In June 2006 PC Gamer UK replaced its long-running Devil’s Advocaat column (provocative analysis of egg-based liqueurs) with a Devil’s Advocate column (provocative analysis of game-related subjects). It was a popular move. What follows is one of my contributions. Military shooters had been getting some stick for trivialising war. I waded in, semi-seriously, in their defence.
War traumatises, brutalises, and destroys. War scars, steals innocence and takes life randomly. War is an ordeal, a nightmare, a necessary and unnecessary evil.
If you want blindingly obvious ‘insights’ like these go watch Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, or the evening news. If, on the other hand, you’re after real revelations – genuine profundity – I recommend Call of Duty, Brothers In Arms, Day of Defeat or any other half-decent military shooter.
For decades now, directors, documentary makers and war correspondents have been busy filling our heads with safe, socially responsible representations of conflict. These representations are massively important in a world where governments are so ready to trade the lives of their citizens for power and profit, but they are, on the whole, worryingly incomplete. What’s missing? The most unpalatable, unfashionable truth of all:
War is fun.
Not always. Not often. Not when you’re picking pieces of your best pal’s skull out of your webbing, or listening to the girl you mistook for a foe crying for her mother through lips foamy with blood. Obviously it’s no fun then. But read memoirs, sift through unexpurgated reportage, catch veterans off-guard, and you will find the evidence. Soldiers and airmen admitting to feelings of elation, extraordinary exhilaration, glee even; warriors guiltily or shamelessly confessing that they sometimes enjoyed the experience of battle.
On the rare occasions when feelings like these find their way onto celluloid they are usually assigned to the safest of stereotypes. The private that takes pleasure in combat is a scary psychopath or a pitiful fellow unhinged by the fury of the fight. He’s a nutjob. We are shielded from the darker, more disquieting possibility that he may, in fact, be a bloke just like us. Games are much less squeamish, much more honest.
Nobody need explain to a gamer what Winston Churchill (a Boer War witness) meant by “the exhilaration of being shot at without effect” Similarly, deep-down we are probably less surprised than most when we read that level-headed Scots Guard Robert Lawrence shouted “Isn’t this fun!” during the bloody assault of Mount Tumbledown (Seconds later a sniper’s bullet destroyed 43% of his brain). The fact that Geoffrey Wellum, a strikingly sane, sensitive WW2 RAF pilot, experienced feelings of “savage delight” during a particular dogfight is not shocking to the aficionado of Battle Of Britain II or IL-2 : 1946. We understand because the recreations we revel in trigger very similar emotions.
However graphically sophisticated or gruesomely gory military shooters become in the future they will always struggle to communicate anything meaningful about the fear, pain, and grief that war generates so effortlessly. We shouldn’t criticize them too harshly for this. Other popular mediums are handling these aspects of the curriculum reasonably effectively already. We should be thankful instead, that games are providing insights that other war depictions can’t or won’t provide.
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War is fun?
War is only fun to those who haven’t seen it. If you think war is “fun”, sign up and go off to one. If you don’t have the balls, go to a PTSS meeting at the VA and talk to those who did.
“But read memoirs, sift through unexpurgated reportage, catch veterans off-guard, and you will find the evidence.” The operative word here is sift. The misused word here is evidence. If you “sifted” out everything but the anecdotal, you tend to come to silly conclusions like “war is fun”.
You know the funniest, hands on slap-happy, laugh-till-you cry, come-to-Jesus part about war? Coming home with all your limbs. Damn, that was fun. Of course, what’s rattling around in your brain after the experience isn’t very much fun.
You know who likes war in my opinion? Children who don’t know any better, the emotionally retarded, and psychopaths. You know who doesn’t like war? Anybody in the area where the bullets are flying around.
I’m not saying “war is fun” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read on the internet, but it makes Casey Kasem’s Top 40 list for me. It holds a place in my heart with the “Moran” sign guy.
