Another good example that's just occurred to me is Watch Dogs. That whole game is about how unsafe and morally wrong the surveillance state is... but it gives you side missions based around using those surveillance systems to profile people about to commit crimes _that is always correct._ Especially since you can't interrupt the crime before it's committed, otherwise you "fail" - you have to wait until the person steals the purse, shoots the victim etc then beat them unconscious and leave without calling the cops or even returning any stolen items.
Fors Clavigera actually, I would say it's done well. Rather than using the system to punish uncommitted future crimes that you cannot prove will happen, you absolutely use it as a warning sign and only that. You are punished if you try to do what the police are doing, and assault people who haven't even done anything wrong. You can only punish actual crimes that actually happen. I do wish that it would sometimes be wrong though. That would deliver the game's message better.
Yeah, but unfortunately I don't think there'd be a way for them to implement a "sometimes it's wrong" feature without it being infuriating for the player who's just tracked down the criminal and wants the XP. Maybe if it was some kind of version where you have to loiter in the area, causing the "criminal" to think again beacuse there's a witness nearby, or perhaps scare them off? I remember one of Watch Dogs' big problems was that the solution to almost every situation was "shoot someone", so that could have also added a bit of mission variety? At least I'll be playing the sequel soon, which I hear has a bit more of that variety to it.
You can stop the crime before it is committed (in fact, you receive a better reputation if the victim survives unharmed), but you cannot attack unless the criminal is already about to commit the crime (for example, they are already pointing at someone with a gun and yelling threats at them). Moreover, you are encouraged (by receiving more XP and a better reputation) to spare the criminal's life (knocking them unconscious) rather than killing them.
+Adnan Ilyas Actually this is one of the poorer of their videos. One has to wonder whether their tame historian participated in this one at all because, usually, they are a lot more balanced.
+Vivian James um i dont get it? you unsubscribed because they made a video addressing social issues that they felt should be address because they are apart of the community that talks and makes games? You dont see them making videos about why people should take vaccines because they arent in the medical field they are apart of the gaming community with a large number of subscribers who they feel should be away of a current social issue so as to be aware and avoid the desensitization to racial profiling and political agenda.
"During none of the 20th century, did a country collapse into anarchy or riots"... Well one certainly has in the *21st* century. And sadly the ideas this game promoted is in the head of it's president. Glad I'm not american.
+Friedel Majoor Yeah. These guys take some deep looks at games, but sometimes miss the points of them because they look too deeply or sip at the SJW Kookaid. : / Some points in this video were fine, pretty much some I commented on myself, though they didn't seem to notice all the civilians wearing hoodies... *coughs*
Today in Comments Section: Manchildren who complain about Tumblr culture and "liberals" being too sensetive are crying about how the word "problematic" triggers them and that talking about games in a serious way makes them very upset so please censor yourselves, Extra Credits, so as not to offend the people who are offended by people taking offense.
Fridgeworks If by "One comment" you mean "Approximately one hundred comments", then yes. I *replied to one comment, but if you think I'm really going to waste my time giving out snippy replies to every single wasted cumload in this comments section who types up a tirade about how evil SJWs and feminazis are trying to ruin games by talking about them like adults instead of slurping on the console manufacturer's dicks like an obedient concubine in the hopes you'll finally get some validation for your efforts beyond scoffing to myself and rolling my eyes in a cartoony fashion then you sir are very much mistaken.
I wonder if the Division was originally meant to be something along Spec Ops: the Line... line with all the implications. And was later turned into an MMO by executive interference. Oh, I dropped my Occam's razor somewhere...
As Pat said on a recent episode of the Super Best Friendcast, the hypocritical nature of the game's mechanics comes into full bloom when you're sent to stop a group of "Rioters" from looting a store for supplies, as it represents further deterioration of the city... After their threat has been eliminated, you can scavenge the same store for the same supplies under the justification that they are vital for the Division's mission to restore the city...
+Michael Scally Yatzee mentioned that in his review kinda as well "Now we can deliver these supplies to the people!" "What people? Certainly not the hundred or so I gunned down trying to retrieve these supplies!"
Thats up to player choice and interpretation to that choice. When i first went to a shop that was being looted, i went to get some of those crafting items, but the looters noticed me and started shooting, so do you just let them be? Or do you fight back? Players have more choice than they realize don’t they?
that is the reason you sacrifice some freedom to get some protection, if you have only one of them, you lose both, freedom without protection, you lose freedom protection without freedom, you lose protection
@@ibnbattuta7031 Not an enemy of the concept on anarchism, but humans are cooperative or competitive depending of if there are enough resources for all them. When resources become scarce, the predator-prey nature written upon our genes kicks in and we do whatever atrocity is needed for us to survive above others.
If you look at Dishonored and the Battlefield Hardline campaign, both give you the option of completing a no-kill run by knocking people unconscious or hand-cuffing them. I think that the developers could have avoided the current message if it encouraged you and gave you bonuses for taking non-lethal measures in defeating enemies. That option would make sense in the apocalyptic setting where keeping our humanity and ethics intact through tough times should be a major theme.
True, that does seem counter-productive. Maybe, for nonlethal means taken, you should be rewarded with non-lethal weapons, perhaps in the form of advanced tasers or tranquilizer dart guns.
+Ethan Ceroja Man, that could be engaging. I've never thought of the kill/save mechanic existing in so many games being fully applied to the post-apoc theme before. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened already (sometimes in TWD, but we're talking about more... 'gamey' games, I guess. Nothing against Telltale, and they still make games, but they're fairly mechanic-light).
Except that will be practically impossible to pull off since the enemies pretty much shoot first and ask questions later. Not to mention said enemies range from rapist and serial killers, Pyromanicas who burning people alive even those who aren't sick, thugs who prey on the week and a rogue PMC that forces civilians to obey them or be shoot. Also martial law has been declared which allows the suspension of due process and the city has pretty much deteriorated into a warzone way before then.
Extra Credits, there was a story about a playstation employee who made a custom controller for a person with cerebal palsey. Please do a video about disabled gamers in the community. Thanks
+Extra Credits I never played The Division, but even I got a glimpse of what's wrong with it's premise. Maybe it's beacause I'm a post-apocalipse fan, but in a scenario of societal breakdown, I would consider only natural for people to act like the rioters do. Afterall, they don't see any hint that their state is still there to care for them, so how could they take the risk of trusting "the police" to maintain order? The Division Agents don't offer any sense of safety: they don't organize secure areas for people to move into or any other form of help: they just go around and kill.
+Extra Credits Would you have had the same qualms with the game had it been set in say, Paris or Stockholm? Are these only big problems because the game is set in the US?
+Shrewd _GC I would imagine some points, such as the president having a private army, would hold up no matter what, as a totalitarian state is simply a form of government/governing, but I think things like the hoody, while they would still be a problem, would not be as much of a problem due to their being no past, high stress situation in those countries associated with hoodies.
So The Division is basically bizarro Spec Ops The Line? You do horrible things to largely innocent bystanders without any coherent, solid and trustworthy purpose, except when Spec Ops asked "Do you feel like a hero yet?" The Division follows with "because you totally should! Hi-five brah!"
Wafflepudding the enemies in this game are people killing other civilians for their own gain, are the LMB PMC innocent bystanders, the cleaners who burn people alive, the Rikers who are escaped RAPISTS and MURDERERS from Rikers prison, the Looters who attack the player on sight? No no they are not, they are RAPISTS and MURDERERS. There something call environmental context and the actions of the those "INNOCENT BYSTANDERS".
I only played Vegas 1&2 which were basically "Neo Pancho Villa terrorists try to take over Mexico then run off to attack the US when we try to help the Mexican govt." They weren't even like Cartel stereotypes just generic revolutionary terrorist types.
Man, I totally feel you. For me, it's usually: "Huh, this is an interesting video. Maybe some of the commenters will have some interesting discussions about this." Followed by a distinct disappointment, morbid curiosity, and then a wearing down of my mood until my better judgment finally stops me from reading any more.
Manny Akintunde aren't you talking about yourself? It's quite clear that we (especially the people who liked this comment thread) want to have a proper conversation and discussion about this interesting video but a lot of comment (including yours) judge one sidedly without allowing any constructive conversation, let alone opinion, and thus a waste of time because we will get nowhere Get it? Or do I have to explain it further? Is it that hard to understand something so basic?
Films have two interpretations, explicit and implicit. Explicit interpretation is the message that the director wants you to get. Implicit is the interpretation you make on your own. Both are valid and must be considered while the film is being made. Video games are probably one of the most interactive forms of art, so we as game designers must really think hard about what kinds of implicit messages can be taken from our art, whether we intended it or not.
+Suku919 I'm glad you made this comment, because I will take it as my clue that this is one of those videos where I need to stop following my curiosity and stop scrolling down right now, or I'll be here all afternoon.
It's like the opposite of Spec Ops: The Line. Where's the twist where the superior officer who was ordering the murders was actually just a voice in your head?
Honestly, when you examine The Division it becomes harder and harder to believe that what it says is unintentional. That being said, I think the same is true with a lot of scary ideas that are ingrained into our societies; it's easy to attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance. It just highlights how important education, history, and government accountability is.
would like to note that this game was made by a studio in sweden, and probably may reflect their thinking about what state the US can get into given todays circumstances. That is, it may be an outsiders perspective and not a reflection of the society from within.
That also masively affects my understanding of the hoodie thing as they may simply not have known what was up in that regard.(heck I live in the US and I was totally unaware of the hoodie clusterfuck) People online often get angry about things looking like things that are or used to be racist in America (like pretending to be black"Black Face") when sometimes those things were done somewere else without that context.(ie Eusovision has very few black people but proportionaly _so does Europe_)
"In The Division you're a government agent killing US citizens on US soil by government order, without due process of law." "And then there's the fact that the people you're shooting are disaster survivors." "When I arrived at the mission site, I just found a small group of people standing there, talking, they weren't committing a crime, they posed no immediate threat to my agent, and I can't really say that I had any good evidence that they'd ever committed any crime, other than the word of my superior who told me to execute them." "Those minor criminals you're tasked with exterminating, early in the game, are simply called, 'rioters'." "The NPC's even play into it, shouting things like 'low life scum' as they mow these hoodie clad disaster survivors down, reinforcing the dehumanization of these people." ...I'm just going to leave this here, 14 days after George Floyd's death, and see how this continues to age.
FuSiOn Born 1. He reformed and reentered society peacefully and 2. Even if he didn’t, he wasn’t murdered for armed robbery, the only reason the police were even called was because of an allegedly fake 20 bill. And since I can’t even confirm he did use/have a fake $20, he was innocent until proven guilty.
FuSiOn Born the police didn’t know that he had a criminal record at the time. None of the crimes he had done meant he should have been killed. He had already served his time for those crimes. The crimes of his past had no bearing on the event. The police murdered a man in broad daylight.
After coming back to this video and replaying The Division recently, I find myself still agreeing with some of the points made. There is one thing I do think they should have mentioned. The Audio Logs and Phone Recordings. Nearly all of them genuinely humanize the enemies and make you question your actions, at least it did for me. I actually spent the time to collect every collectible in the Division, and some of them are harrowing to listen to and read. The ones which really stood out to me were all the phone recordings involved with the leader of the Cleaners. Those phone recordings are pretty rough to listen to, particularly after you've already killed him.
Ok, so the enemies you are fighting are: 1 - Rioters who kill people to loot their corpses (there is even a guy talking on a radio saying he saw a rioter walk up to a woman and her child, shoot her in the back of the head and loot her while her kid is crying). These aren't disaster survivors, their victims are. 2 - Crazy people who are burning people alive. They think literally everyone who isn't one of them is infected, and everyone needs to be killed with fire to prevent the spread of disease. One mission has them corralling survivors in a subway so they can drop a tanker of napalm on them. 3 - Faction of murderers who kill people for fun. They murder JTF and hang their corpses around their territory to scare people. They play games to kill people, like drawing targets on the ground and throwing them off buildings trying to hit the target, or tying them to a wall and throwing axes at them, scoring based off where they hit them. They have graffiti around the town, stating the cost to get in the gang is a killing a cop and taking his badge. 4 - The LMB. A traitorous private military company that is basically acting like an occupying foreign army. They are taking civilians as prisoners and conscripting them, killing anyone who refuses. This isn't a police shooting unarmed people rabble rabble racism rabble rabble thing. This is a disaster event marshal law trying to maintain control and murderers taking advantage of the situation. Those innocent looters who were just talking that someone told you to go execute? Yeah, stand in the open, they shoot you the second they see you.
+john li Firstly: Habeas Corpus is suspended in times of Martial Law.Just look at the constitution where it actually says that. And secondl: What court? Courts require things like a stable, secure area to hold both the arrested, relevant witnesses, and legal officials. As well as time and resources to while away before appeals. This is clearly not easy to arrange in post-event New York. I COULD appreciate moves to institute it again, but pure old pragmatism means that you are going to have to kill the worst actors and either temporarily (maybe indefinitely) detain or let go the less ones. Oh yeah, and there's the fact that *convicting them in court* means Taking Them Into Custody And Getting Them Into Court. Something that s KIND OF BLOODY HARD when they are resisting with lethal force.
Eric Van De Hey then sell it what it is. you are not some hero fighting for justice you are just being ordered to kill random people you think are bad people but might not be the case at all
john li "Random people"? Are you Kidding Me? Since when is targeting the chain of command of terrorist groups (Which is EXACLTY what the Cleaners and Last Man Battalion are- with the added bonus that the LMB are basically doing what the video accuses the JTF of for realsies) "being ordered to kill random people?" And people who open fire on you with intent to murder are not "random." They are explicitly making themselves a very non-=random, serious threat to you. In real life that is more than enough justification to kill them in self defense. So yes, the Division actually is fighting for justice, or at least as much of it as can be said to exist in the world. That does not mean it is not open to abuse or could not go wrong (the existance of Aaron Keener in game disproves that). But rent a sens eof perspective and do some basic research. "you think are bad people but might not be the case at all" Firstly: i refuse to debase my moral compass to seriously regard people who try and commit murder on the drop of a hat as "might not be bad." Especially when they tend to be rampaging gangs, or an actual totalitarian regime. secondly: whether or not they are bad people is *completely bloody secondary* to self preservation if they try and murder you without due cause. if someone is firing at you with a Kalashkinov it is the wrong time to be worrying about if they were a halfway house manager in a previous life.
