Certain hobbies set off warning bells

I really blame the games industry as a whole for this. They keep making games with Space Marines as the protagonists, where their violence is presented as justified, when a lore-friendly space marine game should be like "No Russian" missions all the time and the resulting failure this causes to their Empire. This constant "whitewashing" of the lore, is what has attracted a ton of people.

I would LOVE to see a WH40k setting where the space marines are lore-accurate murdering an entire multi-billion hive-city for some minor heresy by a few thousand of the people on the 925th-sub-basement, and you're playing random ganger Scumface Mc Spikearms who's just trying to survive.
- So a WH40K/Spec-Ops: The Line mashup.
  The Line was an anti-shooter, in the sense that it felt like a generic third-person shooter while constantly hammering the “you shouldn’t be having fun playing this because war is awful and full of atrocities” messaging. It was actually a fairly decent critique of the shooters that were prevalent when the game was developed. It came out when games like Gears of War, Resident Evil, Mass Effect, and Red Dead Redemption were dominating the third-person shooter market, while the FPS market was dominated by Halo and COD.
  
  Eh, I feel the message of Spec Ops was really sabotaged by the poor in-game systems.
  There's a mission where you have to defend a point, and you get the option to drop white phosphorus. But that mission is really easy, and you can easily play it for hours and hours, killing an infinite number of enemies. It doesn't progress without pushing the button.
  And then it berates you, the player, for pushing the button.
  This feels really weird to me. I can see the point in the distance, but it really doesn't work for me, since you can obviously just murder people till eternity as well.
  And the game has several hidden "better ways", like shooting the rope at the hanging, where it will reward you for doing it better. But it doesn't have that option elsewhere, like the white phosphorus option.
  Honestly, there's a big disconnect between some of the scenes, and the heavyhanded message.
  Contrast it with "no Russian", which is a map that's offered with zero commentary, letting you shoot unarmed civilians, but not punishing you at all if you don't. And no matter what you do, the end result is the same. That's a system that fits with everything in the game, it doesn't have to swing a message in your face, and it doesn't have to break with normal gameplay to insert elements required for the message.
  
  I think it forms part of bigger meta narrative, and the end of the day you still go through with the white phosphur attack as the game is forcing the choice on you to proceed as the only way to solve the problem - which is what the character believed in
  Its message is,to me, "are you having fun" playing a game of murder -it forced, albeit clumsily, the reality of war when you feel you have no other option - a choice you are forced to make like pulling the trigger of a gun. You can leave the game and not do it or you pull the trigger.
  You are still killing after that point soon after, with character quick to stat blaming others and you are still going on for the ride by playing- to finish the game, to get to Komrad- it comes off pretentious i admit, but the wp was acting as a turning point and was using a blunt force narrative to make you start asking questions about the character' sanity
  Could it have been done better - sure, but the thing is you, the player, still went through with it and pressed the button instead of putting the game down and refusing - it is trying to sell the point of view of the player's character you are playing decided that it was the "only way" and by continuing to play the game you have accepted the condition forced upon you and continued to be complicit in the events that unfold because you wanted to see the story through.
  "No Russian is shock value, but there really isn't much player consequence as it doesn't matter what you do so long as you keep up, you could even skip it"
  If you wanted to avoid the nastiness of what you were doing you could in No russian, specs ops decided to comfront the player with deciding for the player to either accept the nastiness or don't and if you want to see the story to completion you better get your hands proper dirty and not half ass it.
  Again, conveying that is not easy and what they did could have been conveyed better. You are seeing things from the perspective of a dude with severe ptsd and you have been murdering people up to that point on fragile pretense
  