- John
Sergeant, USMC
Veteran Gulf War I, and other miscellaneous stupidities under Reagan/Bush the Elder
Subject matter expert: War
That’s your experience. You can hardly judge that anyone who enjoys battle a child, idiot or maniac. There have been plenty of happy soldiers throughout the ages, you just don’t seem to be one of them. Also, considering the way the first Gulf War worked out I’m surprised you had any bullets flying around you at all. The Marines generally do get the short end of the stick, though.
Rich_P almost touched on this, but what about RTS’s? They largely have war as the main subject matter, often on a much greater scale than FPS’s. I recently played CoD: World at War. I was a little unnerved by the blown off limbs – especially the part where you move through Japanese lines after a heavy bombardment. I don’t think I’ve gotten a kind of visceral “war is nasty” moment in a strategy game. Couldn’t it be argued that RTS (or some of them) trivialize war moreso than FPS’s may glorify combat?
/goes to listen to War Pigs
//maybe
Ah, but you’re wrong. I can, and I do. That’s one of the benefits of having extended first hand observational experience instead of having to rely on second hand anecdotal reports and/or stories from biographers/autobiographers more interested in how their subject looks then reality. I can make direct observations and then come to conclusions based on them. I may be wrong, but I certainly am in a position to make the call.
I’ve seen rookie soldiers piss themselves when not even under direct fire – just when the sound of combat starts up. I saw a veteran soldier get up after a T-72/LOB put a round through his Hvee shaking so bad he couldn’t hold the radio button down to make a report for the better part of 20 minutes. Never once did I see anyone give the thumbs up and talk about how fun it was to be shelled, shot at, etc, etc, etc.
I have yet to run into anyone who is in love with war who doesn’t fit into one of the aforementioned categories. Actually, that’s not true: there are two other categories that I would add – the liars and the forgetful. The former need no further discussion, and the latter are those who have forgotten most of the bad and only remember the good. IMHO, they have earned that right, so I’m not going to call someone out on that.
For example: Anyone who ever had a bullet pass by their ear isn’t going to turn to their chum and discuss “the exhilaration of being shot at without effect.*” No sir. He’s going to be asking himself if he happens to have extra clean underwear stowed away in his pack.
* Unless he happens to be Winston Churchill. In which case he knocks back another bottle of gin, and whips out this one liner. Hell, he probably shamed the Boer who took the shot away with another (unrecorded) one-liner. The man was a quote machine. Ridiculous. The man would rule the forum/blog-space if he was still alive today. He’d already have cut me to shreds with some biting comment on my manhood.
Or our friend Scots Guard Robert Lawrence, who is quoted here as shouting “Isn’t this fun!” while charging up the hill. If anyone here thinks he wasn’t being sarcastic, I’ve got a bridge to sell to you. Only slightly used of course. The Scot’s are hard people, but I believe fun for them is the same as it is for me: knocking back a drink at the pub and doing your best to get laid.
I’m not saying that people talking about how fun war is has never happened in the long sad stupid history of war, but I believe they fall into one of the five previously mentioned categories. If I had to guess the fun:not run ratio of all soldiers who have ever been in war, I’m guessing the ratio is somewhere around a million to one (conservatively, probably higher). This ratio doesn’t count the REMF’s, profiteers, politicians, spectators, and other riff-raff not associated with the actual fighting end of things.
Perhaps that’s who your happy soldiers are – the ones who spend the war anywhere and everywhere but where the bullet goes bang. Damn, that would make me happy too. I could write a memoir about how I pushed a bunch of counters across a map and won a war. Happy fun time!
I think scribbler got much closer to the target with his statement “I’d argue that the best depictions of war in film like Apocalypse Now, or Full Metal Jacket**, attempt to convey both exhilaration of combat while attempting to explore other aspects too.”
Exhilaration is the word I would use, not fun. The “oh my god I’m still alive” moment is, for the sane, the former, and not the latter. Again, with the limb/ genitalia check after something goes bang, I’ve only felt the former.