Eric Van De Hey im talking about the people who are just trying to survive. and probably everybody knows that agents like you are out to murder them so they fire at you on sight
and now, after having finished and put down the game weeks ago, I can't help but have a sour taste in my mouth looking back at everything my character did. Was any of it truly justifiable? Other than the Rikers, did any of the "Enemy" factions overstep the moral boundaries any more than my character did? The entire game was filled with moments that make you sympathetic to every other faction in some way, and then within two minutes has you back to mowing them down in the name of "the greater good."
+coltsfan354 the LMB is literally a uniformed occupying enemy army and you stopped the cleaners from burning thousands of people alive. Worst bad guy ever?
+coltsfan354 You could just not shoot anyone, but all the enemies will kill you on sight. The closest you can come to killing a non-hostile is shooting a dog
+John D. Haven't played other games in the series, nor read the books, but isn't that one of the big themes of the Tom Clancy works? To look into the various aspects of social conflict and war? That doesn't sound too out of place with what the division is doing here.
Another thing that bothered me in the Division is that you spend a lot of the game gunning down looters so that you can loot their corpses and supply stashes.
+Darryvon __ I am not sure that what is at stake is the morality of looting looters, but more about the overhall goal we have. The characters are mainly just good looters compare to evil looters. But, this looting seem pointless in the setting except for greed. There are a zone with military that can supply you with gun, ammunition and so on, so why loot?
Darryvon __ When I played the beta it does not appear to be that way. I partially accept your point for quest but not for the dark zone. What the point of going in a dark zone to get better gear? Your better Gear should come from the rest of the united states (governement research center/weapon manufactories...). As for taking what was stolen, I disagree because you take their weapon and generally not there supply and you basically use them for yourself as if it was the only source of weapon for you. On a gameplay point of view, the game reward you for looting not for saving the citizen. This is at least what I felt when I played the game.
I'm seeing a lot of "well every rioter tries to kill you so you're justified in murdering them" in the comments. The thing is, this is a video game. The rioters all try to kill you, not because that's a reasonable thing someone in their position might do, but because the game designers made it that way. Now, this is hardly unique to the division. What separates The Division from other games with ridiculously homocidal AI behavior is the setting. You're a government agent in a post-disaster New York who is fighting civilians in a modern setting. You have no way other than lethal violence (because the game gives you no other way) to deal with the situation. You are portrayed as the good guy in this. Saying the dehumanization is okay because the rioters do, indeed, act like monsters is not a valid point because it was a design decision to make them act like monsters.
If they‘re armed and start shooting on sight, are they still civilians? According to the geneva convention a medic using a gun is no longer a medic. Doesn‘t this apply for civilians too?
@@johnhenryeden8728 you've completely misunderstood this. the developer *made the decision* to have everyone be armed and shooting on sight. there was no rule saying "every NPC that's not part of the clique has to be armed and violent," the developers chose to make that the case.
Actually, I hear "It's just a movie, stop overthinking it" all the time. I hear that about books, too. I think that we tend to underplay the impact and meaning of a lot of our media.
+cheezemonkeyeater Media affects my everyday life. Every time I've been told something ableist relating to my psychiatric diagnoses I can always trace it back to the way people like me are depicted in media. Conversely, it's not uncommon for me to, on reflection (in the moment is more difficult), realize that I am making assumptions about a person based on a very vague image assembled from works of fiction and off-hand comments on social media. How about this? Take note of the people you see on your way to work, or school, or whatever. Compare them to the cast of your favorite TV show. Which roles would the people you saw have on that show based on how similar they are to the current cast members? Do you think these roles make sense? Do you think they describe that person fairly? Do you think that, if you knew these people, you would have held the same opinion?
I'd like to note about the hoodie thing, about how it might be unintentional because, you know, it's the middle of deep winter. Everything is cold, and hoodies are fairly common winter clones, probably the thing which all these stores had the most in stock
I believe there are audio tracks around the map that depict a struggling person that eventually joins the rioters. You sympathize with this person and feel and understand his need to survive. One point of this video is that this person is being killed by you regardless of his will to survive. It's contradictory of the game for you to want the survivor to live, but makes you kill all of them at the same time. It's kind of interesting too, because the very first rioter i killed made his buddy say "They killed alex." At the same time, i was playing with my friend whose name is also Alex. lol
In general, it seems like the "make bad guys obvious" mechanic slides really easily into unfortunate implications. Which makes SENSE, because the premise it is based upon is an unfortunate implication.
I think if you compare this game to say, Prototype, which is about an infection ravaging the same city, and a paramilitary group taking over the local police and military forces remaining in the area in an attempt to contain the infection, there are some interesting similarities, right down to the protagonists of 1 and 2 wearing hoodies. The Division is basically Blackwatch. Furthermore, zombie fiction postulates that the military falls like wet paper to the unconventional attributes of zombies as inhuman combatants, whereas this game posits that they succumb to rioting, janitors, escaped prisoners, and PMCs on their payroll. This "justifying" the existence of super elite sleeper agents whose skills have been honed despite living such deep cover lives that they haven't been regularly training or working out. And these secret agents are more, not less likely to have succumbed to a bioterror attack (involving handling cash in time square) than the military, who have isolated and offshore military bases, and a good communications system that provides quick warnings and would readily hand out bioweapon protection as needed. Game is quite full of fast and loose "rule of cool" logic , which as the video says is why it's bad when it deals with real issues in a "realistic" non-fantasy depiction of the world.
I'm just going to quote from Ben "Yahtzee" "Zero Punctuation" Croshaw... "See, the premise would have worked perfectly well if we'd just been some random citizen doing our bit to take back the city, Charles Bronson style, baby! The only thing the secret police thing adds is to make us less relatable and give hard-ons to the paranoid authoritarian lot, who want to believe that the government will finally sort out those intimidating young people who stand around outside their house talking loudly."
+Hiane Rawr Same here, I get the topic is serious enough and maybe I don't get the context as I live in europe and we've got different issues at the moment, but I expected to still be in the "scope" of games here. Yet this is pretty much pure politics and ethic/morality...
+Meppho maby they forgot to put in the tie in? i was kinda getting that as a community we should be bolder about these topics, but that could be just me
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike the video or the topic. It just surprised me because I expected something more practical, considering the division is such a mess design-wise.
I haven't played The Division but from hearing about that, another point can be talked about : why cannot you negociate with enemies ? It happens in every game. In a game that looks realistic, always having the generic enemies attack you even when it is obvious they have no chance is annoying and weird.
+scarfacemperor Because it's an action RPG where you kill things for loot. Not a supremely tense real life simulation. I think he's looking way too much into it.
Akeche still, that's annoying on the long run. When I'm at high level and a low-level enemy attacks me, my reaction is like "*facepalm* everyone knows I can kill dragons in seconds and am virtually invincible, you KNOW you have no chance and you'll die, so why do you attack me instead of the random civilian just next to me ?"
+scarfacemperor > why cannot you negociate with enemies ? More exp from killing. Takes less time. You dont need to produce additional animations and lines. Don't need to find a reason why they should stop fighting. Must i count more things?
+scarfacemperor I agree. That one feature, even if executed in a very simple and minimalistic manner, would both greatly increase immersion and thus make the game more engaging to play, and greatly migate the impact of most of the issues discussed in this video. Maybe for a remaster, if that ever happens?
I've been a fan of EC for a while now,but have never had the guts to post here till after watching this particular ep. why? because it made me think for wks. on my own unease with this game,and why I just suddenly stopped playing. You and the EC Team nailed it, for me, on what rubbed me the wrong way and expressed it so eloquently that I just had to give a shout out to all of you. Thank you for the insight,and for making my week abit brighter.
Thank you! I know this comment is a drop of support in what seems like a sea of angry "stop thinking" comments, but this was really thought out and brings up some great topics.
+LittleNemo Not really, no. In fact, it categorically lied (or at least was MONSTROUSLY lazy) about a lot of things. "And perhaps more importantly, during none of the major epidemics of the 20th century did a major country collapse into anarchy, or face widespread lawlessness and rioting" This is categorically, objectively, provably false. All I have to point out is that the Spanish Flu EXISTED, and that during its' runtime Russia collapsed into Civil War and then a totalitarian nightmare, and China broke into warlordoms (to say nothing of the demise of the Central Powers). And that's just the most technical and probably easiest to prove of that. They just got so much wrong it isn't funny.
Overall I think this video raises interesting and valid concerns. I think the video would have benefited from EC having additional playtime on the game, but their concerns are certainly still worth discussing as they are. I am surprised at the number of people misinterpreting the content of the video, or misattributing political stances to it (how is this in any way socialist?), but I guess that's pretty par for the course. Any UA-cam video talking about what a AAA game's mechanics and setting says will net you angry responses from all sides, for some reason
I mean, the main problem with saying that the game supports totalitarianism is that extrajudicial killings are nothing new in video games. For example: in Mass Effect, you are outright a secret police officer who can legally do nearly whatever the hell they want to. Or Fallout, you're a vigilante who summarily executes raiders on an hourly basis.
Matthew Campbell I don't think you're focusing on the right thing. It's not a problem that the game is about killing civilians extrajudiciously, it's that it doesn't question or say anything about it. You just do it because you're told to, and it's portrayed as perfectly natural and reasonable. That gives me a skeevy vibe, personally. I haven't played Mass Effect so I don't know the details, but I imagine that if there are any comparable scenarios they aren't always portrayed positively. Mass Effect is known for their nuanced storytelling, they'd really be screwing the pooch if they had a plot line about secret police killing people without a trial and they didn't have at least one character go "this is wrong". As for Fallout, I don't think they're similar situations. You're just a wanderer in a post-apocalyptic world. You aren't employed by a government, there is no rule of law. In at least the more roleplay-oriented Fallouts you can choose to kill the roving gangs as an act of self-defense, hunt them for caps, befriend and join them, or avoid them entirely. It's up to you. It's not quite the same as your day job being to kill civilians who the government has extrajudiciously deemed criminals
Your not just dealing with a common criminal your dealing with a legendary spector that has gone rouge and the only way he can be brought to justice is for another specter to bring him in dead or alive.
Rc3651 Actually, your actions are questioned, although they are not questioned directly. The guy on the radio show continually brings up theories about the Division from a civilian point of view, and, from the how he talks about it, he recognizes the problems with the mere existence of such a group. One thing I noticed while playing was that, if you get too close to an NPC, they react as though you were aiming your weapon at them. Until recently, I thought this was just a bug. Now, however, I think that it is actually a way to show that people are afraid of you. They don't know whether or not you will kill them like any of the other gangs roaming the streets. To them, you are practically no different.
Having watched this video before playing the game, I tried to do things "ethically" (not firing the first shot, focusing on abilities that either give defensive buffs or intelligence, not using explosive or incendiary weapons/items) and discovered that the game will ream you out for doing so. Not being a fan of Dark Souls/ Dorf Fortress style games, I played as the devs intended. The game became easier If they had made the titular Division an NGO like Global Frequency (an independent network of trouble shooters and experts from all over the world), I don't think that this video would have been made. It would, however, skate eversoclose to the popular trope of "PMC = evil" we see so often in video games.
+David Umstattd I don't know. I can't speak for the man himself but his books seldom if ever take nuanced political positions that entertain non-western POVs...what I mean to say is it is it is always clear who is the good guy and who is the bad guy regardless of situation.
How many of you who are complaining about the use of the word "Problematic" even bothered watching the video? Or did you just cut it off because you saw an "SJW" word, and were too, dare I say it, "triggered" to keep watching?
+Mikaele Baker , quite a fair amount, i'd say. But , as always, they used problematic to signify the same thing as "water can be a choking hazard, in some instances... maybe... if you can't swim". Which, frankly, makes the issue presented seem as important and influential as thinking about airplane deaths when embarking an airplane. Or like the general issue of heart-attack deaths when eating a good steak. It's a first world problem rooted and crated from and by a third world ideology/moral system.
SGresponse By that logic, should we not criticize the messages put forth by ANY culture? Criticism is an important aspect of taking any art seriously. No one rational is claiming we should ban the Division, we are only criticizing the points it makes, inadvertently or otherwise, regarding a number of important social issues. People are still free to play it, in fact I still very much would like to play it, even though from what I hear it's not very good as a game (all messages aside). I would hope we would afford the same courtesy to any medium.
Mikaele Baker , Why are you conflating culture and art? They're not interchangeable terms, so use them in their own right. "Criticism is an important aspect of taking any art seriously." What has that got to do with going out o0f your way to mind the meaning of things... IN ART WHOSE CREATORS ARE STILL ALIVE and can be asked about it? This is not criticism, this is guessing, supposing what the creators intended. " we are only criticizing the points it makes " , you say, but i fail to see any of you citing the dev's saying those are the point it makes. Not instead, you are criticizing the points it seems to make, to you, through your ideological/moral lens. "People are still free to play it" Still... ha. Freudian slip there? "I would hope we would afford the same courtesy to any medium." Joke's on you, bob, because we have been doing so for centuries, for other mediums. Oddly enough, not much of the criticism survived, unlike the art which was the subject of it. Maybe it was not universal enough to be deemed valuable (criticism). So your passive aggressive tactics won't work, because nobody's debating whether you should. Rather, they're debating whether looking at a work of art through ideological lenses makes for valid criticism for the rest of us, or not.
