Okay, I'll start with the disclaimer first: Please, PLEASE refrain from derailing the thread, trolling attempts or starting flame wars. This is NOT meant as a troll bait, or anything like that. I would like a honest discussion of the subject matter as I am truly interested in other peoples thoughts on the matter. Please don't get this thread killed like many others before.
Thank you.
I guess I am not the only one who got wind of this new controversy surrounding CoD:WW2... that in the multiplayer part, you can end up on the german side even if your character is black.
Now, don't get me wrong, the whole thing is completly blown out of proportion by people with an agenda for controversies sake. After all, multiplayer never is the most historical accurate part of any game, Call of Duty never was known for ANY kind of historical accuray. And lets be honest, this is an industry full of corporate scumbags making the shots, so this is a rather mild controversy compared to what else they might come up with *cough*releasing unfinished games*cough*.
But it got me thinking: BECAUSE its often guys who know nothing about games and history, just about how to print money who make the shots in this industry, BECAUSE gameplay often trumps story or historical accuray, BECAUSE history itself has for a long time not been the kind of utopia that some people think games should now promote... could it be that the call for diversity in games, which IMO is a righteous call (because games have been and still are sometimes a pretty undiverse environment), leads to unwanted, and maybe even harmful results?
I mean, if you want to show an utopia, if you want to allow for diversity in player characters and storys, you can always do that in a fantasy setting. To be more precise, a black woman as a Wehrmacht soldier (lets be precise here, because the derogatory n4zi term the german soldiers get rolled together under is disrespectful to the wehrmacht soldiers that died trying to end the regime) is perfectly fine in an alternate reality setting... hell, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the upcoming Wolfenstein games would feature such a character (maybe it already did, didn't complete the first reboot after getting grossed out by the QTEvent-Fest at the start).
Now, these games can clearly get away with it because they don't claim to depict reality thus they can do whatever they want with the realistic elements they use as base (but still could get called out for the result which might still be inapropriate).
But when you call your game "based on reality", you might want to put historical accuray before some agenda you try to push with your story. More often than diversity, that agenda is nationalistic propaganda, and we have WAY more of these games since like... the dawn of time. Especially war games. This is also something I think is inappropriate. Because all of this serves one purpose, intended or not: warping the image kids and young adults have of history. Because as much as WW2-history was drilled into our heads when I was in school... is it still today? And that history we got drilled into us was maybe not completly wrong... but the amount of things left out was just staggering. I blame my teachers subconscious agenda for this as much as anything.
So if even the official history you learnt in a country with a pretty good school system 20 years ago was not really good enough to give the full picture... how bad will information on WW2 be learned 20 years from now? What about all the kids that sleep in history lessons because "history is boring" (I was always finished with the book before the semester was half over. I loved history books)?
Now, if most youngsters will never learn the true history behind an event like WW2... and then play stupid "historical" games like CoD. And then get confronted with a historical fact. Will they be able to tell fact from fiction? Or will they believe the nonsense these games fed them?
Now, this problem is nothing new, and these new push for diversity is not the cause of it. But could it be that the more people start to ask for things that the game developers think they need to cater for (not pissing off the nationalists in a big market, thus leave out the juicy bits of history that paint that nation in a bad light, not pissing off the advocates of diversity, thus adding ethnicities and genders that do not fit the historical setting, not pissing of the religious groups, thus leaving out the juicy bit painting that religion in a bad light, or cut down on swearing, not pissing off the prudes and violence-haters, thus cutting out sex scenes and gimping violence to comical level), the more a "historical" game becomes a weird alternate dimension fantasy story loosely based on real events?
Now, I might blow this out of proportion too. What I have problems with though is that weird chimeras like the new COD:WW2 Multiplayer mode gets made when you could add in diversity in a way more "historical" fashion. It would fit the setting, it would please the history buffs, and it wouldn't be that much additional work in the end. There have been black people fighting in WW2. They were grouped together in their own units. But as far as I recall my history, they had a great track record, and would rightly deserve their time in the spotlight, just like all the other brave souls that fought in WW2. There have been female soldiers fighting in WW2, mainly in the Red Army. AFAIK in russia they are a symbol of national pride to this day. Worth creating a game featuring a female red army soldier as protagonist any day of the week. Then there is the fact that without the help of millions of female workers that replaced the men in the factories, WW2 would have come to a grinding halt midway (not the worst outcome if you ask me... question is who would have had the upper hand by then). Maybe put these unsung heroines of the homefront in the spotlight for once?
You could create a historical game that promotes REAL diversity by picking a story that oftentimes got brushed under the rug at the time, and show what women, black or asian people DID do in WW2. They all have a story deserving to be told. And I am sure most players would be grateful for getting a different take on an already done to death conflict. If Battlefield 1 showed one thing, its how little is needed to completly transform the way people perceive a story campaign, and that MOST people like the different expierience (talking about the first level here, not the unhistorical garbage that follows of course).
But no, we have devs that take your bog standart multiplayer, skin it with a WW2 Theme and call it a day. And then wonder when their plan blows up in their face because the history buffs don't like it (and join the ranks of the anti-diversity crowd).
What are your thoughts on this?
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