I could get on board with “War is exhilarating”. “War is Fun” is still standing next to “Moran” guy for just plain ridiculous for me.
** Full metal Jacket is spot on for USMC Boot camp. It really hits the highlights of the process. I can’t speak directly to the Vietnam war part, as that wasn’t my war, but if you don’t mind me speaking for a friend who was there for three tours, he felt it really captured the spirit of craziness that went on at the Tet Offensive.
PS: Lots and lots and lots of bullets went bang in GWI (and the other various minor sundries of that age). I’ve got a enough shell frag in me to have trouble with the hand wands at the airport. Not sure what GWI you were in, but it obviously wasn’t the one I and my men went to.
- John
/rantoff
I live with a man who grew up in one of the most hideous wars of the last thirty years. Every week people he knew died, and every day he lived with the fear that a grenade could crash through his window and kill his family at any moment. He has no time for warmongerers and shakes his head in despair at the thought of how absolutely nothing was gained by the whole thing but a load of death and destruction, and he acknowledges how lucky he was to survive it, especially after he was conscripted.
He spent much of last night playing Far Cry 2, gleefully gunning down soldiers, and takes as much delight in a hideously violent grenade kill in a good FPS as any one of us. He’s looking forward to the next Call of Duty. Because playing games is fun. People who pretend to be offended on someone else’s behalf should just shut the hell up and let them speak for themselves.
And anyone who tries to deny that there’s a visceral thrill in surviving a dangerous situation is frankly embarassing themself.
No, you’re not. You had one experience, and you’re in no position to judge how other people should feel about it. You’re judgment is no more relevant than a games journalist stating that “no one but idiots or maniacs should like X game”. You’ve got experience in the field, but you can’t tell me what other people should feel on that basis alone.
If not me, then who? Isn’t all second hand knowledge ultimately derived from the experience of others? If a person with extensive first hand knowledge about a subject isn’t in a position to put forward his conclusions for others to examine, then who is?
You obviously disagree with the witnesses conclusions, your honor, but does not the witness have the right to them?
You’ve attempted to tie the reality and consequences of combat and the fantasy constructs of a computer game together to make your argument.
It’s easy enough to validate: ask the man you know if he was “gleeful” while gunning down real people, and did he have a sense of “delight” when he achieved a real “violent grenade kill”.
Your own statements about the man make it pretty clear he would not. Thus, your friend/relative obviously can separate the real from fantasy. Again, from your statements, the man did not have a “fun war”, but can have fun playing a game without consequences.
I haven’t seen a single post from anyone do that yet. We were talking about war is fun, not that the experiences of war can give you a visceral thrill. Visceral thrill covers pretty much the entire spectrum of crude emotion, does it not?
Germans try to pretend WWII didn’t happen, from what I’ve read.
Than you have read the wrong books (or tabloids). WWII is still, and will be for a long time, a important topic in Germany. No sane person is pretending that it never happened.
I don’t know where you live, but I would like to advice you to diversify your sources of information.
You can tell is how it made you feel, but not how others should feel. Enjoying battle doesn’t usually qualify one for the nut house, and you’d have quite a task on your hands if you sought to prove that Patton was a raving lunatic, a liar, emotionally retarded or a child.
Now for the requisite bit about how you would beat me up if we ever met, I presume.
That’s precisely the point – it’s a game. It simulates the thrilling parts without all the shitey parts. And something that gives one a thrill is a pretty good definition of ‘fun’, is it not?
I won’t deny the man was in love with war. His entire life was devoted to it. I don’t believe he ever said “war is fun”.
The closest I can think of is “Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!”
Don’t see the word fun in there, so not sure how this applies to the position I’ve put forward, which is, in simplest terms: war is not fun for those directly involved.
PS: The Ad hominem argument at the end of your post was amusing. Not sure what my physical prowess has to do with this conversation. Besides wowing the ladies on this thread, if any.