I conflated the two terms so as to use parallel language with SGresponse who said: " let culture be vile and let the recipient choose to dismiss it by himself instead of policing him to do so" By using the term "culture" in the same way as SGresponse, it is made clear that I am responding to his point. I think you and I fundamentally disagree about the nature of art. Art has messages independent of the artist's intent. In literature, this is usually called Death of the Author. In the context of a book, it involves kind of disregarding the author and analyzing just the book itself. Most modern schools of criticism accept this in some form, even though the term itself is specific to an essay written by Barthes. From Wikipedia: "Ideas presented in 'The Death of the Author' were anticipated to some extent by the New Criticism, a school of literary criticism important in the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s. New Criticism differs from Barthes' theory of critical reading because it attempts to arrive at more authoritative interpretations of texts. Nevertheless, the crucial New Critical precept of the 'intentional fallacy' declares that a poem does not belong to its author; rather, 'it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs to the public.'" I do not to go so far as to say the author's intent doesn't matter, there is a class of criticism called historical criticism, in which a work is examined in the context of its author and the time and place it was written. I do not think historical criticism is invalid. But this is far from the only way to analyze a work of art. Extra Credits makes it very clear that mechanics have meaning, this is a presupposition they are fairly candid about. This meaning may well conflict with a developers intent. To me, this presupposition is fairly intuitive, I was brought up thoroughly within a New Critical framework, but I suppose a lot of people disagree. In fact I would venture to say most people disagree, with New Criticism being mostly confined to academics and their students. That's why English teachers are stereotyped as "overthinking" literature independently of the author's intent (see:the curtains were fucking blue). They likely went to college for literature and were presented with New Criticism. Art in general serves human beings, and is a creation of human beings. Thus, I think that any work has multiple ways of interpreting it that are equally correct and valid. I won't go so far as to say there are no wrong answers, you certainly will not be able to convince me that the Diary of Anne Frank is pro-Nazi, or that Atlas Shrugged is pro-Communist. You still have to support your criticism with the text. I'm simply saying that provided you support your analysis using the text, you will be hard pressed to come up with a totally incorrect interpretation of the message. So I've lapsed into using literary language, but literature is just one form of Art, and anything I say about works of Literature applies to visual art, Television, movies and Video Games. I'm also a first-year college student, and make no claims at being an authority. I encourage you to google the things I've mentioned and read about them for yourself. You will find arguments for and against what I'm saying. In 2010 literary theorist Sean Burke wrote a book professing to refute Barthes and by extension the notion of Death of the Author. I've not read this book, but you may want to look into it.
+Derikoopa Not trying to explain everything in a tublr feminist's dictionary. You find something "Problematic" You could say "This thing is something i have a problem with." or "This thing goes against my views" IT may not be one word, but it explains your ideals better
+Eluem Firstly: criticism is not censorship. On the word being triggering, i just hate the word in general. It's a un-aggressive, politically correct and "clean" way to say something is bad and needs to stop. Except that it feelslike it doesn't need to stop just because problematic sounds more like a suggestion. Saying something is terrible, or saying something is "problematic" technically means the same thing, only one of them actually gets people to listen. Problematic sounds more like: Hey, this is not really great and you could make it better, but you don't need to if it would bother you to do so. I hate that attitude towards not just politics, but everything in life.
RPGtalkout Telling people to stop using words because they bother you is censorship. Reducing the number of words that can be used with similar but slightly different meanings is the beginning of New Speak.
+Eluem No, its not censorship if nobody has been censored. To be censored is to have your platform or your voice removed. I told them to stop using the word, a suggestion. A suggestion can be ignored. You can't ignore being censored. That's the difference between censorship and criticism. And even if I got my way and they stopped using that annoying word, their message wouldn't change. The idea would remain intact, but the from would change. This is not censorship. On new speech, I'm not familiar with that term. But using multiple words that mean the exact same is completely pointless when trying to inform people about your ideology and/or cause.
You are requesting self censorship. "self-cen·sor·ship noun noun: self-censorship the exercising of control over what one says and does, especially to avoid castigation." You don't know what New Speak is? You've never read 1984?
Also overlooked, which I think is important, is the fact that the player is coming in on at least the third wave of support. As Directive 51 is a "when all else fails" plan, we can assume there was an attempt from the local law enforcement to keep order. I don't recall hearing any details about this period, but I don't think it is explicit in the time frames. A quick history, as I understand it (spoiler free): Weaponized virus is released, lots of people die, panic in the streets. (Uncertain if JTF is formed right away or later. No time references) Quarantines are set up, Dark Zone is established. First Wave of Division agents activated Dark Zone is abandoned due to disease and shortages First Wave goes missing Second Wave activated (players). As to the hoodie-wearing Rioters: Yes, perhaps the hoodie was not the best choice, but there needed to be some kind of "uniform" to distinguish each of the factions. Rikers wear the orange prison jumpsuits, LMB has the white/grey urban camo, Cleaners have their reflective vests.
You're right, they do explicitly state at one point that law enforcement has failed, and any remaining officers that still wanted to help have now joined the JTF.
+CaitSeith The virus in the Division has a short incubation time which allows it to spread rapidly by the time the army knows that its a biological weapon it would've already been too late.
For some reason it's always really funny when right-wingers suddenly realize EC is a left-leaning show, especially since it has been since the very early days. I mean, the episode on Other M is what got me really hooked on the show, and I think that was first- or second-season. Haven't played The Division, but speaking as a writer? Writers ABSOLUTELY insert symbolism into our stories whether we want to or not. And what we think of what we wrote is only one part of the conversation, and that part is not even half of it. Everyone is going to take something different from what we wrote, and their experiences and interpretations are every bit as valid as ours. Games are no different. Just like it's important to know both how writing mechanically goes together in terms of commas and spelling as well as how to not put your foot in your mouth via fiction, conversations about what a game is saying about the world are just as important to developing games as understanding level design. And just as interesting. I don't think the EC team is saying The Division should be censored from saying what it is; what they're saying is, "This is what it DID say, and it's crappy, so let's talk about it so we can do better next time."
+Sparky Lurkdragon Hear hear, bud. Video games, as much as any other medium, deserve to be forums for meaningful discussion and criticism. To deny games any sort of conversation, or to accuse what's being said as equivalent to, say, "censorship" or "SJW"s (a term that's supposed to be use ironically), is to deny games the chance to become anything more than objects of mindless entertainment.
+Sparky Lurkdragon Except they completely missed the point where innocent civilians are being kidnapped, taken hostage, robbed or outright KILLED for enjoyment by not the player but the people you're sent in to put down including rogue agents. This episode did little to address things like how you save civilians that are starving, have a gun to their head or captured to be used as playthings by thugs like the Riker's or burned by the Cleaners. The only difference between them and the Agents is that the Agents are there to protect what minuscule numbers of scavengers and people trying to get by on scraps while they're hunted down by the gangs and thugs, as opposed to the gangs that just steal kill and loot to survive regardless of who they do it to. Yeah, you're basically killing people that were ONCE civilians. But at some point they thought that they're better off murdering fellow civilians and taking what little they have. Instead we're given a 'oh poor them' kind of story that shows one side and doesn't address both.
Listened to a phone message in game a rioter sent to his brother about how he had to get violent with someone for food, that the hunger was so bad it gnawed at his brain. The way he rationalized the whole thing and then ended the message with "Don't tell Mom, you...you don't have to call me back.", Found the phone after I gunned down half a dozen guys in a small park bitching about the cold. I knew then and there, we were the bad guys.
+Drew Brigner (Hyldin) But have you heard the message he leaves after that one? The one where he is almost gleeful about how he and his buddies now go where they want, take what they want and eat whenever they want?
This is what happens when you get people that have no idea what they're doing to write a story for a video game. They just need an excuse to create a shooting gallery the size of a city.
I love how people label this as a "never play video games episode". They're merely inspected a game BASED on the real world, not some random game world, and commenting on it's parallels. They even stated that they know this wasn't the intent of the devs. But the game simply had negative parallels to real life in a terrible time. No one said you can't play Division anymore. No one said this game will instantly produce bad people. In other words, stop complaining and watch the whole video, then speak. Just because they have this opinion doesn't make them SJWs. Just makes you a defensive nut.
My biggest beef with "The Division" is a part that you only glanced over: The treatment of the "Cleaners" Just so we are on the same page: Cleaning and sanitation professionals are probably the biggest heroes in modern society. They literally pick up your trash and keep the streets clean. That is crazily important. Look at some statistics of how much garbage and filth the average city produces and how deep in crap it would be if the garbagemen and women went on strike. And they do such an important and disgusting job for a laughable wage. And in this game, you hunt them down like they are a combination of the SS and The Fury from MGS3. And never does anyone suggest to take them alive or establish peaceful contact. Instead, you kill off people who just want to get through this madness.
There's also the fact that they're the sanitation _union,_ and through that, the game implicitly demonizes unions. Shitting in just, _all_ the buckets you can, aren't you, The Division?
@@cronotekk9193 that was an intentional decision the designers made. they made the decision to make these sanitation workers try to burn people alive, to demonize them and justify your slaughter of them.
I'm hardly an expert having never played the game, but everything else I've heard about it paints it as a horrifying vision of the future that raises disturbing questions about what can be done in the name of the "greater good".
keffypoo What strikes me is that the issue is well-known enough that it would be hard for someone to not think about it while playing the game. In fact, the game itself lacking anything to stop the player from slipping into the "correct" mindset from time to time would make it all the more potent, just like how you Undertale deliberately allows you to slip into the gamer "kill all the things, gain all the XP" mindset and not realize you are doing anything wrong until too late to change anything. It makes people much more on guard against the real world if they see that a game can alter their perspective in such terrifying ways. Its almost a training fight in a way, except that instead of the enemy it trains you to fight being hoodie-wearing strangers, its the kind of propagandists who might tell you to shoot them. I generally think that any work of art is beneficial if it adds to the breadth of experiences and people really do think about it is making them think.
Hey Extra Credits, you guys are getting a lot of criticism in the comments, and it's great that those who take issue with this video are voicing their complaints, but I personally would just like to say I thought this analysis was insightful and profound.
Excellent overview. I can already see some of the furor building in the comments, so my question is- if "don't think about it so much, it's just a game" is something that you're honestly liable to say, what on earth are you doing watching Extra Credits? Like the central premise of the series is that games deserve the same level of deep critical analysis as any other medium.
+Van van Mojo But not all games. Some games really do make us think. Some games exist just for fun. Just like some movies make us think, and some movies exist just for fun. Ikiru is a superb movie about finding meaning in life, about combatting the stubborn beauracracy to make a difference in the world, even if it's something as simple as building a park for children to play in. Commando is a movie where Arnold shoots a lot of people and spouts one-liners. I like them both. Commando doesn't deserve or need thought. Ikiru is a movie you cannot enjoy without thinking. When people are saying "Don't think about it too much" they're saying that The Division is much closer to Commando than Ikiru.
A very interesting discussion! Although some very interesting points are being raised about generalization, accountability of law enforcers. There are also some counter arguments: The Rioters are constantly depicted looting corpses and bragging about killing. The Cleaners are constantly depicted burning civilians alive (or at least trying to) The Rikers are told to be escaped prisoners and depicted hunting and killing law enforcement and civilians and finding great pleasure in doing that.. The Last Man Batallion (LMB) is depicted as a private army that has taken control over the North-East area of midtown Manhattan and enforced their own martial law, oppressing the civilians. The Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters also patrol the streets and attack civilians (the LMB doesn't do this). But all these factions attack you as soon as they see you.
+AlphaLeader013 indeed in the game the enemies we fight are all "bad guys" but i think the focus is on the problematic system where we agents are literally the prosecutor, judge and law-enforcement combined who needs no supervising or control, doesn't need to file any action reports or anything... BUT! also, it's just a BAD story setting for a MEH game which will never happen in the real world so, yeah
+lamb4902 "where we agents are literally the prosecutor, judge and law-enforcement combined" Ont his much I agree, that is a system with all kinds of possibility for abuse (which even the game acknowledges, see later). Though in a setting of martial law- which is the closest to what the JTF does as we can compare- it isn't entirely unprecedented or even unusual. "who needs no supervising or control, doesn't need to file any action reports or anything..." Except for the fact that that is not true at all. Heck, the game even provides its' own Judas in the form of Aaron Keener- someone who Actually did the things that the video tries to claim the entire JTF did- and whose supervisors marked him down (justifiably) as a mad, rabid dog and a rogue. "also, it's just a BAD story setting for a MEH game which will never happen in the real world" Ehh, I make no judgement on how bad or good the story or game is,, but saying it will Never happen in the real world strikes me of overconfidence at best. As I have ruthlessly flogged the people for making this video over, they claimed: ""And perhaps more importantly, during none of the major epidemics of the 20th century did a major country collapse into anarchy, or face widespread lawlessness and rioting"" Except this is exactly what we saw with the Spanish Flu in 1918-1920, and which helped cause *exactly these things* in Russia and China in particular, with honorable mentions going to the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the German Empire. The idea that this cannot happen is easily debunkable by looking at things like the Black Plague or the Colombian epidemics. The idea that this cannot happen *now* is murky at best given what the Great Flu did to what was still a modern world, even factoring in how bioweapons tend to differ from normal epidemics.
I'm not saying bad things won't happen, or drastic actions won't be taken on an epidemic situation. The way I mean it won't happen is in the sense that before things really gone that bad, this kind of "precaution system" (agents in the game) won't have a chance to establish. To have armed civilians working as the trinity of law system as the society's a last line of defense? Nah, I don't think so. That's why I just see it as a bad story setting, and a very LAZY one as well. guess i should have written my last comment more precisely :\ also, sending 2nd wave agents against keener is not control, it's the proof of no control ;)
+AlphaLeader013 you said "The Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters also patrol the streets and attack civilians" Well, the Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters are also civilians. Sick and violent civilians, but civilians none the less. So yes, the LMB does do this, they just don't attack peaceful civilians who aren't sick and ruthless. I too think this video is overstating the message a little, but i can't deny there is some meat to it.
Rene Knight "Well, the Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters are also civilians. Sick and violent civilians, but civilians none the less." Point, but I think this is a bit besides the point. A civilian behaving like the Rs, Cs, and Rioters behave loses the legal protections being a civilian grants them. For the same reason that laws against the murder of civilians by soldiers do not apply to civilians that decide to grab arms and shoot at soldiers without Damn Good Reason. "So yes, the LMB does do this, they just don't attack peaceful civilians who aren't sick and ruthless." At most, this isn't portrayed in game. The lore we have on them and some of the artwork indicates that they are absolutely willing to attack peaceful, healthy civilians if they are guilty of even nonviolent dissent. To quote a radio message and the game site.. "If you are in their territory and don’t play by their rules, you are screwed!" - Pirate Radio Podcast (in-game) "I too think this video is overstating the message a little, but i can't deny there is some meat to it." Fair enough. In terms of the messages of this game, I would be willing to admit it more, and say that there are areas where it could have been done better (for instance, armed friendly survivor NPCs and more diversity in enemy clothing). But my big issue with the video isn't even that it's overstating it, but in how it misstates plenty of things. I don't see how doing things like ignoring the Spanish Flu or the definition of totalitarian dictatorship helped any, and I think they're manifestly a different kind of problem than a mere overstatement.