  Could it have been done better - sure, but the thing is you, the player, still went through with it and pressed the button instead of putting the game down and refusing - it is trying to sell the point of view of the player’s character you are playing decided that it was the “only way” and by continuing to play the game you have accepted the condition forced upon you and continued to be complicit in the events that unfold because you wanted to see the story through.
  My problem is that the game does tries to do it both ways. It tries to give you in-game options to "be less bad", in the crowd scene and the hanging scene, doing a very game-y thing by going straight. But then it ALSO does the WP scene where it's going for "The only winning move is not to play" thing by breaking outside the game.
  And that ruins both angles for me, it feels really lazy, like they just kinda shoehorned the angle in and felt super smart afterwards, when to me it just feels like they're covering up for bad writing. They didn't commit.
  “No Russian is shock value, but there really isn’t much player consequence as it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you keep up, you could even skip it”
  If you wanted to avoid the nastiness of what you were doing you could in No russian, specs ops decided to comfront the player with deciding for the player to either accept the nastiness or don’t and if you want to see the story to completion you better get your hands proper dirty and not half ass it.
  You couldn't skip No Russian way back when it first released, that was patched in later because of the massive public outcry over that map. That's not really my point, my point is that as a writer, it's fine to engage inside the game with the characters OR place it on the reader/player, but doing both makes both miss the mark.
  
  See, I always thought this comparison falls flat, because No Russian and Spec Ops both give you the same amount of choice - either you complete the mission or not - and both give you no alternative way to proceed and no way to prevent it other than close the game. That Spec Ops makes you push buttons for the bad thing to happen rather than allow you to chicken out and be a passive rather than active participant is a point in it's favour.
  
  I always hear people talk about the white phosphorus part of the game, but the game doesn't give you a choice there. I much prefer the parts where you are actually given a choice. The one that I remember the best is the civilians, you don't have to kill them and I just fired a warning shot and they quickly dispersed. Apparently some people will gun them down.
  
  You hear people talk about it, because it's so bad and jarring and forced. People keep bringing up specops as some great writing inversion of a shooter trope, when it really just doesn't get what agency is.
  If you don't give a player agency, you can't then berate them for doing something wrong, because they didn't actually do a thing. The phosphorous part of the game is a thing you don't get a say in, but the game blames you as a player.
  It's like me blaming you for reading the word phosphorus, when you had basically no choice in that.
  If you don't give agency, you can only ever blame the character. And the writer made the characters, not the player.
- Apropos , the Necromunda video game was such a disappointment :(
  
  yeah, agreed. But Rogue Trader was remarkably on brand.
  There were a LOT of parts where you basically had to decide the life and death of tens to hundreds of thousands. And often, the ethical thing was NOT the in-game right choice. For example, you could allow refugees aboard, it gets you nothing, but some of them will try to sabotage you. If you kill them all, you even get piety points for killing (some) heretics.
  I recall one of the developer replying to a comment that said "If I'm evil, I get cool items, if I'm good, I get nothing, why is that?" and they replied with "If you're doing it for a rewards, you're not really being good, are you now?"
  
  "If you're doing it for a rewards, you're not really being good, are you now?"
  This is moon logic. Yes, that's how it works in the real world, but you aren't in the real world. You're playing a game.
  
  You do in fact score points in the "people love me" stats if you do things like that. But the "people love me" path is far less powerful than the either of the "Religious fundamentalists love me" paths.
  
  RDR2 I think did it really well. In RDR2 you have that good/bad meter, and people react to your presence based on that. Do good stuff, and they'll greet you nicely. Do bad, especially in a specific town, and they'll shoot first ask questions later. You didn't even need to do anything if your bad meter was even full a little bit, they'd just be more hostile to you, and scales based on just how far the meter was on bad. Anywhere from NPCs mouthing off telling you to kick rocks, getting punched, getting shot at, and having a posse gathered hunting you down.
  I don't think warhammer can do that though, because if you know anything about that universe, you're solidly in the evil category. But that's every species, even the "good" sect of the Eldar aren't exactly good guys.
  
  In Rogue Trader, you can recruit a dark eldar, and give them a hunting preserve on your ship. And yes, those will be humans.
  Or, on the other side, you can have a sister of battle in your party who will happily shoot some of the other characters without blinking.
  It's a bit more than a meter. You also have a reputation though, and it matters quite a lot what you've done.
GW constantly pushes Space Marines and to a lesser extent the Imperial Guard as a majority of time as the protagonist. People don’t have the media literacy to understand that protagonist does not equal the hero. The protagonist is just the main character of the story and they can be evil or good or anything in between.
I feel like the satire is being washed out to support the line that shall always go up.
But hey, Space Marines goes “Pew! Pew! Pew!”
The article discusses this; basically the video games want you to at least slightly like the protagonist you're playing as, which means they can't entirely be the monstrous caricatures they were designed to be.
- I don't get it why not though, Spec Ops The Line was not a technical marvel or an outstanding gameplay experience even for its time, but we are still talking about it for its message.
- Meanwhile stellaris exists with multiple different options for genocide.
I would like some more grimdark in warhammer games. At this point Rimworld seems better for it, as you can commit most warcrimes in that just fine. Even new things that are not yet yet in the Geneva suggestions! Like executing POWs with eldritch horrors after you have harvested them for most of their organs to sell on the blackmarket.