I think we’re both on the same page here. Game:fun, real war: !fun
John,
Thanks for your insightful comments, and for your service.
cheers,
Richard
ENS, USN
I have only mild experience with military shooters and none with real war. That said, I doubt that even the most immersive of the former conjure up the experience of the latter for most players. I loved playing through COD4 and enjoyed the story, but it was basically really awesome paintball with even less lasting effect on reality than that sport (due to lack of bruises or pine needles everywhere after a full hour’s worth of hiding in a forest).
I think that the “war is fun” tagline does little justice to this article. It is likely true that war is only fun to children, psychopaths, and those who don’t understand what is happening around them. I believe that the article’s point is partially predicated on this assumption. If enjoying war is a function of a lack of understanding or empathy, why then is its simulation so popular? Why do military shooters do so well when the insectoid alien menace genre thrives as well? You could go off and kill space roaches with a laser, but sometimes you choose Nazis and terrorists and assault rifles instead. These games are not true simulations of war by any stretch, but that doesn’t prevent other connections to real conflicts. They strive to present reasonably accurate iconography in the most compelling fashion they can muster. They aren’t war, but I think they might hit part of the mind as being close enough.
I’d love to see some first-hand research on this issue. Give groups of players free access to rotating selections of FPSs from various genres and see if trends develop. Perhaps I’m wrong and the popularity of military shooters is due to other factors (quality of play, media presence, etc.). I’d wager (but not much, because I’m not getting paid for weeks) that the opportunity to play soldier in a relatively contemporary setting is a big draw for many. If that’s so, perhaps there’s a little more child or psychopath in us than we thought.
Right, right.
I remember now. Germany is just really touchy about stuff having the Swastika in it, etc. And violence. But that’s the opposite position entirely, remembering so much you’re really touchy about the subject. I probably have that wrong too, but now I’m wrong in a way that’s more consistent with what I’ve read.
Dumb of me. I apologize to all Germans reading this.
This is interesting. We talk, though, as if this male thing of needing extreme adventure and to be tested in the face of death or something is just human nature. Well, given all the things that have been called human nature we wouldn’t want to be too hasty there. But at this end of history it’s fairly safe to say that the question of being a soldier or warrior sits in the back of a lot of people’s minds. And if circumstances provide, they’ll find reasons to answer it (or at least investigate it). They’re not killers, often not even patriots, but they weight of myth (or something) means they want to find out and war is the only space to do it (a psycho-social space that conveniently and temporarily reconfigures everything they believed about being a caring individual human being. Legally and socially proscribed absolution for murder. Plenty will tell you it’s the true essence of life experienced first hand but that’s baloney. Extremes are not essences. You might as well say life on earth is a facade and to really understand it we have to go live in a volcano).
Anyway, I swear I had a point here somewhere.
I would split a hair at ‘war is fun’ and say war is exciting and excitement and the potential for it are fun. War is fun to play with, for all the reasons (well, not sure that’s a good word since reason doesn’t much come into it) that it is appealing and intruiging in reality.
It’s hard to say if games are significantly different to the warrior mythmaking and glorification of the past. Taken seriously they can provide serious food for thought (as per that guilt article of …Walker’s(?) a while back), in ways other media cannot. But I doubt they’ll particularly alter things that much. Just as the most violent, harrowing and off-putting service account (from some weeping old man who damns war and governments with every word and shouts “Never again! Under no circumstances!” at the end.) still has boys enthralled and saying to themselves “That’s so cool!” or “You’re the finest person in the world; I want to be just like you and do all the things you’ve done” regardless of the message.
I have pleasure of experiencing war first hand. And i can tell you one thing
War is as fun as sitting in cold puddle of your urine while shitting yourself.
There is no glory in war nor fun. It is painfull experience of pointless killing other people for nothing that could not and will not be resolved with diplomatic means.
People that fought in war usually end up in mental institutions or as drug or alcohol addicts with ruined lives.