Don't forget the part in the game where you murder a group of people rioting a tech shop and then loot the exact same store immediately after. That's messed up.
Just from playing the stress-test beta, the vibe I got from The Division was very questionable. The fact that you're playing as a secret government sleeper cell just WAITING for a civil uprising to put down is sinister as can be. It's a world away from the righteous indignation of, say, Wolfenstein: The New Order, where you *are* the uprising against a powerful government willing and able to put down anyone that gets in its way. Wolfenstein might have its own moral quandaries to wrangle with, but at least in that one, you're fighting against the SS, not acting like them.
A very good and analytical video, unfortunately Ubisoft is too busy counting the number of copies of The Division they have sold, and counting the amount of cash they have made to care. It's not that Ubisoft didn't intend to create these totalitarian messages, they are just simply too incompetent to make a good, decent story. "People like shooting guns? People like open worlds with good graphics? Let's exploit this!" = literally their thought process. Also, with all the enemies in the game being stupidly designed bullet sponges, if I hadn't known, I would have mistaken them for fast-healing regenerative vampires rather than US citizens struggling to survive. This design choice alone just goes to show how incompetent they are, and how little they care about the potential messages this game can create. Fuck this game and fuck Ubisoft.
This game honestly won't be remembered by the end of the year... it's another one of those games that you find at a game store ten years after it's release and go "oh yeah, THAT existed!" and then walk away, never thinking about it again.
Igorcastrochucre I just watched the video, and I'm not entirely sure that I understand what you mean; are you saying that I'm saying that the subject matter of this video is irrelevant because the game doesn't have enough staying power to be relevant by 2017? If so, then that's not what I'm saying; I find the subject matter of this video incredibly interesting, but I'm simply stating that the game isn't designed well enough/ ins't interesting enough to be remembered. It's the classic Ubisoft/EA/Activision game; encapsulating a certain crowd for a month or two before being left by the wayside for "the next big thing" that will be forgotten eventually, as well. Evolve, Titanfall, Destiny, all prime examples of this; games that focus more on the marketing campaign than actual game design to make the game seem much more cool and interesting than it actually is.
Igorcastrochucre Once again, I am not dismissing the people who may have gotten the unintentional message about the game, I'm just dismissing the game in general for being shoddy and lazily put together. Just like in the Call of Juarez video, he talks about lazy design causing the wrong message to get across, which is exactly what happened in the Division.
I think this article really got at the heart of what turned me off about The Division. I played the entire story by the release weekend, and I remember completing the final mission. I remember being super pissed off about what the villain said. I think if Massive wanted to give me a "We're not so different" speech, I would have appreciated the opportunity to be non lethal in my game play. Let me choose the morality of my agent, not Aaron Keener. I can have little rolly bombs, but not a tazer or stun baton? What about some handcuffs? I would have chosen it even if it would have been a much harder play path, frankly.
I get that they're trying to make a point about stereotyping the "Rioters" (not looters, not survivalists) that run at you with baseball bats, creep along with homemade shields, or shoot at you with commercially-available (read: bought at Walmart) guns as being normal people in an abnormal situation. I get that they are pointing out the stereotype of Hoodies=Bad Person. The problem with the argument is all the multiracial civilians in the post office, the civilians-in-need asking for a bottle of water... before dropping a "Tactical Hoodie" that my character can wear.
The fact that everything that you kill in the game is also trying to kill you for no reason other than walking past them makes most of your argument entirely void.
+THEOTHERJESTER Uh, the designers are the ones who programmed that behaviour. They didn't build a game around some hooded criminal critters living inside their computer.
I like how this touches on things that I occasionally thought about in games. Everyone you gun down in a game has a family. Another momma's boy that wont come home. You guys are great. Keep it up.
Im really happy you broke this games logic down. I saw some odd things within the trailers that I questioned, such as the sanitation enemies doing the same thing as the division is, and you have brought all those things to light and much more.
Pro Tip: Replace "SJWs" with "goblins" and the comments become way more entertaining, and way more immediately reflective of the maturity of the commenters.
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sjw-to-skeleton/kckodmjikeoncekpplppkkcjolofmacc chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/skeleton-j-warrior/cngepiginggnblepfmmbpkijddklhgni chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/skeleton-alert/nobfdgalgecdhfjbeahipbnpcepcpcei There's three different extensions that switch 'SJW' with 'skeleton'
Literally all of the people you fight will shoot first, atop that, the only faction truly clean from crime are the rioters. Rikers, LMB, and Cleaners are all gangs known for killing civilians, JTF, and Agents alike. I think this video was more personal than it seems on the surface with a more political motive as opposed to the regular sort of Extra Credits sorts of vids
+Flatlander Guy ya they do. it's a real turn off. Disguising this as "mechanics" is deceptive. This was pure social justice shaming. Good job extra credits. Telling people what others will take away from a game. They know our minds and how everyone will interpret things.
+Bustaperizm I agree with his arguments about how the game parallels what has been happening with police brutality and that kind of thing, but that assumes that people are influenced that easily by video games.
Its sad to see Extra Credits descent into swj rhetoric, slapping outer meaning into games. I love this channel for its contribution to the game culture critique, but this is clearly extrapolation.
+Jevon James We never try to talk to the cleaners and explain there are immune or give them antidote. I'm just thinking that I'm lucky that I'm a immune should I really be trying to kill everyone who is not immune?
cry w Who the sick people? It would have some type of organization and networking for resources or else everyone dies from lack of food within a week maybe a month. And have you dealt with air filters? It matters on what you are trying to filter some last days some can last a month. There is a difference between a bacterial threat and a virus threat, its a very good thing its not radiation, those filters are worse plus you have to change your clothing more often. This disease seems worse than Smallpox by transmission and time to death. It seems like within a week it could kill it self out and cleaners and trying to help stop people from spreading it because they have the equipment to move around while food in available. You die from dehydration faster but it is easier to get a water plant going to support more people then thousands of farms and trucks to support thousands.
Hi from a year. From what I seen, the only 'strong' arguments seem to be pointing out that those enemy factions in the context of the game are due to context of the game. Doesn't really stop the real-world comparisons that happened on accident shown in the videos, but still worthy of discussions.
I do not know what mission you were talking about at around the 4 minute mark because all the enemies you kill are people who took advantage of the plague to rob, kill, and do what ever they want, people who escaped from a prison, people who think that anyone still in new York should die because they are "infected" and a private military force trying to add martial law to parts of the city without government approval.
What makes you so sure the developers did not want to make this statement? And I don't mean this as an accusation to them, more like they too are worried to where America (or the West in general) is heading. They might have made an intentional statement the same way the Terminator or the Hunger Games or Fallout (yes, Fallout!) did.
+Mikosch2 Yeah I am not sure. Swedish developers so they might not have the same sensibility to certain things. Being a Swede my self I know that... you tend not to always get the finer points of some issues in America. While I wont say there are not racial issues in Sweden those issues are a different sort of character. And so we Swedes might have a hard time reflecting on it from a American perspective. That being said that just a hypotheses from my side and I do not know the actual background of the writers on this project. But like you said this might also be intended. To actually make you shock to think about you actions. But then again there is a issue there that what you can do is very limited. Which means it hard to question your actions in the game when you only have one action. Is it a good way to go about it? To have false agency? Or is it better to actually give the player true agency? I am not sure to be honest. I know that I always feel hesitant about gunning down the rioters. After all there just look like people that tries to survive and wears hoodies. I know that I did not actually start to shoot back at them at the early part of the game until they started to shoot me first. And in fact I am still very heistiant about shooting them. Though I think the game does it darndest in trying to just view them as combatants to gun down. Personally I would have felt better if I had more options then just use brute force to accomplice my objectives. I am not interested in harming people. I am there to try to stop the virus outbreak and to help people. So it makes me a bit sad when most things are solved though a gunfight. Even thing that could avoid having gunfights have them because well... it is a game. And games have gunfights. The Division has a interesting backdrop with potentially very interesting topics to explore. But the game is sadly in many ways a bit shallow to. I think a fairly shallow gameplay might actually be what hurts the exploration of it topics. But the game will continue to develop and we will see. I think the game has done something at least if it warrens a video like this that actually beings up the discussion. And that is something at least.
The only thing I find contentious is your belief this wasn't what the devloper intended; At some point a plot hole just can't be that big. The disconnect between actions and tone is so jarring that it actually messes with your suspension of disbelief because that storyline is horrifying for the wrong reasons. Thanks for addressing this stuff.
well, the problem is, that martial law has already been declared I'm the area. basically, "the division" is sending spec ops sleeper agents under the indirect command of the president in to help enforce martial law. as that radio guy says, "martial law is undemocratic, but at least it's transparent."
Another good example that's just occurred to me is Watch Dogs. That whole game is about how unsafe and morally wrong the surveillance state is... but it gives you side missions based around using those surveillance systems to profile people about to commit crimes _that is always correct._ Especially since you can't interrupt the crime before it's committed, otherwise you "fail" - you have to wait until the person steals the purse, shoots the victim etc then beat them unconscious and leave without calling the cops or even returning any stolen items.
Fors Clavigera actually, I would say it's done well. Rather than using the system to punish uncommitted future crimes that you cannot prove will happen, you absolutely use it as a warning sign and only that. You are punished if you try to do what the police are doing, and assault people who haven't even done anything wrong. You can only punish actual crimes that actually happen. I do wish that it would sometimes be wrong though. That would deliver the game's message better.
Yeah, but unfortunately I don't think there'd be a way for them to implement a "sometimes it's wrong" feature without it being infuriating for the player who's just tracked down the criminal and wants the XP. Maybe if it was some kind of version where you have to loiter in the area, causing the "criminal" to think again beacuse there's a witness nearby, or perhaps scare them off? I remember one of Watch Dogs' big problems was that the solution to almost every situation was "shoot someone", so that could have also added a bit of mission variety?
At least I'll be playing the sequel soon, which I hear has a bit more of that variety to it.
@@Blacknight8850 You want game abou vioelence and abusing power play Undrtale
You can stop the crime before it is committed (in fact, you receive a better reputation if the victim survives unharmed), but you cannot attack unless the criminal is already about to commit the crime (for example, they are already pointing at someone with a gun and yelling threats at them).
Moreover, you are encouraged (by receiving more XP and a better reputation) to spare the criminal's life (knocking them unconscious) rather than killing them.
"Even sars and ebola has shown to be containable"... not gonna lie, made me laugh to hear that while I'm quarantined :)
Bruh
So you guys ended up back here too huh
Well this is ironic.
wondering if this is the only reason this video popped up rn
Glad I'm not the only one who wondered here now
And this is why I am subscribed to this channel.
*not
+Vivian James Later, gator
+Adnan Ilyas Actually this is one of the poorer of their videos. One has to wonder whether their tame historian participated in this one at all because, usually, they are a lot more balanced.
+Vivian James um i dont get it? you unsubscribed because they made a video addressing social issues that they felt should be address because they are apart of the community that talks and makes games? You dont see them making videos about why people should take vaccines because they arent in the medical field they are apart of the gaming community with a large number of subscribers who they feel should be away of a current social issue so as to be aware and avoid the desensitization to racial profiling and political agenda.
+John D. Yeah and if you are so quick with coming up with such comments, we'll probably neither miss you...
Oh Boy, this is fun to watch in 2020
r/agedlikemilk -.-
Yikes.
Especially right now. My God.
"During none of the 20th century, did a country collapse into anarchy or riots"...
Well one certainly has in the *21st* century. And sadly the ideas this game promoted is in the head of it's president. Glad I'm not american.
Even more so in June 2020
Funny how a video about the division is so dividing.
Buh-dum >crash
+Friedel Majoor 10/10
+Friedel Majoor This does deserve one-up.
+Friedel Majoor pun to strong for serious response.
+Friedel Majoor Yeah. These guys take some deep looks at games, but sometimes miss the points of them because they look too deeply or sip at the SJW Kookaid. : / Some points in this video were fine, pretty much some I commented on myself, though they didn't seem to notice all the civilians wearing hoodies... *coughs*
Today in Comments Section: Manchildren who complain about Tumblr culture and "liberals" being too sensetive are crying about how the word "problematic" triggers them and that talking about games in a serious way makes them very upset so please censor yourselves, Extra Credits, so as not to offend the people who are offended by people taking offense.
yes
Fridgeworks
If by "One comment" you mean "Approximately one hundred comments", then yes.
I *replied to one comment, but if you think I'm really going to waste my time giving out snippy replies to every single wasted cumload in this comments section who types up a tirade about how evil SJWs and feminazis are trying to ruin games by talking about them like adults instead of slurping on the console manufacturer's dicks like an obedient concubine in the hopes you'll finally get some validation for your efforts beyond scoffing to myself and rolling my eyes in a cartoony fashion then you sir are very much mistaken.
+HellbirdIV
>defending weasel words
but the people who cry on tumblr are usually manchildrens...
+Toxic Potato preach it
This video is hitting so much harder these past few days...
HA!
love how Flareon using Swift was the picture when he says "it's unavoidable"
I wonder if the Division was originally meant to be something along Spec Ops: the Line... line with all the implications. And was later turned into an MMO by executive interference. Oh, I dropped my Occam's razor somewhere...
Agreed, they could have made the plot into something really interesting and introspective, but I guess that's too risky.
As Pat said on a recent episode of the Super Best Friendcast, the hypocritical nature of the game's mechanics comes into full bloom when you're sent to stop a group of "Rioters" from looting a store for supplies, as it represents further deterioration of the city... After their threat has been eliminated, you can scavenge the same store for the same supplies under the justification that they are vital for the Division's mission to restore the city...
+Michael Scally Yatzee mentioned that in his review kinda as well "Now we can deliver these supplies to the people!" "What people? Certainly not the hundred or so I gunned down trying to retrieve these supplies!"
I just want the free stuff even though I never use it :P
Thats up to player choice and interpretation to that choice. When i first went to a shop that was being looted, i went to get some of those crafting items, but the looters noticed me and started shooting, so do you just let them be? Or do you fight back? Players have more choice than they realize don’t they?
@@kayleefenix huh, how about talking? Where's that choice?
