tegan

I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

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So, I had a random thought. I did ask Austin Walker for his opinion but he ignored me (which is fine) and I joked at Chris Remo about it on twitter.

Do people have thoughts about how Germans and Russians are represented in video games?

 

For context: I'm originally from Ukraine and live in Germany at the moment.

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So, I had a random thought. I did ask Austin Walker for his opinion but he ignored me (which is fine) and I joked at Chris Remo about it on twitter.

Do people have thoughts about how Germans and Russians are represented in video games?

 

For context: I'm originally from Ukraine and live in Germany at the moment.

Nationalities representation in games aligns with pretty much with the representation of any other group, lazy writers use stereotypes. 

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So, I had a random thought. I did ask Austin Walker for his opinion but he ignored me (which is fine) and I joked at Chris Remo about it on twitter.

Do people have thoughts about how Germans and Russians are represented in video games?

 

For context: I'm originally from Ukraine and live in Germany at the moment.

In what context? In the case of WWII there are really a lot of things to say about video game representations of the Eastern front in particular, few of them good. Outside of works explicitly about that war, Russians are usually depicted as Soviets or as mafia, and Germans are usually implied to be Nazis or at least somewhat sadistic. Either that or a really good engineer. Russians are the modern Nazi, in video game terms. Interchangeable enemy, except usually they use modern day Russians with the nationalism turned all the way up. It's a very weird space.

I think one of the biggest problems with representations of Russians, in the US at least, is that the existence of the Soviet Union turned everyone from anywhere it ever covered "Russian", regardless of actual ethnicity or nationality. I'm German/Ukrainian, and live in America, and it can actually be hard to convince people that Ukraine isn't part of Russia (well, harder before the war. People seem to get it now.) and that people from there are not always Russian (This is still pretty sticky.). I'm guilty of it, I've called myself Russian before to avoid having to explain the geopolitics of Ukraine. People are very comfortable thinking of everything east of Germany, north of the middle east, and west of China as being "Russia" in some manner, there's decades of cold war conditioning behind it, and it's really detrimental to any sort of nuance there. Everyone is Russian, and they are all either criminals, nationalists or former soviet agents, possibly all three, and modern politics make them acceptable targets.

 

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Hmmmm.... The WW2 period is rather transparent in that regard as it feels like it's the time most of those tropes where formed. Sadly I'm having trouble coming up with examples from the modern times.

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Rainbow Six: Siege has four german operatives and four "Spetsnaz" operators. The german operatives lean somewhat towards precision engineering (but in the case of Bandit, it's pretty low-tech). The russian operatives use really powerful offensive weapons (with the exception of Kapkan).

I actually thought Thermite looked a lot like a german kid I knew in highschool, but it turns out he's an F.B.I. operator.

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I think World In Conflict managed to have a decent depiction of Russians in it. It was set during the 80's period of the Cold War but it seemed more humanising than many similar setups.

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So here is a strange one. I thought about if it would be possible to have a video game that has a bigoted narrator but is not a bigoted work as a whole.

Sorry if my thoughts are not posted in a complete form but as snippets. D:

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So here is a strange one. I thought about if it would be possible to have a video game that has a bigoted narrator but is not a bigoted work as a whole.

Sorry if my thoughts are not posted in a complete form but as snippets. D:

 

Absolutely. This is "simply" done through having some sort of ironic distance between what is happening with the game, and what is being said over the top of this. The Stanley Parable has this, though for simply comedic effect. It's also how a novel like Lolita is about a pedophile and murderer, while not being a pornographic/etc. novel as a whole. 

 

Of course, the real issue is that when you do these kinds of things, you have to REALLY nail it, as people tend to simply believe narrators, which can have a very opposite effect to what was intended.

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Of course, the real issue is that when you do these kinds of things, you have to REALLY nail it, as people tend to simply believe narrators, which can have a very opposite effect to what was intended.

