I don't find the WW2 game comparisons to be at all apt. Infinity's use of the name Kempeitei, where it's clearly a different organization but one that echoes the past, maybe prompting people to do some research and learn a thing or two about the Human Sphere Kempeitei's 'ancestor', is good science fiction. So if the description of the Kempeitei's actions during the uprising are different than the 20th century entity, that's highlighting the fact that morality is about choice and outcomes, not about name-association. It's certainly a dark association, but I think handled pretty gracefully. Compare that to a game like Dust, which intentionally tries to remove the 'offensive' portions of the Axis in order to sanitize it for a more widely palatable gaming experience. Or compare it to a game like Bolt Action which is still a WW2 game but intentionally separates historical units from their theaters of war and active duty periods in order to distance troops like the waffen SS from the warcrimes they committed in Russia and other countries. I find that kind of fiction and gaming extremely off-putting, but it's a personal taste, not a judgement of those who enjoy Dust 47 or Bolt Action.
I think we need to choose our words more carefully -- no one can dictate to someone else what they should *be offended by,* but we can probably all agree that the baseline for whether or not something is *offensive* is whether or not the average person in the class represented by the potentially offensive material would be offended by it.
I call that a missed oportunity, I would have preferred that name instead of giving the unit nearly the same name as the organization the characters are part of in GiTS.
You... uh... You did read the link provided for Unit 731 right? And you do understand why using Unit 731 for any unit name in Infinity would be a bad idea right? RRiigghhtt?
That's basically what this whole discussion is about. There is nothing to understand here, just conflicting opinions.
First off, I greatly enjoy this game and this community. Second, my hat is off to all of you. When someone annoys us, we really ought to 1) Give them the benefit of the doubt 2) Discuss it. @Knauf and @Mahtamori have a deep, meaningful disagreement going here. Yet they are trying to talk through it: respectfully and rationally. Other community members weighing in are doing the same. Again -- hats off to everyone. Please permit me to add my 2 cents to the discussion: We live in an age of unparalleled freedom. Yet I believe nearly all of us either have direct experience with politically oppressive and repressive regimes -- or know someone very close to us, who did. So this discussion cannot be without emotion. This Forum is a part of CB. They do an excellent job of making this game feel, "real." That means including good guys, bad guys, and the infinite nuances that separate the two extremes. Some of that visceral "realness" comes from tweaking our noses with the stuff that bugs us. As a US citizen, I was initially deeply annoyed at the fate of the good ole US of A in the Infinity background. Then I thought about it: what destroys the USA? Their/Our obsession with "Rights" without acknowledgement of the simple fact that "Rights" are meaningless -- and dangerous! -- unless a people is willing to acknowledge, and strictly observe, the balancing principal of "Responsibility." The way the USA goes out in the Infinity background IS via our Achilles heel. Chilling. Disturbing. And Appropriate. (Here's hoping we wise up.) With respect, I firmly believe that we, The Infinity Community, have a binary choice. We as individuals can either accept that we will occasionally be offended, or we can utterly give up on the ideal of "Free Speech." To me, this means that I do not have a "Right To Not Be Offended." Yet, when some-one or something annoys me, it is in the Community's best interest if I speak to them about it. Hell, it's my Responsibility to bring it up -- so we can all hash it out, as we are doing here.
I'll take "false dichotomy" for 500, Trebek. This isn't about "free speech", because "free speech" doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want without fear of retaliation. If your ideas are shitty, you should expect other people to use their speech to trash them. If Corvus Belli makes a bad decision, we criticize their poor use of speech. This has nothing to do with free speech.