Umm. Yeah. About that
I forgot who, but someone said that,"if you sacrifice your freedom for protection, you soon will lose both."
Cheese Sandwich Ben franklin said that
@The Martial Lord of Loyalty I think at that point, there's enough freedom that there's an anarchic kind of protection.
that is the reason you sacrifice some freedom to get some protection, if you have only one of them, you lose both,
freedom without protection, you lose freedom
protection without freedom, you lose protection
"anarchiskm is chaos"
Anarchism is not chaos, and most people wouldn't do things like the holocaust because humans are naturally cooperative/
@@ibnbattuta7031 Not an enemy of the concept on anarchism, but humans are cooperative or competitive depending of if there are enough resources for all them. When resources become scarce, the predator-prey nature written upon our genes kicks in and we do whatever atrocity is needed for us to survive above others.
If you look at Dishonored and the Battlefield Hardline campaign, both give you the option of completing a no-kill run by knocking people unconscious or hand-cuffing them. I think that the developers could have avoided the current message if it encouraged you and gave you bonuses for taking non-lethal measures in defeating enemies. That option would make sense in the apocalyptic setting where keeping our humanity and ethics intact through tough times should be a major theme.
+Ethan Ceroja The problem with Battlefield Hardline is that it rewards your non-lethal play with... more lethal weapons.
True, that does seem counter-productive. Maybe, for nonlethal means taken, you should be rewarded with non-lethal weapons, perhaps in the form of advanced tasers or tranquilizer dart guns.
+Ethan Ceroja
Man, that could be engaging. I've never thought of the kill/save mechanic existing in so many games being fully applied to the post-apoc theme before. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened already (sometimes in TWD, but we're talking about more... 'gamey' games, I guess. Nothing against Telltale, and they still make games, but they're fairly mechanic-light).
Except that will be practically impossible to pull off since the enemies pretty much shoot first and ask questions later. Not to mention said enemies range from rapist and serial killers, Pyromanicas who burning people alive even those who aren't sick, thugs who prey on the week and a rogue PMC that forces civilians to obey them or be shoot. Also martial law has been declared which allows the suspension of due process and the city has pretty much deteriorated into a warzone way before then.
223Drone
Depends on the world you're building, mate.
Let's talk about the problematic elements of The Division. What does its gameplay say about issues we face today?
Extra Credits, there was a story about a playstation employee who made a custom controller for a person with cerebal palsey. Please do a video about disabled gamers in the community. Thanks
+Extra Credits I never played The Division, but even I got a glimpse of what's wrong with it's premise. Maybe it's beacause I'm a post-apocalipse fan, but in a scenario of societal breakdown, I would consider only natural for people to act like the rioters do. Afterall, they don't see any hint that their state is still there to care for them, so how could they take the risk of trusting "the police" to maintain order?
The Division Agents don't offer any sense of safety: they don't organize secure areas for people to move into or any other form of help: they just go around and kill.
+Extra Credits Would you have had the same qualms with the game had it been set in say, Paris or Stockholm? Are these only big problems because the game is set in the US?
+Shrewd _GC I would imagine some points, such as the president having a private army, would hold up no matter what, as a totalitarian state is simply a form of government/governing, but I think things like the hoody, while they would still be a problem, would not be as much of a problem due to their being no past, high stress situation in those countries associated with hoodies.
+Extra Credits The Division is as Tom Clancy as a soup sandwich.
So The Division is basically bizarro Spec Ops The Line? You do horrible things to largely innocent bystanders without any coherent, solid and trustworthy purpose, except when Spec Ops asked "Do you feel like a hero yet?" The Division follows with "because you totally should! Hi-five brah!"
Not even remotely close lol
Wafflepudding
Wafflepudding the enemies in this game are people killing other civilians for their own gain, are the LMB PMC innocent bystanders, the cleaners who burn people alive, the Rikers who are escaped RAPISTS and MURDERERS from Rikers prison, the Looters who attack the player on sight? No no they are not, they are RAPISTS and MURDERERS. There something call environmental context and the actions of the those "INNOCENT BYSTANDERS".
Waffle
The first mission were they stole food and held a cop at gun.
Well, I mean, it's a Tom Clancy game.
They sort of have a history of tackling difficult topics and then sweeping the conversation under the rug.
The more the reason we need to critics more, just because it is the norm doesn't make it alright
I only played Vegas 1&2 which were basically "Neo Pancho Villa terrorists try to take over Mexico then run off to attack the US when we try to help the Mexican govt." They weren't even like Cartel stereotypes just generic revolutionary terrorist types.
You couldn't base a shoot 'em up game on a John La Carre novel.
Why do I ever look at the comments section? Ruins my mood every time.
Man, I totally feel you. For me, it's usually:
"Huh, this is an interesting video. Maybe some of the commenters will have some interesting discussions about this."
Followed by a distinct disappointment, morbid curiosity, and then a wearing down of my mood until my better judgment finally stops me from reading any more.
I can relate
Whether the comments surprise me or give me exactly what I'm expecting, I'm usually amused, if darkly so.
Ikr, I'm thinking of doing proper conversation about the video and the game but these people ruin my mood
Manny Akintunde aren't you talking about yourself?
It's quite clear that we (especially the people who liked this comment thread) want to have a proper conversation and discussion about this interesting video but a lot of comment (including yours) judge one sidedly without allowing any constructive conversation, let alone opinion, and thus a waste of time because we will get nowhere
Get it? Or do I have to explain it further? Is it that hard to understand something so basic?
The division is 2020 in a nutshell.
Lol
Lol
but the usa had a meltdown
Films have two interpretations, explicit and implicit. Explicit interpretation is the message that the director wants you to get. Implicit is the interpretation you make on your own. Both are valid and must be considered while the film is being made. Video games are probably one of the most interactive forms of art, so we as game designers must really think hard about what kinds of implicit messages can be taken from our art, whether we intended it or not.
*Looks at comment section*
"HOly shit"
*grabs popcorn*
+Suku919
I'm glad you made this comment, because I will take it as my clue that this is one of those videos where I need to stop following my curiosity and stop scrolling down right now, or I'll be here all afternoon.
+BologneyT Yes.
Yep
+Suku919 Thanks for the warning!
+Suku919 I'm glad this has turned into an epic quest XD
Nobody:
2020: I'm taking notes
It's like the opposite of Spec Ops: The Line. Where's the twist where the superior officer who was ordering the murders was actually just a voice in your head?
Honestly, when you examine The Division it becomes harder and harder to believe that what it says is unintentional. That being said, I think the same is true with a lot of scary ideas that are ingrained into our societies; it's easy to attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance. It just highlights how important education, history, and government accountability is.
would like to note that this game was made by a studio in sweden,
and probably may reflect their thinking about what state the US can get into given todays circumstances.
That is, it may be an outsiders perspective and not a reflection of the society from within.
+TheAltairAhad good point
That also masively affects my understanding of the hoodie thing as they may simply not have known what was up in that regard.(heck I live in the US and I was totally unaware of the hoodie clusterfuck) People online often get angry about things looking like things that are or used to be racist in America (like pretending to be black"Black Face") when sometimes those things were done somewere else without that context.(ie Eusovision has very few black people but proportionaly _so does Europe_)
This explains a lot. At best, It seems like this video amounts to Dan's knee-jerk reaction to playing the game.
Artsy_Judoka
In high school I remember walking down the street and some old guy asked if my best friend and I were part of a black-hooded gang lol
Yeah I figured it's hard to tell whether the game glorifies these things or if it's really a criticism by showing a world that glorifies them
Who else is here after SARS's cousin COVID-19 was shown to be way less containable?
I am.
Also this is supprisingly topical now, oof.
Don't worry, COVID-19 is nothing to worry about now. At least according to the media.
And Ebola is also back. And the Swine flu. Hooooray.
In America at least
A sot of people and now the division is free on xbox
"The people you're shooting are disaster survivors." Now that's just victim blaming.
Thank you for taking video games seriously and taking the time to properly critique the game.
"In The Division you're a government agent killing US citizens on US soil by government order, without due process of law."
"And then there's the fact that the people you're shooting are disaster survivors."
"When I arrived at the mission site, I just found a small group of people standing there, talking, they weren't committing a crime, they posed no immediate threat to my agent, and I can't really say that I had any good evidence that they'd ever committed any crime, other than the word of my superior who told me to execute them."
"Those minor criminals you're tasked with exterminating, early in the game, are simply called, 'rioters'."
"The NPC's even play into it, shouting things like 'low life scum' as they mow these hoodie clad disaster survivors down, reinforcing the dehumanization of these people."
...I'm just going to leave this here, 14 days after George Floyd's death, and see how this continues to age.
George wasnt an innocent man, and had many terrible crimes
FuSiOn Born 1. He reformed and reentered society peacefully and 2. Even if he didn’t, he wasn’t murdered for armed robbery, the only reason the police were even called was because of an allegedly fake 20 bill. And since I can’t even confirm he did use/have a fake $20, he was innocent until proven guilty.
FuSiOn Born the police didn’t know that he had a criminal record at the time. None of the crimes he had done meant he should have been killed. He had already served his time for those crimes. The crimes of his past had no bearing on the event. The police murdered a man in broad daylight.
@@austinvedder3536 so you're saying he should have been murdered via slow suffocation over 10minutes while bystanders filmed his death?
Ok? He did his time, and he was killed for no reason.
This is trying to justify police brutality through backwards logic.
After coming back to this video and replaying The Division recently, I find myself still agreeing with some of the points made. There is one thing I do think they should have mentioned. The Audio Logs and Phone Recordings. Nearly all of them genuinely humanize the enemies and make you question your actions, at least it did for me. I actually spent the time to collect every collectible in the Division, and some of them are harrowing to listen to and read. The ones which really stood out to me were all the phone recordings involved with the leader of the Cleaners. Those phone recordings are pretty rough to listen to, particularly after you've already killed him.
The problem is that the game doesn't give you another option except killing.
Ok, so the enemies you are fighting are:
1 - Rioters who kill people to loot their corpses (there is even a guy talking on a radio saying he saw a rioter walk up to a woman and her child, shoot her in the back of the head and loot her while her kid is crying). These aren't disaster survivors, their victims are.
2 - Crazy people who are burning people alive. They think literally everyone who isn't one of them is infected, and everyone needs to be killed with fire to prevent the spread of disease. One mission has them corralling survivors in a subway so they can drop a tanker of napalm on them.
3 - Faction of murderers who kill people for fun. They murder JTF and hang their corpses around their territory to scare people. They play games to kill people, like drawing targets on the ground and throwing them off buildings trying to hit the target, or tying them to a wall and throwing axes at them, scoring based off where they hit them. They have graffiti around the town, stating the cost to get in the gang is a killing a cop and taking his badge.
4 - The LMB. A traitorous private military company that is basically acting like an occupying foreign army. They are taking civilians as prisoners and conscripting them, killing anyone who refuses.
This isn't a police shooting unarmed people rabble rabble racism rabble rabble thing. This is a disaster event marshal law trying to maintain control and murderers taking advantage of the situation. Those innocent looters who were just talking that someone told you to go execute? Yeah, stand in the open, they shoot you the second they see you.
+AkaRystik then it wouldnt be hard to convict them in court. habeus corpus isnt there for fun
+john li
Firstly: Habeas Corpus is suspended in times of Martial Law.Just look at the constitution where it actually says that.
And secondl: What court?
Courts require things like a stable, secure area to hold both the arrested, relevant witnesses, and legal officials. As well as time and resources to while away before appeals.
This is clearly not easy to arrange in post-event New York. I COULD appreciate moves to institute it again, but pure old pragmatism means that you are going to have to kill the worst actors and either temporarily (maybe indefinitely) detain or let go the less ones.
Oh yeah, and there's the fact that *convicting them in court* means Taking Them Into Custody And Getting Them Into Court.
Something that s KIND OF BLOODY HARD when they are resisting with lethal force.
Eric Van De Hey then sell it what it is. you are not some hero fighting for justice you are just being ordered to kill random people you think are bad people but might not be the case at all
john li
"Random people"? Are you Kidding Me?
Since when is targeting the chain of command of terrorist groups (Which is EXACLTY what the Cleaners and Last Man Battalion are- with the added bonus that the LMB are basically doing what the video accuses the JTF of for realsies) "being ordered to kill random people?"
And people who open fire on you with intent to murder are not "random." They are explicitly making themselves a very non-=random, serious threat to you. In real life that is more than enough justification to kill them in self defense.
So yes, the Division actually is fighting for justice, or at least as much of it as can be said to exist in the world. That does not mean it is not open to abuse or could not go wrong (the existance of Aaron Keener in game disproves that). But rent a sens eof perspective and do some basic research.
"you think are bad people but might not be the case at all"
Firstly: i refuse to debase my moral compass to seriously regard people who try and commit murder on the drop of a hat as "might not be bad."
Especially when they tend to be rampaging gangs, or an actual totalitarian regime.
secondly: whether or not they are bad people is *completely bloody secondary* to self preservation if they try and murder you without due cause.
if someone is firing at you with a Kalashkinov it is the wrong time to be worrying about if they were a halfway house manager in a previous life.
Eric Van De Hey im talking about the people who are just trying to survive. and probably everybody knows that agents like you are out to murder them so they fire at you on sight
and now, after having finished and put down the game weeks ago, I can't help but have a sour taste in my mouth looking back at everything my character did. Was any of it truly justifiable? Other than the Rikers, did any of the "Enemy" factions overstep the moral boundaries any more than my character did? The entire game was filled with moments that make you sympathetic to every other faction in some way, and then within two minutes has you back to mowing them down in the name of "the greater good."
+coltsfan354 the LMB is literally a uniformed occupying enemy army and you stopped the cleaners from burning thousands of people alive. Worst bad guy ever?
+raptokvortex You're giving Ubisoft way too much credit.
+raptokvortex
If that's the case, then the message is poorly delivered.
+coltsfan354 You could just not shoot anyone, but all the enemies will kill you on sight. The closest you can come to killing a non-hostile is shooting a dog
+John D. Haven't played other games in the series, nor read the books, but isn't that one of the big themes of the Tom Clancy works? To look into the various aspects of social conflict and war? That doesn't sound too out of place with what the division is doing here.
Another thing that bothered me in the Division is that you spend a lot of the game gunning down looters so that you can loot their corpses and supply stashes.