 

And then sometimes that happens even if you do nail it. Plenty of people out there who misunderstand the point of Lolita.

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I hate house hunting and living in shared apartments. I want a massive fuck-off TV to play games on. Can't do that when you're essentially a guest in someone's house.

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Rainbow Six:Siege (PC) is going to have a free weekend 4/15-4/18. If you enjoy tense matches and teamwork in a competitive first-person shooters then I strongly recommend trying this out. I've been playing a few matches more days than not somce it came out and it hasn't gotten old at all.

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Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but whatever...

 

I recently emigrated to Germany. I didn't take my TV, it wasn't amazing and was too big for me to easily transport without damaging it (along with the other shit I had to take). Now I want to play video games but I don't have a TV.

 

I've not played console games on a monitor before, and I think that small TVs are really depressing. I don't really want to spend a lot of money on a large TV if I decide to go back to the UK in a few years. So my question is:

 

How is console gaming on a monitor? How small of an HD tv can you get and still see details? I couldn't imagine playing The Witcher 3 on anything less than a 40 inch tv - the writing was small enough. 

If I decide to stay here 3+ years, then I'll splash out on a large TV, but until then I'd like to be a bit more conservative, and a monitor is easy to transport, plus I can use it for my PC if I want.

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Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but whatever...

 

I recently emigrated to Germany. I didn't take my TV, it wasn't amazing and was too big for me to easily transport without damaging it (along with the other shit I had to take). Now I want to play video games but I don't have a TV.

 

I've not played console games on a monitor before, and I think that small TVs are really depressing. I don't really want to spend a lot of money on a large TV if I decide to go back to the UK in a few years. So my question is:

 

How is console gaming on a monitor? How small of an HD tv can you get and still see details? I couldn't imagine playing The Witcher 3 on anything less than a 40 inch tv - the writing was small enough. 

If I decide to stay here 3+ years, then I'll splash out on a large TV, but until then I'd like to be a bit more conservative, and a monitor is easy to transport, plus I can use it for my PC if I want.

I played PS3 on a 27" monitor for a while and it was fine. The issue is usually PC -> TV more than Console -> Monitor. It also depends on how far away you sit. If you are worried about size and transporting it later. You could always get a projector.

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You could always get a projector.

 

:tup: :tup:

 

If you've got a room with decent light control, I'd highly suggest looking at the decent entry level projectors (last I looked a couple of years ago there were some pretty nice ones in the $700 range). 

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Not sure projector is an option. Rooms tend to be rather small...

I have a pretty small studio apartment and still manage to get an 80" screen up on one of my walls

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Yeah, when I was doing a bunch of research putting mine in, I found a bunch of people in dorm rooms who had set them up rather than try and have a TV taking up space in such a tiny room. 

 

FWIW, I've got a 150" screen at the end of a room that is 13' x 20'. 

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Now all I can think of is putting a projector pointing at the ceiling so I can have a sandwich, lie down, and play some video games.

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I've considered getting a projector before but dealing with t he bright sunlight during the day seems like a hgue hassle...

 

Partly because I LIKE bright sunlight!

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Our living room is somewhat odd (our house is a little oddly laid out because the core is 116 years old and it has been added onto multiple times), but perfect for a projector.  It's a long room with no windows on the long walls, so that just leaves windows on the short walls at each end.  We just hung heavy, blackout curtains on the windows and close them when we want to watch/game during the day and open them for nice bright sunshine the rest of the time. 

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About 7 years ago I got a 24" BenQ monitor with craploads of inputs and it was my main console monitor for a couple of years. At one point it had my PC, Wii, 360 and N64 plugged in to it. I'll always prefer sitting in a decent armchair to play games but I can't fault the screen. If you're sitting 6-8ft away it's perfect. Do you have a monitor or would you need to get one?

Mind you, you can get some pretty great flash deals on TVs. If you're staying for any length of time it might be worth picking up something cheap, or 2nd hand.

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