comment: >
  
  I’m sorry I haven’t seen Apocalypse now or full metal jacket so i can’t comment on that
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  If we refrained from any media or entertainment that someone could find insensitive or offensive, we wouldn't have any media or entertainment. >
  
  But we all have limits to the media we collectively accept. I am not criticising people playing the games but the companies who make them. Would you have a problem if they started making rape simulators? >
  
  
  Would you have a problem if they started making rape simulators?
  
  Did you miss when Rapelay blew up the internet? They've been making them for years. >
  
  Yeah but that was widely banned and condemned. While I don’t support banning war games I think at the very least we should be having more discussions about the morality of it. >
  
  What is immoral about video games that isn’t about movies? >
  
  This is what I want to know! Why are video games about real life wars immoral/evil when books, movies, plays, art, and all other forms of media depict real life wars for entertainment as well >
  
  Well I would say this is different because the majority of the time they have scenes where they mention the struggles of these young men. Also if you knew your history you’d know that these games are just scratching the surface. I’ve never seen a video game about WW2 that covers the siege of Leningrad, where people were eating small children to live, or how Soviet officers would kill every 10th man in line to “boost” morale and or the killing and raping of women and children all across Europe when the Soviet were marching to Berlin. I’d be willing to bet you didn’t even know any of this and this is just the 2nd world war. Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 “war stories” tell amazing stories of soldiers and things they experienced example “the last tiger” which the way they wrote it it makes you feel bad for the Germans.
  Also there are games that are pretty historically accurate like “war of rights” where before each battle they tell you the story of those strings of battles. Wars in videos games keep History alive and breathing. It’s a form of oral tradition. 
  To stop games like this is basically denying history.
  People especially children learn through all types of media and video games are a great source to allow them to learn and if they like it to explore it further if they choose too. 
  Not to mention there are games about serial killers.
  That include rape, murder, torture etc etc etc
  Basically War is Hell and it should be talked about, it should be shown in all types of media and People shouldn’t be afraid of it or scared of it. It’s how we learn not to do it again.
  But, war. 
  War never changes. >
  
  Effective form of oral tradition too, for example with younger people there is vastly more of them that know about ww2 as opposed to ww1 in part because there was so many games made in ww2 setting, if you compare that to some war such as franco-prussian war almost nobody knows about it since there is so little of media they consume centered around it >
  
  Exactly! I’m a social studies teacher, I can safely say about 33% of my male students have picked up information from playing games that are entrenched in history and or they liked it so much they did an even deeper dive. I can’t even tell you how many kids have played games like this and have gone on to pick up history podcasts and so much more. Oral tradition makes my job easier and more fun to do. >
  
  One reason companies make games based off real war is because a lot of the 'work' was already done.  To clarify:  making a game is a lot of work.  This includes things like making the artwork, scenario design, concept sketches, map layout, and lots of other stuff.  When you use a real war in real places, then you directly copy/adapt things like the uniform designs, weapons, the combat scenario, what the different factions are, the maps and unit positions, and many other details.
  Otherwise you'd have to make those all up entirely, and be careful about consistency.  Making up entire worlds, cultures, and geographies is hard.
  It's still messed up and disturbing of course; but one can see how as a cost-cutting measure a company would do it. >
  
  !delta Yeah that makes sense from a creative standpoint. >
  
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  I play the Battlefield 1. It’s a first person shooter based on World War One. There are other battlefields in the franchise but I don’t play those. 
  I would say it’s net positive because it’s caused me to do endless research on the various sides of the war, the weapons, tanks and planes and locations of the battles. 
  I think games like this, or historical fiction can cause people to become far more curious than they otherwise would be and in turn, have more knowledge about what happened.
  ETA: I didn’t meant to say that like you didn’t mention battlefield, I just wanted to provide context. >
  
  Why is that different than a WWII movie? Tom Hanks didn’t really storm the beaches of normandy is Saving Private Ryan stolen Valor?
  
  We don't have Ted Bundy games where you play Ted and rape and murder girls for fun but how is it different?
  
  Are the GTA games that different? >
  
  The difference with a war movie is that they are designed for you to reflect on the horrors of war. I feel like war games are just their for the pure fun of shooting at people. >
  
  Is it possible to have a truly anti war film? 
  Take American sniper. Is it a thought provoking film about a man descending into madness trying to protect his family (at home, in the field), realizing he can't, and succumbs to the horrors of war... OR...... Is it glorifying killing faceless terrorists meant to give us a lil patriot boner? >
  
  
  Is it possible to have a truly anti war film?
  
  Yes, but being anti-war is a political position about a nation joining the war being wrong. 
  Simply showing that war is hell, is still pro-war if the implication is that it is worth fighting for anyways. >
  
  
  Simply showing that war is hell, is still pro-war if the implication is that it is worth fighting for anyways.
  
  Completely agree. And that's where question comes from. Even if it was made with the intent of being anti war, if the viewer sees the action as justified (or even tacticool) then it becomes pro war. 
  I think a movie can only be anti war if the viewer is anti war >
  
  You can show the country's leaders starting the war for selfish reasons, show the facts on the ground not matching the propaganda that the protagonist received, you can show the protagonist's side contributing to unnecessary suffering of civilians, etc. >
  
  How do you feel about games like This War of Mine? While it's not any specific conflict, it's clearly intended to be related to real modern wars. But it's not doing it for "cheap entertainment". It is, in part, a way to use an artistic medium (video games) to get people to better empathize with civilians in war-torn areas. >
  
  This doens't seem like the cheap entertainment the OP mentioned. Showing the dark side of war without glorifying it is an absoluetly necessary part of our media. 
  I played quite a bit of Battlefield 3 a few years ago but never really played a singeplayer "war simulator". Recently I got to play a short part of the new CoD MW2 campaign and felt something between awe and disgust by the sophistication of the drone sequence. 
  The player is controlling a drone and has to help friendly NPCs through a very enemy-dense territory by spotting and shooting all hostiles. 
  While this was entertaining in a god-complex kind of way  I couldn't stop thinking that this is someones actual job. There's some young men sitting in a basement in Texas for example, piloting a drone thats starting from Ramstein Air Base, quickly flying whereever its needed and obliterating some poor peoples houses and husbands while the fat and lazy west sits on its comfortable couch, playing a simulation of actual mass murder thats happening, possibly at the exact same time. 
  While your point obviously stands I still think that, best case scenario: its only disrespectful but doesnt cause actual harm and worst case scenario: people (subconciously!) get used to the idea that war is kind of fun and thus dont see a problem with it. And if you dont agree that playing a glorified version of a war simulation tends to have that effect on people I would highly advise you to look up the correlation between habits and overall worldview. Not to mention the small rush of dopamine you get every time you kill a simulated enemy. >
  
  
  This doens't seem like the cheap entertainment the OP mentioned. 
  
  Well yes, that was kind of my point. OP didn't engage with the possibility of games based on real wars that weren't just cheap entertainment, so I was trying to bring it up. >
  
  That depends I suppose. Most war games are pretty explicit that war fucking sucks ass. Sure you're an elite, yes you win a lot of your objectives, but the games tend to feature loss and death and at least one prominent character dies. Very few war games have you play the 'bad guys'. The ones that do usually only do so just so you can see the kind of monsters you're hunting down i.e. why war is necessary in the first place. Can I ask for examples of war games where the story makes war seem like a positive fun experience that you should want? >
  
  You feel the same about movies? >
  
  Depends on the movie. Something like All quiet on the western front is good because it shows war as something brutal, tragic and doesn’t for one moment try to glamorise it. >
  
  so you are against movies like apocalypse now, full metal jacket?