+Michael Joyce Exactly, we're suffering the same issue in new york as we speak.
+Darryvon __ I am not sure that what is at stake is the morality of looting looters, but more about the overhall goal we have. The characters are mainly just good looters compare to evil looters. But, this looting seem pointless in the setting except for greed. There are a zone with military that can supply you with gun, ammunition and so on, so why loot?
Darryvon __ When I played the beta it does not appear to be that way. I partially accept your point for quest but not for the dark zone. What the point of going in a dark zone to get better gear? Your better Gear should come from the rest of the united states (governement research center/weapon manufactories...). As for taking what was stolen, I disagree because you take their weapon and generally not there supply and you basically use them for yourself as if it was the only source of weapon for you.
On a gameplay point of view, the game reward you for looting not for saving the citizen. This is at least what I felt when I played the game.
I'm seeing a lot of "well every rioter tries to kill you so you're justified in murdering them" in the comments. The thing is, this is a video game. The rioters all try to kill you, not because that's a reasonable thing someone in their position might do, but because the game designers made it that way. Now, this is hardly unique to the division. What separates The Division from other games with ridiculously homocidal AI behavior is the setting. You're a government agent in a post-disaster New York who is fighting civilians in a modern setting. You have no way other than lethal violence (because the game gives you no other way) to deal with the situation. You are portrayed as the good guy in this.
Saying the dehumanization is okay because the rioters do, indeed, act like monsters is not a valid point because it was a design decision to make them act like monsters.
If they‘re armed and start shooting on sight, are they still civilians? According to the geneva convention a medic using a gun is no longer a medic. Doesn‘t this apply for civilians too?
@@johnhenryeden8728 Short answer: No
@@johnhenryeden8728 they're video game npc's that are labeled as citizens
John Henry Eden I heard that some of the medics in Vietnam were given guns for protection.
@@johnhenryeden8728 you've completely misunderstood this. the developer *made the decision* to have everyone be armed and shooting on sight. there was no rule saying "every NPC that's not part of the clique has to be armed and violent," the developers chose to make that the case.
Actually, I hear "It's just a movie, stop overthinking it" all the time. I hear that about books, too. I think that we tend to underplay the impact and meaning of a lot of our media.
+cheezemonkeyeater Media affects my everyday life. Every time I've been told something ableist relating to my psychiatric diagnoses I can always trace it back to the way people like me are depicted in media.
Conversely, it's not uncommon for me to, on reflection (in the moment is more difficult), realize that I am making assumptions about a person based on a very vague image assembled from works of fiction and off-hand comments on social media.
How about this? Take note of the people you see on your way to work, or school, or whatever. Compare them to the cast of your favorite TV show. Which roles would the people you saw have on that show based on how similar they are to the current cast members? Do you think these roles make sense? Do you think they describe that person fairly? Do you think that, if you knew these people, you would have held the same opinion?
I'd like to note about the hoodie thing, about how it might be unintentional because, you know, it's the middle of deep winter. Everything is cold, and hoodies are fairly common winter clones, probably the thing which all these stores had the most in stock
This is what we call 'looking way too far into it.'
I believe there are audio tracks around the map that depict a struggling person that eventually joins the rioters. You sympathize with this person and feel and understand his need to survive. One point of this video is that this person is being killed by you regardless of his will to survive. It's contradictory of the game for you to want the survivor to live, but makes you kill all of them at the same time. It's kind of interesting too, because the very first rioter i killed made his buddy say "They killed alex." At the same time, i was playing with my friend whose name is also Alex. lol
In general, it seems like the "make bad guys obvious" mechanic slides really easily into unfortunate implications. Which makes SENSE, because the premise it is based upon is an unfortunate implication.
HAH! At 1:00, the phrase "it's unavoidable" is accompained by a picture of a Pokémon using the move Swift, which never misses.
+Samrux I was pleasently suprised when that joke came up and I was like "Oh! I get it!"
SuperQuagsire64 That describes my reaction perfectly.
I think if you compare this game to say, Prototype, which is about an infection ravaging the same city, and a paramilitary group taking over the local police and military forces remaining in the area in an attempt to contain the infection, there are some interesting similarities, right down to the protagonists of 1 and 2 wearing hoodies. The Division is basically Blackwatch. Furthermore, zombie fiction postulates that the military falls like wet paper to the unconventional attributes of zombies as inhuman combatants, whereas this game posits that they succumb to rioting, janitors, escaped prisoners, and PMCs on their payroll. This "justifying" the existence of super elite sleeper agents whose skills have been honed despite living such deep cover lives that they haven't been regularly training or working out. And these secret agents are more, not less likely to have succumbed to a bioterror attack (involving handling cash in time square) than the military, who have isolated and offshore military bases, and a good communications system that provides quick warnings and would readily hand out bioweapon protection as needed. Game is quite full of fast and loose "rule of cool" logic , which as the video says is why it's bad when it deals with real issues in a "realistic" non-fantasy depiction of the world.
I'm just going to quote from Ben "Yahtzee" "Zero Punctuation" Croshaw...
"See, the premise would have worked perfectly well if we'd just been some random citizen doing our bit to take back the city, Charles Bronson style, baby! The only thing the secret police thing adds is to make us less relatable and give hard-ons to the paranoid authoritarian lot, who want to believe that the government will finally sort out those intimidating young people who stand around outside their house talking loudly."
Honestly i thought this was going to be a video about how the game mechanics are terrible and how the devs messed up
not politics
+Hiane Rawr So, this was your first Extra Credits video obviously?
+Hiane Rawr Same here, I get the topic is serious enough and maybe I don't get the context as I live in europe and we've got different issues at the moment, but I expected to still be in the "scope" of games here. Yet this is pretty much pure politics and ethic/morality...
+Meppho maby they forgot to put in the tie in? i was kinda getting that as a community we should be bolder about these topics, but that could be just me
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike the video or the topic. It just surprised me because I expected something more practical, considering the division is such a mess design-wise.
Meppho Pretty much how i felt
Man this was an extremely insightful video. Your team does great work!
I haven't played The Division but from hearing about that, another point can be talked about : why cannot you negociate with enemies ?
It happens in every game. In a game that looks realistic, always having the generic enemies attack you even when it is obvious they have no chance is annoying and weird.
+scarfacemperor Because it's an action RPG where you kill things for loot. Not a supremely tense real life simulation. I think he's looking way too much into it.
+scarfacemperor It's a game designed for mass market and average game consumer being unable or unwilling to have any conscious thoughts while playing.
Akeche still, that's annoying on the long run. When I'm at high level and a low-level enemy attacks me, my reaction is like
"*facepalm* everyone knows I can kill dragons in seconds and am virtually invincible, you KNOW you have no chance and you'll die, so why do you attack me instead of the random civilian just next to me ?"
+scarfacemperor > why cannot you negociate with enemies ?
More exp from killing. Takes less time. You dont need to produce additional animations and lines. Don't need to find a reason why they should stop fighting. Must i count more things?
+scarfacemperor I agree. That one feature, even if executed in a very simple and minimalistic manner, would both greatly increase immersion and thus make the game more engaging to play, and greatly migate the impact of most of the issues discussed in this video. Maybe for a remaster, if that ever happens?
I've been a fan of EC for a while now,but have never had the guts to post here till after watching this particular ep. why? because it made me think for wks. on my own unease with this game,and why I just suddenly stopped playing. You and the EC Team nailed it, for me, on what rubbed me the wrong way and expressed it so eloquently that I just had to give a shout out to all of you. Thank you for the insight,and for making my week abit brighter.
Exactly what I felt
But the game isn't supposed to be taken seriously
@@deadalkabobThinking about things is fun
Thank you!
I know this comment is a drop of support in what seems like a sea of angry "stop thinking" comments, but this was really thought out and brings up some great topics.
+LittleNemo
Not really, no.
In fact, it categorically lied (or at least was MONSTROUSLY lazy) about a lot of things.
"And perhaps more importantly, during none of the major epidemics of the 20th century did a major country collapse into anarchy, or face widespread lawlessness and rioting"
This is categorically, objectively, provably false.
All I have to point out is that the Spanish Flu EXISTED, and that during its' runtime Russia collapsed into Civil War and then a totalitarian nightmare, and China broke into warlordoms (to say nothing of the demise of the Central Powers).
And that's just the most technical and probably easiest to prove of that. They just got so much wrong it isn't funny.
Eric Van De Hey
Except for the fact that none of those countries fell because of an epidemic. They fell because of inept leadership and war.
Your first mistake was expecting competency form Ubisoft
Overall I think this video raises interesting and valid concerns. I think the video would have benefited from EC having additional playtime on the game, but their concerns are certainly still worth discussing as they are. I am surprised at the number of people misinterpreting the content of the video, or misattributing political stances to it (how is this in any way socialist?), but I guess that's pretty par for the course. Any UA-cam video talking about what a AAA game's mechanics and setting says will net you angry responses from all sides, for some reason
anyone that discusses social issues on the internet these days is immediately perceived as "SJW SJW FEMINAZI LIBERAL SCUM"
I mean, the main problem with saying that the game supports totalitarianism is that extrajudicial killings are nothing new in video games. For example: in Mass Effect, you are outright a secret police officer who can legally do nearly whatever the hell they want to. Or Fallout, you're a vigilante who summarily executes raiders on an hourly basis.
Matthew Campbell I don't think you're focusing on the right thing. It's not a problem that the game is about killing civilians extrajudiciously, it's that it doesn't question or say anything about it. You just do it because you're told to, and it's portrayed as perfectly natural and reasonable. That gives me a skeevy vibe, personally. I haven't played Mass Effect so I don't know the details, but I imagine that if there are any comparable scenarios they aren't always portrayed positively. Mass Effect is known for their nuanced storytelling, they'd really be screwing the pooch if they had a plot line about secret police killing people without a trial and they didn't have at least one character go "this is wrong".
As for Fallout, I don't think they're similar situations. You're just a wanderer in a post-apocalyptic world. You aren't employed by a government, there is no rule of law. In at least the more roleplay-oriented Fallouts you can choose to kill the roving gangs as an act of self-defense, hunt them for caps, befriend and join them, or avoid them entirely. It's up to you. It's not quite the same as your day job being to kill civilians who the government has extrajudiciously deemed criminals
Your not just dealing with a common criminal your dealing with a legendary spector that has gone rouge and the only way he can be brought to justice is for another specter to bring him in dead or alive.
Rc3651 Actually, your actions are questioned, although they are not questioned directly. The guy on the radio show continually brings up theories about the Division from a civilian point of view, and, from the how he talks about it, he recognizes the problems with the mere existence of such a group.
One thing I noticed while playing was that, if you get too close to an NPC, they react as though you were aiming your weapon at them. Until recently, I thought this was just a bug. Now, however, I think that it is actually a way to show that people are afraid of you. They don't know whether or not you will kill them like any of the other gangs roaming the streets. To them, you are practically no different.
Having watched this video before playing the game, I tried to do things "ethically" (not firing the first shot, focusing on abilities that either give defensive buffs or intelligence, not using explosive or incendiary weapons/items) and discovered that the game will ream you out for doing so. Not being a fan of Dark Souls/ Dorf Fortress style games, I played as the devs intended. The game became easier
If they had made the titular Division an NGO like Global Frequency (an independent network of trouble shooters and experts from all over the world), I don't think that this video would have been made. It would, however, skate eversoclose to the popular trope of "PMC = evil" we see so often in video games.
isnt diversity an old old wooden ship used during the civil war era?
+Schon Fazio I would be surprised if the affiliates were concerned about the lack of an old, old wooden ship, but nice try.
+Schon Fazio Straight from Ashville, North Carolina, meet Ms. Veronica Corningstone.
+Schon Fazio If so, every game needs diversity.
They wear hoodies because its fucking cold
+Anon Ymous The Division clearly depicts New York as blanketed in snow.
In fact it doesn't look to dissimilar too Canadian winters.
+BeagleBagel In the climate shown in the game, you'd want a coat much warmer than hoodies
+BeagleBagel And that is why they must all DIE
"In fact it doesn't look to dissimilar too Canadian winters."
Now you're just trying to annoy Grammar Nazis like me.
Mattoropael *Your
jk its good
I rather like the word 'problematic'. It's like a litmus test for arguments I can go right ahead and ignore.
its a Tom Clancy game so yeah
the man who dedicated every single one of his self written books to ronald reagan
+Abraham Drimmer This comment defines everything wrong with Tom Clancy. 9/10 not enough Watergate scandal.
+Cody Cullum (LazerSpammer) to be fair id be lying if i said i didnt enjoy the clancy penned originals at least on a perverse level
But Tom Clancy didn't write a book this game is based on. Don't drag Mr. Clancy in this! ;)
+David Umstattd I don't know. I can't speak for the man himself but his books seldom if ever take nuanced political positions that entertain non-western POVs...what I mean to say is it is it is always clear who is the good guy and who is the bad guy regardless of situation.
How many of you who are complaining about the use of the word "Problematic" even bothered watching the video? Or did you just cut it off because you saw an "SJW" word, and were too, dare I say it, "triggered" to keep watching?
Lol, nice
+Mikaele Baker , quite a fair amount, i'd say.
But , as always, they used problematic to signify the same thing as "water can be a choking hazard, in some instances... maybe... if you can't swim".
Which, frankly, makes the issue presented seem as important and influential as thinking about airplane deaths when embarking an airplane. Or like the general issue of heart-attack deaths when eating a good steak.
It's a first world problem rooted and crated from and by a third world ideology/moral system.
SGresponse By that logic, should we not criticize the messages put forth by ANY culture? Criticism is an important aspect of taking any art seriously.
No one rational is claiming we should ban the Division, we are only criticizing the points it makes, inadvertently or otherwise, regarding a number of important social issues. People are still free to play it, in fact I still very much would like to play it, even though from what I hear it's not very good as a game (all messages aside).
I would hope we would afford the same courtesy to any medium.
Mikaele Baker , Why are you conflating culture and art?
They're not interchangeable terms, so use them in their own right.
"Criticism is an important aspect of taking any art seriously."
What has that got to do with going out o0f your way to mind the meaning of things... IN ART WHOSE CREATORS ARE STILL ALIVE and can be asked about it?
This is not criticism, this is guessing, supposing what the creators intended.
