XML FeedsHonoring or Defiling?
By TB on Jan 28, 2008 | In TB's Soapbox | 13 feedbacks »
So there is this huge push for everyone to have a Blackhawk Down game. I have seen posts about such games from the East Coast to the West with sprinklings in Texas and other places and it makes me wonder, what the hell are people thinking?
As a Marine who was in Somila (not during Task Force Ranger) during Operation Restore Hope, I must say that I find the game and exhuberence that so many take to it to be highly disturbing. To see people on message forums quoting Islamic verses, repeating Islamic Chants and screaming death to the infidels is beyond what most would consider to be good taste.
I like to play bad guys as much as anyone. I have played all manner of badguys in scenario paintball games, however there is and should be a line that just isn't crossed. Like for instance the dressing up in Nazi regalia complete with swastika. I mean you could dress in the uniform, but do you have to have the swastika? "but TB, we have to be historically correct!" you may say. For a freaking paintball game? is my reply. And some of you people claim I take the game to serious. If that is the case then some of you, take the playing dress up way too serious and need to get some help.
My biggest issue with Middle East themed games is the fact that we are still at war with several insurgent groups there and are still actively searching for Bin Laden. To make light of this does none of those men honor no matter how people try to sell it or re-package it or call it honoring the sacrifices. Scenario paintball isn't freaking history, none of these games are meant to teach anyone about history. Anyone who has been shot at in a combat zone will tell you that paintball and combat have nothing in common. Absolutely nothing!
So here is a question for some of you? Do you think people should dress up as Shughart or Gordon? Or should they have dummies that they pull out of helicopters and drag through the field chanting anti-american sayings? Maybe some 'kidnappings' and be-headings or even better some anti-american propaganda? I have seen some call it friendly 'smak talk' but some of the things that they are saying would have me on edge if I were going to the event.
What the reality is that most of these players like playing war and soldier and this fits into their macho fantasies of being 'elite' or 'tactical'. Even the ones who play the terrorists. I played in a D-Day game and I had grown men coming up and saluting me and trying to treat me like I was really a Captain in the 82nd Airborne. While I didn't laugh at them, it made me highly uncomfortable to be in that position. Maybe that is just me and my Marine upbringing, who knows.
I know that it isn't going to stop. I mean it has gotten bigger and bigger, with more and more people doing these mil-fun (oops I mean mil-sim) games thinking that if you tie the US Army to your games then you are guranteed success! Well all one can do is try to stay alert and not take part in the events that makes one uncomfortable. But I do have something to say to all you 'tactical' and 'elite' teams and players who think you are the man at events like these. Why not join the Army or the Marine Corps, go infantry and then volunteer to head over to Iraq or better yet Afghanistan, maybe you can use all these 'skills' you picked up on the paintball field to end the wars and find the real Bin Laden, otherwise well you are no better then the 10 and 12 years olds running around shooting at each other with cap guns on the weekends.
13 comments
While having a bit of role-playing and character in games can be fun, too much is not only disturbing, its disrespectful. Having games based on real conflicts is fine, but at the same time care needs to be take to prevent inappropriate representations of the game and of the conflict it is based on.
playing solider is no joke in our home - the kids do it for real
i do draw the line as to what i consider going to far. there's no reason for nazi swasticas. as far as i'm concerned, these are the people who have all this "memorabilia" displayed in their basements next to their white sheet outfits. you want to dress as a german soldier, cool. but if a player dresses up like an ss soldier (a symbol of hate), they become a primary target for me and i make sure to convincingly shoot them off the field time after time. i also have a distain for anyone wearing military markings that were not earned. if a player wants an airborne ranger special forces tab, there's a war on. he can go earn it.
as far as realistic scenarios, that's all crap. all games boil down to similar objectives and tactics. there is no history taught. if it was up to me, scenarios would just be red vs blue or whatever. no good guys, no bad guys, just two groups of players going at it, trying to run missions, control the field, score points and beat the other side. fictional armies and lands are cool and allow for role-players to do their thing.
These guys are just D&D geeks all grown up. Let em play dress up.
I don't even understand why people create other profiles for those certain people. I have seen many profiles whose name are people who are leaders in Afghanistan. I mean, who would have the disrespect to do that?