Games are fun though…but those are only pixels
I don’t like the devil’s advocate idea at all. Writers either get the green light to write BS with a ready excuse like “look, it was just to promote discussions, it doesn’t mean I believe this” or they’re forbidden from stating what they honestly believe because the article’s tone dictates something else, with the same excuse (even if it was their own choice). I don’t know under which category this piece falls, but it’s pretty good :P
On the other hand, I’ll keep it simple and say I don’t think the thrills you get from a game are related to the thrills of actual warfare, and the thrills of actual warfare shouldn’t just be dismissed as some sort of sick “glee”. It doesn’t mean they were gleeful because they just fucking shot someone’s brains out, they may simply be gleeful because they got to live, and their partners got to live, and they had a part in that. The joy of offering life if you will, rather than the joy of taking life. Though I’m sure a few individuals also feel the latter, but I doubt it’s the rule, otherwise it would be in every interview, and not just in a few, and people wouldn’t be so afraid to admit it.
So, yeah, the thrills you get from a game. If it’s multi player, it’s just the whole competitive thing, beating others, or in my case managing to not die twice as many times as you kill, or whatever. It can be the same as sports, or the same in games that aren’t about wars, or violence. It’s just a competition.
For single player, it’s similar to the thrills you get in a movie. You’re constantly aware it’s not real, the most a game deisgner can do is spook you with sudden events or with use of music and sounds, much like movies. Except you’re in perceived control. You can also be competitive with the AI, though on different terms than with players. The AI is only created to challenge you and you take up that challenge and have fun with it. Again, it can be the same with games that aren’t about warfare.
So, yeah, I guess I don’t have a point after all. Tough weekend, haven’t slept, c ya.
About the “enjoyment” of war: wouldn’t large levels of adrenaline and whatever other hormones your body produces in a situation of intense “ohfuckohshitohbuggerimgonnadieeeeaaarrrghhh!!!!” pretty much deactivate your higher brain functions so you wouldn’t be thinking “War is hell, alas!” during those moments but rather a vague but intense feeling of exhilaration? I can imagine the excitement of warfare falling under this category.
“It was exciting; no other word for it, and no explanation needed, for honest folk. We all have kindly impulses, fostered by two thousand years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbour, but we have the killer instinct, too, the murderous impulse of the hunter… but one must not say so. The young men going out to the Gulf felt obliged to tell the cameras that they felt nothing personal against the Iraqis, and wished them no harm – but I know, for I have felt it, that when an Iraqi came in their sights, the blood-lust would take them hot and strong. Never mind the excuse that this is what a soldier is trained for, that it is his duty, that like 007 he is licensed to kill; the truth is that he gets a kick out of it – which may be one reason why, when he is asked later: “Did you ever kill a Jap (or a German or an Iraqi)?” he will often dodge the question. Other reasons include a decent reticence, an understandable wish not to dwell on unpleasant memories, a reluctance to be thought a line-shooter or a psychopath, and a sense that the question is in doubtful taste. (The best answer, incidentally, is “Why do you want to know?” That makes them think.)
Such considerations don’t arise when the human target appears in the V of the backsight. You’re just thankful for the chance and concentrate on keeping the aim steady – which is not easy when you’re excited, and fearful that they’ll get away.”
George MacDonald Fraser, Lance Corporal of the Border Regiment in Burma in 1945, writing in Quartered Safe Out Here, his excellent war memoir. I’ve no personal experience of war, and God help me I hope I never do, but I would agree with the late Mr Fraser that to deny the excitement that can come from warfare would be dishonest. Obviously war as a whole is despicable, but it runs the whole gamut of human experience, from the very worst to the very best (courage and sacrifice and all that good stuff). It makes sense that enjoyment would be one of the factors in that.
I think one thing that games get right is how easy it is to die. In films, you can’t kill the main character at random, but in games you can, with the proviso that they just come back to life. Regenerating health, quicksave, checkpoints all serve to remind us of how easy it is to get shot – and when games mostly remove these – like Operation Flashpoint, Raven Shield or whatever, it becomes terrifying just to exist anywhere near an enemy with a gun.