" we are only criticizing the points it makes " , you say, but i fail to see any of you citing the dev's saying those are the point it makes.
Not instead, you are criticizing the points it seems to make, to you, through your ideological/moral lens.
"People are still free to play it"
Still... ha. Freudian slip there?
"I would hope we would afford the same courtesy to any medium."
Joke's on you, bob, because we have been doing so for centuries, for other mediums.
Oddly enough, not much of the criticism survived, unlike the art which was the subject of it. Maybe it was not universal enough to be deemed valuable (criticism).
So your passive aggressive tactics won't work, because nobody's debating whether you should.
Rather, they're debating whether looking at a work of art through ideological lenses makes for valid criticism for the rest of us, or not.
I conflated the two terms so as to use parallel language with SGresponse who said:
" let culture be vile and let the recipient choose to dismiss it by himself instead of policing him to do so"
By using the term "culture" in the same way as SGresponse, it is made clear that I am responding to his point.
I think you and I fundamentally disagree about the nature of art. Art has messages independent of the artist's intent. In literature, this is usually called Death of the Author. In the context of a book, it involves kind of disregarding the author and analyzing just the book itself.
Most modern schools of criticism accept this in some form, even though the term itself is specific to an essay written by Barthes.
From Wikipedia:
"Ideas presented in 'The Death of the Author' were anticipated to some extent by the New Criticism, a school of literary criticism important in the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s. New Criticism differs from Barthes' theory of critical reading because it attempts to arrive at more authoritative interpretations of texts. Nevertheless, the crucial New Critical precept of the 'intentional fallacy' declares that a poem does not belong to its author; rather, 'it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs to the public.'"
I do not to go so far as to say the author's intent doesn't matter, there is a class of criticism called historical criticism, in which a work is examined in the context of its author and the time and place it was written. I do not think historical criticism is invalid.
But this is far from the only way to analyze a work of art. Extra Credits makes it very clear that mechanics have meaning, this is a presupposition they are fairly candid about. This meaning may well conflict with a developers intent.
To me, this presupposition is fairly intuitive, I was brought up thoroughly within a New Critical framework, but I suppose a lot of people disagree. In fact I would venture to say most people disagree, with New Criticism being mostly confined to academics and their students. That's why English teachers are stereotyped as "overthinking" literature independently of the author's intent (see:the curtains were fucking blue). They likely went to college for literature and were presented with New Criticism.
Art in general serves human beings, and is a creation of human beings. Thus, I think that any work has multiple ways of interpreting it that are equally correct and valid. I won't go so far as to say there are no wrong answers, you certainly will not be able to convince me that the Diary of Anne Frank is pro-Nazi, or that Atlas Shrugged is pro-Communist. You still have to support your criticism with the text. I'm simply saying that provided you support your analysis using the text, you will be hard pressed to come up with a totally incorrect interpretation of the message.
So I've lapsed into using literary language, but literature is just one form of Art, and anything I say about works of Literature applies to visual art, Television, movies and Video Games.
I'm also a first-year college student, and make no claims at being an authority. I encourage you to google the things I've mentioned and read about them for yourself. You will find arguments for and against what I'm saying. In 2010 literary theorist Sean Burke wrote a book professing to refute Barthes and by extension the notion of Death of the Author. I've not read this book, but you may want to look into it.
I hate how some people use the term "overthink" to mean "thinking at all."
Problematic is a buzzword that needs to die
+Bruce Wayne These guys are such morons And this vid... I mean bloody hell they are dumb
+Bruce Wayne What is your alternative then?
+Bruce Wayne Yeah I would love to hear an alternative word for the term "constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty."
+Derikoopa Not trying to explain everything in a tublr feminist's dictionary. You find something "Problematic" You could say "This thing is something i have a problem with." or "This thing goes against my views" IT may not be one word, but it explains your ideals better
+Bruce Wayne Your concern for this word is problematic. Maybe we can start the conversation that will address these problematic concerns.
2016:
2017:
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2020 Mar:
2020 Apr, in the midst of lock-down: UA-cam recommends this video
My take away from this;
"One more reason to not play a game I never had any intention of playing anyway."
There's this guy on the tech wing who exposes some of these problems, and the whole "gone rogue" history is precisely about this.
Please, just don't use the word problematic. I get flashbacks to gamergate.
+RPGtalkout So... you're triggered by a generic word... and you want to censor people for it? Sounds very New Speakish...
+Eluem Firstly: criticism is not censorship.
On the word being triggering, i just hate the word in general. It's a un-aggressive, politically correct and "clean" way to say something is bad and needs to stop. Except that it feelslike it doesn't need to stop just because problematic sounds more like a suggestion. Saying something is terrible, or saying something is "problematic" technically means the same thing, only one of them actually gets people to listen. Problematic sounds more like: Hey, this is not really great and you could make it better, but you don't need to if it would bother you to do so. I hate that attitude towards not just politics, but everything in life.
RPGtalkout
Telling people to stop using words because they bother you is censorship.
Reducing the number of words that can be used with similar but slightly different meanings is the beginning of New Speak.
+Eluem No, its not censorship if nobody has been censored. To be censored is to have your platform or your voice removed. I told them to stop using the word, a suggestion. A suggestion can be ignored. You can't ignore being censored. That's the difference between censorship and criticism. And even if I got my way and they stopped using that annoying word, their message wouldn't change. The idea would remain intact, but the from would change. This is not censorship.
On new speech, I'm not familiar with that term. But using multiple words that mean the exact same is completely pointless when trying to inform people about your ideology and/or cause.
You are requesting self censorship.
"self-cen·sor·ship
noun
noun: self-censorship
the exercising of control over what one says and does, especially to avoid castigation."
You don't know what New Speak is? You've never read 1984?
Isn't it, like, winter in NY in game? Hoodies are warm.
not to mention they hide your face well so you can't be identified at a glance.
Not warm enough.
Also, setting is a choice by the developers.
An bulletproof considering how many 9mm rounds they seem to take.
Also overlooked, which I think is important, is the fact that the player is coming in on at least the third wave of support. As Directive 51 is a "when all else fails" plan, we can assume there was an attempt from the local law enforcement to keep order. I don't recall hearing any details about this period, but I don't think it is explicit in the time frames. A quick history, as I understand it (spoiler free):
Weaponized virus is released, lots of people die, panic in the streets.
(Uncertain if JTF is formed right away or later. No time references)
Quarantines are set up, Dark Zone is established.
First Wave of Division agents activated
Dark Zone is abandoned due to disease and shortages
First Wave goes missing
Second Wave activated (players).
As to the hoodie-wearing Rioters: Yes, perhaps the hoodie was not the best choice, but there needed to be some kind of "uniform" to distinguish each of the factions. Rikers wear the orange prison jumpsuits, LMB has the white/grey urban camo, Cleaners have their reflective vests.
You're right, they do explicitly state at one point that law enforcement has failed, and any remaining officers that still wanted to help have now joined the JTF.
Incompetent, or dead from smallpox? You decide!
+CaitSeith The virus in the Division has a short incubation time which allows it to spread rapidly by the time the army knows that its a biological weapon it would've already been too late.
For some reason it's always really funny when right-wingers suddenly realize EC is a left-leaning show, especially since it has been since the very early days. I mean, the episode on Other M is what got me really hooked on the show, and I think that was first- or second-season.
Haven't played The Division, but speaking as a writer? Writers ABSOLUTELY insert symbolism into our stories whether we want to or not. And what we think of what we wrote is only one part of the conversation, and that part is not even half of it. Everyone is going to take something different from what we wrote, and their experiences and interpretations are every bit as valid as ours. Games are no different.
Just like it's important to know both how writing mechanically goes together in terms of commas and spelling as well as how to not put your foot in your mouth via fiction, conversations about what a game is saying about the world are just as important to developing games as understanding level design. And just as interesting. I don't think the EC team is saying The Division should be censored from saying what it is; what they're saying is, "This is what it DID say, and it's crappy, so let's talk about it so we can do better next time."
+Sparky Lurkdragon Hear hear, bud. Video games, as much as any other medium, deserve to be forums for meaningful discussion and criticism. To deny games any sort of conversation, or to accuse what's being said as equivalent to, say, "censorship" or "SJW"s (a term that's supposed to be use ironically), is to deny games the chance to become anything more than objects of mindless entertainment.
+Sparky Lurkdragon Except they completely missed the point where innocent civilians are being kidnapped, taken hostage, robbed or outright KILLED for enjoyment by not the player but the people you're sent in to put down including rogue agents. This episode did little to address things like how you save civilians that are starving, have a gun to their head or captured to be used as playthings by thugs like the Riker's or burned by the Cleaners. The only difference between them and the Agents is that the Agents are there to protect what minuscule numbers of scavengers and people trying to get by on scraps while they're hunted down by the gangs and thugs, as opposed to the gangs that just steal kill and loot to survive regardless of who they do it to. Yeah, you're basically killing people that were ONCE civilians. But at some point they thought that they're better off murdering fellow civilians and taking what little they have.
Instead we're given a 'oh poor them' kind of story that shows one side and doesn't address both.
Listened to a phone message in game a rioter sent to his brother about how he had to get violent with someone for food, that the hunger was so bad it gnawed at his brain. The way he rationalized the whole thing and then ended the message with "Don't tell Mom, you...you don't have to call me back.", Found the phone after I gunned down half a dozen guys in a small park bitching about the cold. I knew then and there, we were the bad guys.
+Drew Brigner (Hyldin) But have you heard the message he leaves after that one? The one where he is almost gleeful about how he and his buddies now go where they want, take what they want and eat whenever they want?
They should've given us a non-lethal option in the game.
So many issues of the Division could've been avoided that way
The moment I heard "non-lethal", I imagined a modern military using danmaku fights.
Or atleast a way not to kill evryone
This is what happens when you get people that have no idea what they're doing to write a story for a video game. They just need an excuse to create a shooting gallery the size of a city.
I love how people label this as a "never play video games episode".
They're merely inspected a game BASED on the real world, not some random game world, and commenting on it's parallels.
They even stated that they know this wasn't the intent of the devs.
But the game simply had negative parallels to real life in a terrible time.
No one said you can't play Division anymore. No one said this game will instantly produce bad people.
In other words, stop complaining and watch the whole video, then speak. Just because they have this opinion doesn't make them SJWs. Just makes you a defensive nut.
My biggest beef with "The Division" is a part that you only glanced over: The treatment of the "Cleaners"
Just so we are on the same page: Cleaning and sanitation professionals are probably the biggest heroes in modern society. They literally pick up your trash and keep the streets clean. That is crazily important. Look at some statistics of how much garbage and filth the average city produces and how deep in crap it would be if the garbagemen and women went on strike. And they do such an important and disgusting job for a laughable wage.
And in this game, you hunt them down like they are a combination of the SS and The Fury from MGS3. And never does anyone suggest to take them alive or establish peaceful contact. Instead, you kill off people who just want to get through this madness.
...by burning innocent civilians alive.
+Davesknd but their version of cleaning is BURNING CITIZENS ALIVE.
There's also the fact that they're the sanitation _union,_ and through that, the game implicitly demonizes unions. Shitting in just, _all_ the buckets you can, aren't you, The Division?
@@cronotekk9193 that was an intentional decision the designers made. they made the decision to make these sanitation workers try to burn people alive, to demonize them and justify your slaughter of them.
@@afreakazoid4813 dont they just dress up as sanitation workers to fit their "cleaning the city"" theme
I'm hardly an expert having never played the game, but everything else I've heard about it paints it as a horrifying vision of the future that raises disturbing questions about what can be done in the name of the "greater good".
For people who have the maturity and necessary perspective to see it. Where Dan is undoubtedly right is when he says 'culture matters'.
keffypoo
What strikes me is that the issue is well-known enough that it would be hard for someone to not think about it while playing the game. In fact, the game itself lacking anything to stop the player from slipping into the "correct" mindset from time to time would make it all the more potent, just like how you Undertale deliberately allows you to slip into the gamer "kill all the things, gain all the XP" mindset and not realize you are doing anything wrong until too late to change anything.
It makes people much more on guard against the real world if they see that a game can alter their perspective in such terrifying ways. Its almost a training fight in a way, except that instead of the enemy it trains you to fight being hoodie-wearing strangers, its the kind of propagandists who might tell you to shoot them. I generally think that any work of art is beneficial if it adds to the breadth of experiences and people really do think about it is making them think.
Wow, comment section surprisingly not on fire burning down the building right now. You have gotten yourself a great audience EC!
Hey Extra Credits, you guys are getting a lot of criticism in the comments, and it's great that those who take issue with this video are voicing their complaints, but I personally would just like to say I thought this analysis was insightful and profound.
Excellent overview. I can already see some of the furor building in the comments, so my question is- if "don't think about it so much, it's just a game" is something that you're honestly liable to say, what on earth are you doing watching Extra Credits?
Like the central premise of the series is that games deserve the same level of deep critical analysis as any other medium.
+Van van Mojo But not all games. Some games really do make us think. Some games exist just for fun. Just like some movies make us think, and some movies exist just for fun.
Ikiru is a superb movie about finding meaning in life, about combatting the stubborn beauracracy to make a difference in the world, even if it's something as simple as building a park for children to play in.
Commando is a movie where Arnold shoots a lot of people and spouts one-liners.
I like them both. Commando doesn't deserve or need thought. Ikiru is a movie you cannot enjoy without thinking. When people are saying "Don't think about it too much" they're saying that The Division is much closer to Commando than Ikiru.
A very interesting discussion! Although some very interesting points are being raised about generalization, accountability of law enforcers.
There are also some counter arguments:
The Rioters are constantly depicted looting corpses and bragging about killing.
The Cleaners are constantly depicted burning civilians alive (or at least trying to)
The Rikers are told to be escaped prisoners and depicted hunting and killing law enforcement and civilians and finding great pleasure in doing that..
The Last Man Batallion (LMB) is depicted as a private army that has taken control over the North-East area of midtown Manhattan and enforced their own martial law, oppressing the civilians.
The Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters also patrol the streets and attack civilians (the LMB doesn't do this). But all these factions attack you as soon as they see you.
+AlphaLeader013
indeed in the game the enemies we fight are all "bad guys"
but i think the focus is on the problematic system
where we agents are literally the prosecutor, judge and law-enforcement combined
who needs no supervising or control, doesn't need to file any action reports or anything...