Well if by “retaliation” you mean just mocking my ideas or opposing them then I’m all for it but the moment you try to silence me or forbid access to something because your subjective opinion thinks that it is offensive then I’m against it. I have seen people getting doxed in online communities a couple of times and usually because they had some “insensitive” opinions, or because they were just assholes and this stuff is scary. I have only been 1,5 year part of the forums and have witnessed people being... how to say it... “shadow banned” from events because of something they said. I guess that’s why we have moderators to bring order, but just the idea of ostracizing people because of their political beliefs for example is scary to me. And now for my personal opinion on the matter: I really don’t care how troops are named in the game unless it’s something like “childrapers”. I have a friend that even though he likes the models of Haqqislam he won’t collect them because of units like jannisaries and what they have done to our anscestors in the past. I find that difficult to understand as I think this is just fiction. I have a small force of Haqqislam even if I find the real life religion of Islam disturbing. I just want to play with my toy soldiers who sometimes have names of historical importance but for the reason of pointing out their usage and not for glorifying evil acts committed in the past.
Sigh. For the hell-if-I-can-remember-how-manyth-time, that made the freaking secession WORSE, by making ALL the Japanese civilians support it for fear of getting killed by the Imperial Service. The Party (rather, the first Chairman and President, Mao) literally wrote the book on how to win an insurgency. They are *very* good at it. The US wrote the book on how to beat an insurgency. We are OK at it, as long as the politicians actually listen to the people who have read that book. China, today, uses the US playbook on how to beat an Insurgency. It's that good.
Are you aware of the paradox of tolerance? If we're "shadowbanning" people for having beliefs that would mean other people wouldn't be allowed to play, I really don't have a problem with that. I'm not going to play Infinity with people who are openly anti-Semitic because their beliefs would see a large segment of the population not playing infinity, for example. Tolerance has no responsibility or obligation to tolerate beliefs which would destroy it.
Well, the main reason an Insurgency wins is that the other side gives up because its not worth the costs. Its really the main reason America won its revolution, the British decided it wasn't worth the cost in lives and money especially with a war with France brewing. And politicians parrot what the voters want, that is after all what representative democracies are designed to do. Counter-insurgency is easier to pull of in more despotic governments, which by their nature are far more controlling of their society.
Yes. You can refuse to play with a guy you know has antisemetic views but if for example you are a warcor and refuse him entrance to your tournaments and then you announce to other every warcor in your area, then you are no longer just refusing to play with a guy but using your position to dox someone that is against your political beliefs. For example I would say to that guy: You know Mike, if people learn that you are an anti Semite then no one will want to play with you cause it is possible they have Jewish friends. Also stop being an asshat man. Now the tolerance paradox is very tricky because if you tolerate someone who does not tolerate you and he is glad to use force, then you are in deep trouble. But if you use the tolerance paradox to justify your views and use force yourself on people that might have intolerant views just in case, then it is scary.
Not a doxx if it's a real person. I don't think doxxing means what you think it means. Calling someone out for being a shitty person and then telling other people you think they're a shitty person isn't a dox. (Also this sounds like you basically support one player in particular who I am also familiar with, and I think the WarCor made the right call.) Yes, and then if he continues to be an asshat, I see nothing wrong with telling him he isn't welcome there. Intolerance wins when tolerant people aren't vigilant in fighting it. I don't think there's anything wrong with forcing the view "don't be a bigot" on other people, because it's the correct view.
True. I still haven't found anyone who can cite a single battle that the North Vietnamese won against the Americans, but the North Vietnamese managed to convince the American public that they wouldn't win the war no matter what. But what I am getting at is that psychoCrane just handed ready-made ammunition to the Japanese (and everyone else) to use against his own government. Doesn't matter if it's hyperbole, doesn't matter if it's the Secessionists who killed all those civilians. It gives the impression that the Imperial Service killed all those civilians. Well, I am saddened to note that a certain game actually had to write "Don't be an asshole" into their rulebooks. Ah, hell with it. Privateer Press found their Page 5 statement about what attitude to have while playing the game so mis-interpreted that they had to write Page 5 Rule 5: Page 5 is not an excuse to be an asshole.