Starship Troopers is so badass!

My dad legitimately thinks that's a great action movie. And to be fair, it is.
But he doesn't understand the deeper meanings.
More meat for the grinder is totally just a bad ass thing to say! Not at all like an orphan crushing machine, for sure.
- "The mobile infantry made me the man I am today" shows off two missing legs and one missing arm
  
  In the books it’s explained the man is missing his legs specifically to scare people away and show them the potential consequences of service, so people really understand what can and does happen and do not sign up just for fleeting glory or to look cool.
  
  I really didn't feel like that needed to be more obvious than it was in the movie. Where would you even find trees to make even more massive clue-by-fours to hit people over the head with?
  
  All the teachers are injured and in need of prosthetics and assisting devices, all of them served.
  As Rico's dad said, it should be illegal to use schools as recruiting centers.
  
  And while they all need a prosthetic, none of them have one unless it specifically pertains to something that will benefit their military job.
  The front desk guy needs 2 legs and an arm, but only has an arm and is in a wheel chair. The arm helps his job stamping new recruits in. The legs serve no purpose but to make his life better, but unnecessary for the job.
  Ricos teacher needs an arm, but while he's teaching, he doesn't have one. Once he's back on active duty, he's allowed a prosthetic arm because it helps the Federation. He doesn't require an arm to teach.
  If it's not required for your specific position, you don't deserve to be made whole. It's a pretty fucked up society overall, and not nearly enough people understand that the humans aren't the good guys.
  
  In the book there's an additional interesting scene with Rico and the recruiter: Rico runs in to the recruiter as he's leaving the office. The recruiter does actually have prosthetic legs, and he's walking out the door. Rico asks why he didn't have them on before. The recruiter explains that his job is actually to scare away recruits. He's supposed to show potential recruits his missing legs as a consequence of his service. That way those that aren't really serious about it, those who are doing it because it just seems like a cool idea, don't go through with signing up. He then explains that the government doesn't require him to be a living warning sign in his off-time, so he puts on his legs and goes about his life that way.
  
  Yeah, but the film is a glaringly obvious satire of the society it depicts, the book isn't.
  
  Not only are they not the good guys, the military started a fight where none existed in order to justify its existence.
  Buenos Aires was 100% a false flag, there's 0 chance bugs in any system other than this one could have, in less than ten thousand years, encountered humanity and started lobbing asteroids at them.
  Even if they had the knowledge of where humanity is from, and the ability to target asteroids in order to reroute them, they simply don't have the technology to speed an asteroid enough to be a threat to another planetary system.
  The military hauled an asteroid to hit a human population center. 100%.
- Wut?! How can someone not understand Starship Troopers is satire? What about all of the propaganda cut ins?!
  
  There really is no limit to how dense some dipshits can be. Hell, there are even fascist Star Trek fans, despite the show beating them over the head with stuff like this all the time!
  
  "star trek went woke"
  BITCH STAR TREK WAS WOKE FROM DAY ONE GET BENT
  
  Unfortunately that’s rather understandable. A largely ‘white’ and mostly male cast of mostly humans running around saving the day and ‘defeating/ enlightening’ backwards ‘alien’ cultures in what are basically military ships.
  So if you ignore the messages and the actual stories being told and only look at the superficial stuff (as MAGA Morons are wont to do) it does, sadly, pass the facist vibe check.
  
  A lot of - I dare say most - people reach for fiction as a form of escapism, and they do need a suspense of disbelief to enjoy it. So if someone points out that in-fiction events are obvious caricatures of real ones, they don't like it because they don't want to see it, that's why they are there and not in the real world.
  
  Honestly I don't know. Even when I point out super obvious ones, I'm "reaching to make a point"
I have no doubt it's satire, but for me it's always been more of a fun escape into a ridiculous, militarized sci fi fantasy world. I'd never want to genuinely set foot in that world though. Except the sexy coed showers. Booyah!