I also think it is very wrong and disrespectful to the players, refs, bystanders and anyone else in America to wear or chant etc. something of the past wars or the one going on today resembling the ones who have killed some of the people fighting for freedom.
All Americans. Even in te brief PBN thread on it we saw threats and people going "yea I love blast those guys to the pain." Why? I'm sure it had something to do with people on the german side bowing to nazi insignia and calling themselves SS.
All I see is a buch of kids saying "Up yours" for no reason. Screw the Jewish people who play. Screw the unsafe actions spurned on by the outfits.
If the english business suit suddenly became vile to everyone I'd stop wearing it after 8 years of having it almost every big game I've been to. As someone who would fall into the "dress-up" catagory I'm against the whole "nazi" or in some respects "terrorist" role playing ideas out there.
That said if I really didn't like the people on the oter side for some reason, like them trying to dick me over, and they had issues with a "terrorist" side I'd totally go for playing a rag head. Mainly because it would be so much sweeter to beat them like that. Wrong? Maybe, but it would just be too amussing. That said I would never go so far as to actually act like or dress like a bloody terrorist. Screw that.
I recall my first scenario game (Clash of The Titans), even though I had been playing paintball for many years before, this was my first scenario game. I recall being bunkered down with a couple of young guys (under 18) and one of them says to the other "I'll bet this is what real war is like". My jaw just dropped and I looked at them. Now they couldn't see the expression on my face because of my goggles, but they understood my words when I said "In a real war, the bullets don't just paint you, they kill you".
I've been known to wear a costume at a game or two, but NEVER when it comes to playing some aspect of the world either in the past, or present that could be construed the wrong way. You can role-play without taking it too far with your costuming.
OH NO! I'm not being politically correct!
Whew!!!......I just realized I'm on TB's site, thought I was on PBN for a minute there.....lol :-)
I once asked Bullwinkle if he'd ever been mortared, he said he hadn't, but he'd been rocketed. I asked what it was like, and he described it as feeling like your asshole was turning inside out.
I watched clips from Pat Dollard's Young Americans, one where they came under mortar attack, and everybody hit the floor of the tent, some yelping at every thump, some ferverently praying. Another clip they were in a watch tower, having a conversation, and suddenly the glass window (armored, and ripped from a busted up hummer) spiderwebs from an AK hit.
I've never felt that kind of fury on the paintball field. Nobody ever will unless they have some serious emotional problems.
On a lighter, yet annoying note, many of the whimsical games I've lobbied for were all scoffed and laughed at.
Cartoon Wars would be the shiznit.
Now personally, I'd rather see "Red vs Blue" because that way no one gets butt hurt when the Germans win D-Day, but the whole Afghanistan/Somali/Al Queda games are just the adult version of "Cowboys & Indians"...and if that's how they want to spend their day off and their cash, I can think of worse ways. The whole costume thing in paintball is goofy anyway.
And what exactly is wrong with being a grown up D&D geek, Kiwi? ;)
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n256/phreax9/b.jpg
I do agree that in these historically themed scenario games, that you can take it too far: in how patriotic you can be, how terroristic you can be, how 'accurate' your uniform can be, etc.
And while I find any games that deal with our history of armed conflict a bit distasteful, I most certainly get disgusted with games based on current events, such as the War on Terror currently being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm a military dependent...why wouldn't I?
I mentioned a two-sided coin, remember?
The flip side of that coin is that while I understand it's all 'in role' I still find it distastful to post as a Nazi, or an Islamic freedom fighter. Other than what I mentioned before, why?
Because I think it also dishonors Germans and followers of Islam, or whomever you are trying to protray as the 'bad' guy in the scenario equation. All Germans weren't Nazi or SS storm troopers (and I've yet to see anyone really role play an 'average' German soldier) and all Afgans/Iraqi aren't America haters who want to kill all the infidels.
I hate stereotypes. And I'm sure the Germans who are tying to get away from being associated with Nazi regime and the peaceful Islams who are trying to distance themselves from terrorists do too.
But my personal favorite: posting as Osama Bin Laden. I hope to hell the Feds give you dumb ass fuckers a visit and ask you what the fuck is wrong with you that you would think that is funny or even tolerable.
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