Lets be fair though, since the actual text of Page 5 is mostly just Privateer Press writing themselves a license to be assholes about pretending their rules were perfect and that all critics literally had no testicles, and were, (gasp) icky girly girls or something, it's not really surprising that the, um, more avid fans of that company and that page in particular read it as a license for themselves to run around being assholes. But Privateer press is probably rather relevant to both the Kempeitai and "what now Yu Jing are Genociders?" discussions what with the whole "Agonizer" incident they utterly mishandled years ago. The marketing mess around this stuff is nothing compared to that melt down, I was there, I wasn't really involved but I saw it, I didn't consciously decide a boycott over it or anything for myself but looking back in retrospect my purchasing choices WERE clearly effected. The least popular faction in the game exploded almost to the very last member active on their forums who then left angrily wholesale. The avid defenders of the game (never individuals who played that faction) posted long loving posts about how much they loved torturing baby animals, they invented a lame PETA related joke slogan making fun of people that didn't like that the new tactical center piece of their army was baby animal torture focused, then Privateer Press actually sold merchandise with that joke on on their main official web site to make fun of the customers they had just lost. Clumsy and separate references to real and fictional war crimes and some bad communication to people upset by that and other more gamey things related to it? This is nothing. But then again, there was a very clear (bad) example to look to in the industry and it doesn't seem like lessons were learned. People don't mind playing "baddie" factions, but they don't like their faces rubbed in it gratuitously. Players happy to ignore the almost inevitably kinda badly written fluff and get their enjoyment despite the fiction behind it will eventually get offended if you keep rubbing the worst bits of it in their faces hard enough.
Pick one. Be a progressive crusader, or be tolerant. But you don't get to preach tolerance and also force your views. Sorry. Note that even the idea of "tolerance" precludes the idea that the thing you want someone else to tolerate, is bad.
I agree I disagree. Also I think we are off topic now, let’s get back to people saying “omg I just learned what kempetai means, I’m not gonna play JSA again” :D
That is just factually untrue. Even tolerant societies have tons of rules giving a framework of acceptable heaviour and behaviours they outright do not tolerate. That doesn't make them intolerant.
There is no tolerance for intolerance. Period. Supporting freedom (personal, political, of speech) by no means requires condoning views and behaviour that would curtail such freedoms. If you, or anyone else, think that it's a paradox, reflect on this: Racism, fascism, anti-semitism, islamophobia, etc. means persecuting people based on who they are. You don't get to choose what's your skin colour, or the culture you've been born into. Fighting racism and other shitty worldviews means persecuting people based on what they choose to do, because their chosen actions are harmful to innocent people. Everyone can choose not to be an asshole. I often hear the strawman that one can't be white, Christian, straight male anymore. That's bullshit. One can't be a white, Christian, straight male that preaches hate and violence towards innocent people. One can't preach such hate and violence even when being a black Muslim lesbian. It's one of them universal rules, should we want a decent society. Views and actions harmful to innocent people have no rights to exist when compared to those that don't result in hurting others. And that includes all forms of hate speech, which is a form of persecution in itself and, if left unchecked, leads to actual physical violence. I'm a Pole, and my country is a perfect example. For the last 2,5 years we've heard all kinds of prejudices against Muslims, even though there are maybe a few thousand of them living here, mostly descendands of people living here for centuries. We've seen fake news, evoking collective responsibility, taking things out of context, etc. You name it, we've had it. After some time of internet shitstorming it evolved, and now we have a spike in real world attacks on everyone who looks even a bit foreign, including people with too dark a tan, and recently there was a case where schoolchildren were asked to draw an "enemy" and chose to draw Muslims and gays. So yeah. Hate speech gets no free pass, or a pass at all. /rant
Kant's 'Paradox of Tolerance', from Wikipedia: "The paradox of tolerance was described by Karl Popper in 1945. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." As such, we can reasonably suggest that free speech does have limits in Western society and that, yes, we can advocate for tolerance in the same breath as we 'crusade' against and utterly reject intolerance.