Yeah, this was on full display when Helldivers 2 launched. So many people just didn’t get the satire, and unironically leaned into the messaging.

For the unaware, Helldivers 2 is basically a Starship Troopers video game.

Starship Troopers the book was flat out propaganda. It's only the movie that is satire.
- The book is an exploration of and presents an argument for militarism. That alone doesn't make it propaganda. While many of the sentiments, implications, premises in the book carry a clear bias, the book nevertheless invites the reader to engage with and reflect on the ideology rather than aiming to manipulate and indoctrinate the reader.
  I'd say the earnest argument presented by Heinlein in ST is flawed and morally objectionable, but not a piece of propaganda.
  
  So the book presents an argument for and has a bias towards militarism, but it's not propaganda? Are you also going to tell me that Atlas Shrugged invites the reader to explore whether capitalism is good or not? Hard disagree.
  
  I mean... yeah? I don't agree with it, but I feel like its to detailed and nuanced to be merely propaganda. Propaganda would be shit like the Red Dawn remake or almost any movie involving the US military that tends to be to shallow to be anything but propaganda.
  
  It's nuanced like a brick is from what I remember and was basically a commercial for the military. The enemy were nonhuman arachnids, which doesn't come off as terribly subtle.
  
  I think it would help if you clarify what "propaganda" means to you, as I have a sense we mean different things.
  For me, I understand propaganda as media/content/communication aimed at manipulating people towards a particular point of view. It's often characterized by reduction, misrepresentation/deception, disingenuous argument, and etc. That is also to say that I make a distinction between manipulation and persuasive argument. So, a piece of content can make an argument, display inherent biases, employ persuasive techniques, without being propaganda. That's because all forms of expression necessarily hold an ideological position.
  
  It was basically a commercial for the military from what I can remember. There wasn't subtlety. The military was put on a pedestal. People that hadn't been in the military didn't get to vote. The enemy were reduced to inhuman arachnids. It's propaganda in the same way Top Gun is.
  But my point was mainly the movie and book were very different.
  
  Are you arguing the book is propaganda or the society of the book is heavily propagandized? The book itself is not propaganda if you fully read it. The horrors of war are on full, gruesome display. Heroism, cowardice, death, and dismemberment to the humans and arachnids. The society of the book is heavy on the propaganda, but the book itself is not propaganda.
  
  I disagree. Goose dies in Top Gun, but that doesn't mean it's not propaganda. Starship Troopers isn't about the horrors of war, it's about how Rico overcomes all that and becomes a real man who leads others and in another sense a real person in that he gets the right to vote.

God-Emperor (mostly dead sitting on a cybernetic throne preserving his life, requires like 100 psychics a day to feed on to live) wants to spread his Religious-no-religion religion across the cosmos, and the brutality with which is required is a small price to pay for industry.

And then they choose to like the guy unironically. But if they're really into Slaneesh then they just get a special brand of weird.

requires like 100 psychics a day
1,000 per day. Every day. For Ten. Thousand. Years.
So you know, just a drop in the bucket, no big deal.
And to be fairrrrrrr.... The emperor himself wants no religion at all, and it's the corrupt and zealous officials that spread the "the emperor is a god" thing, he straight up destroyed a planet because a chapter of marines converted it to Emperorism once. That was before he got stuck on his death throne, obviously.
Anyone who genuinely admires ANY of the factions in 40k just doesn't understand it.
They all suck. There are no good guys. Honestly I'd say the closest thing to good guys there are would be the tyanids, because they're just doing what tyanids do. You don't get mad at cows for being cows. Or wolves for being wolves. They are what they are and they do what they do. It isn't malicious intent.
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- I think the problem is that despite everyone being evil, they are all also cool, and there is no real satire in it when there is no point being made.
  
  they are all also cool
  looks at nurgle
  Uhhhhhh I'm not so sure about that one.
  But hey, if you want papa nurgle's blessing, go for it.
  While the runners these days may not have any kind of satire in mind, it's pretty obvious a large portion of the Imperium is based on a mixture of 1940s German and (80s-now) modern American ideals, as well as capitalism in general. The Eldar are arrogant isolationists and the dark Eldar are gluttonous.
  Most of 40k can have parallels drawn to modern society and the dials are all set to overload.
  While they may not have a direct point, I do think it still can have a message.
  "don't be like this"
  Too bad we are failing...
  
