you can't do what the other side can stop you from doing. I believe Princess Leia said that.

And to answer the OP question...no. That's just silly.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I know a few stories of idiots in Officers uniforms that ended their careers being 'accidentally' killed by friendly fire after getting their men killed by sheer stupidity. It is a bit hard to prove who did what on a battle field with enemy weapons all over the place. WW2 and Vietnam were two wars that I know it happened on occasions.

So will the future be remote controlled Battle Cats controlled as the US does now with drones ala Star Wars number 'whatever it was' with the droids / drones. I think now, the people at the top don't care about the men and women who serve. They seem to get more and more expendable, especially when they come home injured.

Just look at the very recent decisions of the US congress.

As to the OPs question (before we stray too far) the inference really is that those rules exist and they don't. Why interrupt the gameplay. Many games have a feature that penalizes for too many friendly fire incidents.

OP, if you want reality in your game then I suggest this message

YOU HAVE DIED. YOU ARE DEAD You now need to buy this game again. Just follow the links to our payment page.

Now that is realism. I would do that before looking at rules of warfare.

P

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


The implementation of a system which penalises players for exploring all possibilities within the game environment, will, for me, render most games totally unplayable. In real life, I have no arrests to my name, have never been the perpetrator or instigator of a violent assault, outside of a self defensive situation, have never fired a firearm, nor swung a heavy blade in anger, toward a foe.

I do however, get my rage on from time to time, and when I do, one of the ways I work that anger out, is I either go for VERY long walks, or I power up the computer, access one of a range of games that "works" for me, and then I go and butcher thousands and thousands of sprites, in as many thoroughly bastardly ways as I can manage. Depending on the level of freedom within a game, that is generally an awful lot of ways to really mess something up.

But the reasons that certain games do the trick, is because instead of just offering me the ability to stand atop piles of my pixelated victims, they also offer goals and objectives to aim at. There is purpose, and it is this purpose which brings me peace. Now, if those goals involve massive barbarity, then so much the better. I mean, I know people who played Deus Ex: Human Revolution in the pacifist manner, by knocking every enemy out, and relying on stealth, but me personally, I would knock the odd group of bods out too... Then I would walk around the room placing a silenced pistol against their heads and emptying their brain pans. Every other sprite in that game however was given the sum weight in lead, that is the summary punishment for sprites foolish enough to stand before my fury.

Hats on the ground is crucial for me in gaming. But it's just a game. The way I play computer games has no bearing on my behaviour the rest of the time, because I am not a weak minded moron, with all the common sense of a stunned herring. What I am, is a person who treats computer games the same way I treat all entertainment, that is, as totally separate from the reality in which I live. I play computer games that involve shooting the hell out of things, but as a person I find firearms to be unwieldy, unnecessarily loud, a poor tactical choice of weapon in all but the rarest of cases,obnoxious, and utterly ungentlemanly, and would never consider using one on another human being, unless the situation demanded it in the sternest and most fulsome way. An example would be having just taken one from an armed bank robber, in which case he and his chums would be ventilated at the nearest opportunity, assuming I hadn't already said a ballistic good bye to my own spleen by that point.

Just because I game, does not mean that I am tempted to go out and remove someone's kneecaps from a city block away with a rifle. That would be tedious, and not at all decorous, and therefore totally against everything I stand for as a human being. However, in the game,I wouldn't think twice. But life is not a game, and I do not play around with it.

I would be very upset if I were to find, that because some intellectual non-entity has decided that GTA is the instruction manual for life, I could now be prevented from playing the way that I always have. And no, I do not mean flip out and murder everyone involved in the implementation of such a system kind of upset. I mean the sort of, send a stern letter, begin a campaign to have it removed, to make the rights of right minded gamers who have total separation between their fantasy lives and their real ones, and can maintain those barriers perfectly without conscious effort, more influential than the rights of idiot morons to be coddled and advised by digital lawyers that their actions, if transmuted into the real world would constitute a violation of the bloody Geneva convention!

How stupid can some people be? IT'S A GAME! PRETEND! MAKE-BELIEVE! What part of that don't you understand?

If people want to have that type of control over we gamers, then get on to the game developers and publishers and see what they can do to appease you idiots.

I love Mafia II because when I am stressed, I ride around killing baddies with my car, or I sneak up to them and wang a .38 through the back of their heads.

If I'm REALLY stressed, I rob little ladies who tend clothes shops or beat up café owners for their cash and grab a bite to eat.

But here's the thing, I DON'T DO THIS IN REAL LIFE!

Red Cross should have asked WHY AREN'T POLITICIANS AND MILITARY MEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR WAR CRIMES IN #ING REAL LIFE???

Stupid red cross. And we wonder why things don't get done correctly anymore on this Godforsaken planet...

Can it be like real life too, when people/groups defy international rulings and undermine laws/regulations.

Damn, i just got hit by the ICC again, oh well, better just disregard it and move on...Wow just like the real world

Damn campers
Secound line for the heck of it.

Reminds me an awful lot of my friend's son who was expelled from school.

Why?

During a rainy day indoor crafting exercise, while using clay, he made a cylinder shape with a handle. The teacher asked him what it was. He proudly announced that it was a "Star Wars LightSaber". He was eight years old at the time.

Yepp, expelled. For a make believe thing, made out of clay.

For potential violence.


Yepp.



-SN

Sigh... More non-gamers trying to tell gamers how to enjoy their pastime. If these idiots actually picked up and played a game for more than 5 minutes they'd realize how impossible this would be to implement while maintaining the entertainment value of the product. I'm so glad that the modern video game market is starting to mature and people who grew up playing video games are starting to be old enough to be in positions of power. Maybe nonsense like what is in the OP will decrease.

It defeats the purpose of gaming completely. Games have their own rules.

Noun
A form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

Mod Edit: Removed offensive terminology.

pheonix358
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

What rules of Warfare? You mean the ones that no one takes any notice of.

Change the name of the enemy soldier to Terrorist and all those rules vanish! The truth is that the rules of warfare no longer exist and have not for a long time. The only people that get tried for war crimes are those that lose the war! It has been this way for a very long time.

In WW2 both sides played the same game. The carpet bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, London, Coventry and Berlin to name a few were all aimed at civilians let alone Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, who was prosecuted? It has always been this way. Occasionally the victors have to hang some one out to dry due to international pressure but that is the exception rather than the rule.

Warfare has no rules, never has. The Geneva convention on warfare is worth less than the paper it was written on.

P

I think it's pathetic when people who have never been in the military get on high horses and try and pass judgment on things they know nothing about. If you were, well it was not the military i was in.

The ROE for our troops are the strictest in the world. Often, they can't even return fire.

Is war hell and at times these rules get blurred or forgotten, yes, do many people and countries not follow any ROE, yes, especially terrorists.

Do the civilians of countries at war get caught in the middle, yes. But some of which you speak does not happen anymore by modern countries, at least us anyway. That is carpet bombings. We have smart weapons and even artillery is incredibly accurate.

Yea war is messy and people die but the effort made to limit the loss of non combatants is enormous.

The Bot

reply to post by GreyGoo

is tea bagging the enemy a war crime ?

lolz, but trolling certainly should be.