War games, aren’t they fun!
Exactly, games about war are enormously fun. But there is a huge disconnect between the experience of the game, and the experience of the real thing. No matter how ‘nervous’ you get when playing competetively, the lizard brain easily knows when it is in any actual danger. And some comments here leads me to believe those people have never felt such danger. Or they’re playing devils advocate.
“Obviously war as a whole is despicable, but it runs the whole gamut of human experience, from the very worst to the very best (courage and sacrifice and all that good stuff)”
I don’t think “courage”, “sacrifice” and the “exilaration of surviving” counts as the very best of human experience. “Courage” means the experience of fear, except years later when you tell your story to your son, carefully omitting the fact that the guy you were saving had just lost a leg. “Sacrifice” means what exactly? Certainly not comparable to another “best experience” like, say, love.
We mimic war in games, movies and play, because the situations with the most danger are the situations thought of as the most worthy to experience. But that feeling of “worth” of the experience, is completely lost when theres actual danger around.
Many thanks to John the marine for his views and insights, they were very much fun to read :)
My great great grandfather was a mercenary and i’m afraid to say, he genuinely liked fighting. Later in life he was a bare-knuckle prize fighter but would often fight on a sunday morning with ‘friends’, just for fun. So i guess he was an idiot – or maybe just a very tough guy who was perfectly equipped to take on the shitty jobs nobody likes: Killing and fighting. He was by all accounts a lucky s.o.b and when he was an old man he was terribly sad, not through post traumatic stress but because he missed the death and destruction because it made him feel alive. So he found war to be ‘fun’ but fun in those days wasn’t really a happy-smiling type of fun, more a feeling of completeness and usefulness and maybe just the quiet satisfaction that can be gleened by ‘being good at what you do’.
I had a friend who was a vet of the modern conflict in Afghanistan and he told this one story about a certain mission that he saw a squad of the Delta Force go out on.
Basically, he was staged just outside the town that Delta had a mission in. They went in with civilian clothes and behaved more like they were going to a social gathering than a fight. Every once in a while, my friend would hear laughter after some gunshots. The Delta squad’s conversation after returning to base was as if they’d seen some action-comedy movie.
Granted, these people have lives that revolve around killing people with ease. But it just goes to show that war can easily be enjoyable after one gets over the fear of death.
I’ve read somewhere that it only takes 2 kills before a human is no longer emotionally affected by killing. It takes a lot more experience with your friends dying but those emotions can also be all but eradicated.
Even before that experience, earlier posts make a good point. The exhilaration of being in danger can easily replace feelings of fear in most situations. Go do something “extreme” for the first time and you’ll see what I mean. First times on roller coasters, playing paintball, skydiving, and anything else where the fear of pain or discomfort or death exists will show you how fear can turn into euphoria for the brief period that it happens in. The fear (on no matter what level it exists) will return immediately after the end of the event. After enough experience is gained, the fear response subsides for most people and often the level of exhilaration does too.
Clive, you’re Snake’s son?! Wow!
Er, I meant great great grandson or whatever you call it in english :P
I think we might all be guilty of reducing this to a simple yes/no question.
Quite obviously war, taken as a whole, is not fun. I’d go so far as to say – based purely on second and third hand sources – that it’s far more miserable than not.
However that doesn’t mean that – at specific times and in specific ways – some of the people involved in the war have not experienced strong positive emotions; perhaps relief at surviving, pride in their fellow soldiers or the sheer temporary exhilaration of being “in the zone”.
So might we say that war is not fun, but some people have nonetheless had fun for a time during a war?
I think what alot of people take issue with here is the word ‘fun’.
To use the allmighty wiki
“Recreation or fun is the expenditure of time in a manner designed for therapeutic refreshment of one’s body or mind. ”
Words like “Thrill” or “exhilarating” feel correct because they still have a ‘edge’ to them. “Fun” however seems to be a word which implies no negatives.