  Originally it was a parody of Thatcher's England.
  
  Given the time it was created, that's not surprising.
  Also a good time to remind everyone that thatcher's grave is a gender neutral bathroom.
- 1,000 per day. Every day. For Ten. Thousand. Years. So you know, just a drop in the bucket, no big deal.
  3,650,000,000 psykers are sacrificed since the Emperor went on the Golden Throne. That’s just over half the population of Earth.
  Writers have issue with scope. 1,000 a day seems shocking until you compare it a 1,000 out of a galaxy of trillions or whatever comes next. It is a literal drop in the bucket.
  I think the 1,000 was picked cause it’s high enough of a number for our brains to be like “That’s terrible!”
  
  Honestly I keep forgetting the Imperium supposedly controls over 1 million worlds.
  They really do have a problem with scope.
  Space marines are bad ass in a fight but there's only 1000 per chapter if they're adhering to the codex, but that's nowhere near enough for an entire galaxy.
  
  Even at a planet scale, 1k troops are not enough. Sure, each is worth 100 men or whatever, but that makes them always spread too thin. In a planetary invasion, which orks and 'nids often do, if they can't trick the enemy into chokepoints, they're fucked big time.
  The Armageddon war had, what, 20 chapters deploying marines there? And that's with massive support from the local IG regiment, plus space navy
  
  Totally agree. Space Marines are demi-god, death machines however there would be no way a 1,000 of them could take an entire planet, as you correctly pointed an entire galaxy.
  My head cannon is that the Guard does all the work and their achievements are forgotten while the Space Marines get all the credit.
  
  Well they don't want to sacrifice all of their psykers. It is cheap, just a small part in the vast war machine.
- The tyranids are an expression of entropy more than they are a species, they're very nearly a force of nature. They're not really "good" or "bad" in the same way that gravity isn't good or bad.
  Now the Orkz I think are just fun and good dudes. They don't really hate anybody in particular, they just LOVE to FIGHT and will keep doing that unless stopped. They will gladly fight amongst themselves if no one else appears to fight with them. They don't really have grand dreams of conquest beyond swarming over the horizon to fight whatever is on the other side of it. The optimal end state of Ork supremacy isn't galactic domination, it's one big WAAGH cloud that rips across the galaxy in a giant loop and takes long enough doing it that the survivors can settle back down and bunker back up before the Boyz come back to town. They don't even necessarily want to win, they just love to fight, they think it's the best activity that you can do, and they want to share that with any and everyone.
  From anyone else's perspective this is a horrifying wall of green skinned, brutal cunning monsters that will sprout up out of literal nowhere and reproduce faster than you can print more bullets for them. But from the Orkz perspective they're basically just asking you to join their football game. They're fun guys.
  
  But from the Orkz perspective they’re basically just asking you to join their football game. They’re fun guys.
  Different cultures I guess but in my neck of the woods, the hooligans down at the local football club don't rip my arms off if I refuse.
  Oh sorry, I just realized I'm whispering.
  OI YA GIT, HUMIES AIN'T GOOD KRUMPIN', MOST OF EMS IS TOO SMALL FER PROPPA FIGHTINZ, CEPT THE BIG BOYZ WITH THE BIG DAKKAS
- Look at this traitor here^^^^
  All praise be to Omnissiah. May his leadership and grace guide you to the one true path. Give yourself to him and become one.
  Yeah they are really fucked up, but man....what great lore! Best thing about 40k baby

It's just a glaring lack of critical thinking brought on by our (sometimes willingly) ignorant masses. Satire is dead in this country because we didn't have the capacity to comprehend it.

This country of Lemmy?
- Is my American-centrism showing? My bad, but the majority of this problem is from here unfortunately.
  
  I think we've all got our idiots, yours are just a bit louder!

Yeah I am having a great time with Helldivers 2 but damn if I don't feel this pretty much every time I play

Ooh, thanks for sharing this. I clicked on it thinking I had already read it before, but this is actually new to me. It looks interesting