BUT!
also, it's just a BAD story setting for a MEH game which will never happen in the real world
so, yeah
+lamb4902
"where we agents are literally the prosecutor, judge and law-enforcement combined"
Ont his much I agree, that is a system with all kinds of possibility for abuse (which even the game acknowledges, see later). Though in a setting of martial law- which is the closest to what the JTF does as we can compare- it isn't entirely unprecedented or even unusual.
"who needs no supervising or control, doesn't need to file any action reports or anything..."
Except for the fact that that is not true at all. Heck, the game even provides its' own Judas in the form of Aaron Keener- someone who Actually did the things that the video tries to claim the entire JTF did- and whose supervisors marked him down (justifiably) as a mad, rabid dog and a rogue.
"also, it's just a BAD story setting for a MEH game which will never happen in the real world"
Ehh, I make no judgement on how bad or good the story or game is,, but saying it will Never happen in the real world strikes me of overconfidence at best.
As I have ruthlessly flogged the people for making this video over, they claimed:
""And perhaps more importantly, during none of the major epidemics of the 20th century did a major country collapse into anarchy, or face widespread lawlessness and rioting""
Except this is exactly what we saw with the Spanish Flu in 1918-1920, and which helped cause *exactly these things* in Russia and China in particular, with honorable mentions going to the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the German Empire.
The idea that this cannot happen is easily debunkable by looking at things like the Black Plague or the Colombian epidemics.
The idea that this cannot happen *now* is murky at best given what the Great Flu did to what was still a modern world, even factoring in how bioweapons tend to differ from normal epidemics.
I'm not saying bad things won't happen, or drastic actions won't be taken on an epidemic situation.
The way I mean it won't happen is in the sense that before things really gone that bad, this kind of "precaution system" (agents in the game) won't have a chance to establish. To have armed civilians working as the trinity of law system as the society's a last line of defense? Nah, I don't think so. That's why I just see it as a bad story setting, and a very LAZY one as well.
guess i should have written my last comment more precisely :\
also, sending 2nd wave agents against keener is not control, it's the proof of no control ;)
+AlphaLeader013 you said "The Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters also patrol the streets and attack civilians" Well, the Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters are also civilians. Sick and violent civilians, but civilians none the less. So yes, the LMB does do this, they just don't attack peaceful civilians who aren't sick and ruthless. I too think this video is overstating the message a little, but i can't deny there is some meat to it.
Rene Knight
"Well, the Rikers, Cleaners and Rioters are also civilians. Sick and violent civilians, but civilians none the less."
Point, but I think this is a bit besides the point. A civilian behaving like the Rs, Cs, and Rioters behave loses the legal protections being a civilian grants them. For the same reason that laws against the murder of civilians by soldiers do not apply to civilians that decide to grab arms and shoot at soldiers without Damn Good Reason.
"So yes, the LMB does do this, they just don't attack peaceful civilians who aren't sick and ruthless."
At most, this isn't portrayed in game. The lore we have on them and some of the artwork indicates that they are absolutely willing to attack peaceful, healthy civilians if they are guilty of even nonviolent dissent.
To quote a radio message and the game site..
"If you are in their territory and don’t play by their rules, you are screwed!" - Pirate Radio Podcast (in-game)
"I too think this video is overstating the message a little, but i can't deny there is some meat to it."
Fair enough.
In terms of the messages of this game, I would be willing to admit it more, and say that there are areas where it could have been done better (for instance, armed friendly survivor NPCs and more diversity in enemy clothing).
But my big issue with the video isn't even that it's overstating it, but in how it misstates plenty of things.
I don't see how doing things like ignoring the Spanish Flu or the definition of totalitarian dictatorship helped any, and I think they're manifestly a different kind of problem than a mere overstatement.
Don't forget the part in the game where you murder a group of people rioting a tech shop and then loot the exact same store immediately after. That's messed up.
+ThePyrobrid When civilians do it it's looting, when the government does it it's confiscation.
Just from playing the stress-test beta, the vibe I got from The Division was very questionable. The fact that you're playing as a secret government sleeper cell just WAITING for a civil uprising to put down is sinister as can be. It's a world away from the righteous indignation of, say, Wolfenstein: The New Order, where you *are* the uprising against a powerful government willing and able to put down anyone that gets in its way.
Wolfenstein might have its own moral quandaries to wrangle with, but at least in that one, you're fighting against the SS, not acting like them.
A very good and analytical video, unfortunately Ubisoft is too busy counting the number of copies of The Division they have sold, and counting the amount of cash they have made to care. It's not that Ubisoft didn't intend to create these totalitarian messages, they are just simply too incompetent to make a good, decent story. "People like shooting guns? People like open worlds with good graphics? Let's exploit this!" = literally their thought process.
Also, with all the enemies in the game being stupidly designed bullet sponges, if I hadn't known, I would have mistaken them for fast-healing regenerative vampires rather than US citizens struggling to survive. This design choice alone just goes to show how incompetent they are, and how little they care about the potential messages this game can create.
Fuck this game and fuck Ubisoft.
I was watching this, and telling wife about the story of the division.... then realised what the f is going on now
Who wrote this episode? Jonathan Mcintosh?
I could argue all day against some minor details. but this video is well above any argument that I would provide. two thumbs up to you good sir.
This game honestly won't be remembered by the end of the year... it's another one of those games that you find at a game store ten years after it's release and go "oh yeah, THAT existed!" and then walk away, never thinking about it again.
Igorcastrochucre I just watched the video, and I'm not entirely sure that I understand what you mean; are you saying that I'm saying that the subject matter of this video is irrelevant because the game doesn't have enough staying power to be relevant by 2017? If so, then that's not what I'm saying; I find the subject matter of this video incredibly interesting, but I'm simply stating that the game isn't designed well enough/ ins't interesting enough to be remembered. It's the classic Ubisoft/EA/Activision game; encapsulating a certain crowd for a month or two before being left by the wayside for "the next big thing" that will be forgotten eventually, as well. Evolve, Titanfall, Destiny, all prime examples of this; games that focus more on the marketing campaign than actual game design to make the game seem much more cool and interesting than it actually is.
Igorcastrochucre Once again, I am not dismissing the people who may have gotten the unintentional message about the game, I'm just dismissing the game in general for being shoddy and lazily put together. Just like in the Call of Juarez video, he talks about lazy design causing the wrong message to get across, which is exactly what happened in the Division.
I think this article really got at the heart of what turned me off about The Division. I played the entire story by the release weekend, and I remember completing the final mission. I remember being super pissed off about what the villain said.
I think if Massive wanted to give me a "We're not so different" speech, I would have appreciated the opportunity to be non lethal in my game play. Let me choose the morality of my agent, not Aaron Keener.
I can have little rolly bombs, but not a tazer or stun baton? What about some handcuffs? I would have chosen it even if it would have been a much harder play path, frankly.
I THINK you're misunderstanding something here...
I get that they're trying to make a point about stereotyping the "Rioters" (not looters, not survivalists) that run at you with baseball bats, creep along with homemade shields, or shoot at you with commercially-available (read: bought at Walmart) guns as being normal people in an abnormal situation.
I get that they are pointing out the stereotype of Hoodies=Bad Person.
The problem with the argument is all the multiracial civilians in the post office, the civilians-in-need asking for a bottle of water... before dropping a "Tactical Hoodie" that my character can wear.
if you get the point why you complain?
+Farhan Nazar I'm complaining because they're wrong. Maybe you'll figure out how it works one day.
Tristan Toole sure... i trust..... you
+Farhan Nazar what's the fucks trust got to do with this
The fact that everything that you kill in the game is also trying to kill you for no reason other than walking past them makes most of your argument entirely void.
+THEOTHERJESTER Uh, the designers are the ones who programmed that behaviour. They didn't build a game around some hooded criminal critters living inside their computer.
I like how this touches on things that I occasionally thought about in games. Everyone you gun down in a game has a family. Another momma's boy that wont come home.
You guys are great. Keep it up.
Are you fucking serious?
Yes
+Unplugged What seems to be the matter?
+ScrooLewse ??
+Unplugged Sadly, yes.
IT'S JUST A PRANK BRO!!!
actually had this discussion with my gaming group a few days ago. Good stuff~
We cant be having problematic games guys, I mean its the current year!
Im really happy you broke this games logic down. I saw some odd things within the trailers that I questioned, such as the sanitation enemies doing the same thing as the division is, and you have brought all those things to light and much more.
Pro Tip: Replace "SJWs" with "goblins" and the comments become way more entertaining, and way more immediately reflective of the maturity of the commenters.
+Rhyme This should be a chrome extention
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sjw-to-skeleton/kckodmjikeoncekpplppkkcjolofmacc
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/skeleton-j-warrior/cngepiginggnblepfmmbpkijddklhgni
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/skeleton-alert/nobfdgalgecdhfjbeahipbnpcepcpcei
There's three different extensions that switch 'SJW' with 'skeleton'
Literally all of the people you fight will shoot first, atop that, the only faction truly clean from crime are the rioters.
Rikers, LMB, and Cleaners are all gangs known for killing civilians, JTF, and Agents alike.
I think this video was more personal than it seems on the surface with a more political motive as opposed to the regular sort of Extra Credits sorts of vids
Yea Extra Credit has been known to go on SJW rants. Which is always annoying when people twist things around them to support their world view.
They have had a PC leaning POV for a long time now.
+Flatlander Guy ya they do. it's a real turn off. Disguising this as "mechanics" is deceptive. This was pure social justice shaming.
Good job extra credits. Telling people what others will take away from a game. They know our minds and how everyone will interpret things.
+HYPERSHADNIC I honestly enjoy the idea of what they're doing but yea, having a hard time stomaching their message.
+Bustaperizm I agree with his arguments about how the game parallels what has been happening with police brutality and that kind of thing, but that assumes that people are influenced that easily by video games.
Its sad to see Extra Credits descent into swj rhetoric, slapping outer meaning into games. I love this channel for its contribution to the game culture critique, but this is clearly extrapolation.
Hi, extracredits, it's 2020 here
Some new Corona virus appeared
We fight for toilet paper
In the division we are figthing to eliminate the virus and in real life we are figthing for toiletpaper
Man the whole cleaner situation is so messy
+Jevon James We never try to talk to the cleaners and explain there are immune or give them antidote. I'm just thinking that I'm lucky that I'm a immune should I really be trying to kill everyone who is not immune?
+Travis Romig Yeah, I think they've tried to talk to the Cleaners before. You know what happened? Burned alive.
cry w
Who the sick people? It would have some type of organization and networking for resources or else everyone dies from lack of food within a week maybe a month.
And have you dealt with air filters? It matters on what you are trying to filter some last days some can last a month. There is a difference between a bacterial threat and a virus threat, its a very good thing its not radiation, those filters are worse plus you have to change your clothing more often.
This disease seems worse than Smallpox by transmission and time to death. It seems like within a week it could kill it self out and cleaners and trying to help stop people from spreading it because they have the equipment to move around while food in available. You die from dehydration faster but it is easier to get a water plant going to support more people then thousands of farms and trucks to support thousands.
What I don't understand is that they're burning the infected so that humanity can survive... how is that evil?
Oh, I bet this comments section is going to be full of nothing but very pleasant, totally rational and highly civilized discussion.
Hi from a year.
From what I seen, the only 'strong' arguments seem to be pointing out that those enemy factions in the context of the game are due to context of the game. Doesn't really stop the real-world comparisons that happened on accident shown in the videos, but still worthy of discussions.
Me in 2016: This would NEVER happen.
Me in 2021: ...oh...
I do not know what mission you were talking about at around the 4 minute mark because all the enemies you kill are people who took advantage of the plague to rob, kill, and do what ever they want, people who escaped from a prison, people who think that anyone still in new York should die because they are "infected" and a private military force trying to add martial law to parts of the city without government approval.
I wouldn't say that its problematic but I love this sort of analysis. Good job, guys.
What makes you so sure the developers did not want to make this statement? And I don't mean this as an accusation to them, more like they too are worried to where America (or the West in general) is heading. They might have made an intentional statement the same way the Terminator or the Hunger Games or Fallout (yes, Fallout!) did.
+Mikosch2 Yeah I am not sure. Swedish developers so they might not have the same sensibility to certain things. Being a Swede my self I know that... you tend not to always get the finer points of some issues in America. While I wont say there are not racial issues in Sweden those issues are a different sort of character. And so we Swedes might have a hard time reflecting on it from a American perspective. That being said that just a hypotheses from my side and I do not know the actual background of the writers on this project.
But like you said this might also be intended. To actually make you shock to think about you actions. But then again there is a issue there that what you can do is very limited. Which means it hard to question your actions in the game when you only have one action. Is it a good way to go about it? To have false agency? Or is it better to actually give the player true agency? I am not sure to be honest.
I know that I always feel hesitant about gunning down the rioters. After all there just look like people that tries to survive and wears hoodies. I know that I did not actually start to shoot back at them at the early part of the game until they started to shoot me first. And in fact I am still very heistiant about shooting them. Though I think the game does it darndest in trying to just view them as combatants to gun down.
Personally I would have felt better if I had more options then just use brute force to accomplice my objectives. I am not interested in harming people. I am there to try to stop the virus outbreak and to help people. So it makes me a bit sad when most things are solved though a gunfight. Even thing that could avoid having gunfights have them because well... it is a game. And games have gunfights.
The Division has a interesting backdrop with potentially very interesting topics to explore. But the game is sadly in many ways a bit shallow to. I think a fairly shallow gameplay might actually be what hurts the exploration of it topics. But the game will continue to develop and we will see. I think the game has done something at least if it warrens a video like this that actually beings up the discussion. And that is something at least.
The only thing I find contentious is your belief this wasn't what the devloper intended; At some point a plot hole just can't be that big. The disconnect between actions and tone is so jarring that it actually messes with your suspension of disbelief because that storyline is horrifying for the wrong reasons. Thanks for addressing this stuff.
+spacedoubt15 Actually, given the amount of glitches and poor choices in gameplay..it's entirely possible.
well, the problem is, that martial law has already been declared I'm the area. basically, "the division" is sending spec ops sleeper agents under the indirect command of the president in to help enforce martial law.
as that radio guy says, "martial law is undemocratic, but at least it's transparent."