If Tim had said
‘War is thrilling’
i doubt there would have been half the debate there has been (which kinda means hes done his job well hehe).
Wait, is that a Snake Plissken reference?
I agree with bonedancer. According to the testimonies of my family that fought in WW2, war is a lot of uncomfortable waiting, some being worried, and occasional action. My uncle George fought with Patton’s army, and it took quite a toll on him. His hair went gray and he refused to talk about it. My uncle Dave was a Marne who fought in every major conflict of the Pacific as a BAR man. He hated much of it, but it made him who he was, and he always loved the Marines. He told me a story of waiting in the darkness in a foxhole while the Japanese snuck up on their bellies. He couldn’t fire because it’s hard to tell who is doing the shooting at night, and he would have been shot. So he waited for the Jap with his knife ready, shitting his pants. That’s not fun.
But war is not all bad. Winning is fun. Beating the enemy is fun. Killing the Huns is fun. War is a proving ground as old as man, and it has helped to define people and entire generations. Perhaps I feel that war can be fun simply because I bear a lot of hate in my heart. I am Armenian (half) and my Great Grandmother was a victim of the Genocide (perpetrated by the Turks). She saw her entire family killed, and she was only spared because she hid in a pile of bodies. She was later pulled out by a Turkish soldier who let her go, and she worked her way across Turkey as a servant girl, where she was treated badly. I would have absolutely no problem exacting vengeance on the Turks, and I can very easily see how that would be fun. Perhaps catharsis is fun.
If we start from the belief that war is fun, we can work backwards regarding what is not fun about it.
1. War is not fun when you die/get maimed.
2. War is not fun when your friends die/get maimed.
3. War is not fun when you sympathize with the people you are shooting.
4. War is not fun when you are afraid of explosions.
5. War is not fun when you disagree with the goal of said war.
6. War is not fun when you disagree with killing.
7. War is not fun when you are squeamish about gore.
Perhaps I’ve left something out, but it seems that provided those conditions are not met, war can be fun. There has been enough war through the ages that many a person has satisfied these conditions, and thus has had fun.
These seems to be a rather specious argument. It’s easy enough to confirm – validate the opposite, which in this case would be “If we start from the belief that war is NOT fun, we can work backwards regarding what IS fun about it.”
What’s fun about it?
Destroying an evil can be fun.
Guns ARE fun (confirmed it myself).
Camaraderie under fire is fun.
Winning things (even a battle) can be fun.
To be clear, your premise is, war is fun because:
In war, destroying an evil can be fun
In war, guns ARE fun (confirmed it myself).
In war, camaraderie under fire is fun.
In war, winning things (even a battle) can be fun
That’s correct.
Actually, those things are fun, so if war has those properties, but not the properties that I listed that would make it not fun, then yes, it would be fun.
It’s an interesting theory. Let me know if you ever get to test your hypothesis.
I doubt I will. I don’t think the U.S. will start drafting any time soon, and I’m certainly not going to join. I’m not suggesting that war IS fun, just that it CAN BE fun under the right circumstances. Your argument from the getgo was that anyone who enjoyed war must be a loon, a child, or a retard. I’m simply suggesting how someone might enjoy a war, not that it is fun for most people or most of the time.
I’d like to point out the contrast between Fallout 3 and Cormac McCarthy’s After reading the book, I’m surprised that anyone ever talks to you in Fallout.
Bah, link fail! It’s Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
@Jeremy; To be fair, the fallout world is something of a bountiful garden compared to the state of everything in The Road.
But yeah, it IS an interesting contrast. Great book, highly, highly recommended.
@A-Scale
I argue that 3-7 (excepting 4 perhaps) on that list of yours is reserved for idiots and loons, sociopathic people who would end up mass murderers if there were no tangible consequences of it.
Killing is only ever a “need to do” response, never a “want,” despite however calmly you are trained to do it.
–
And oh yes theres no question that war is thrilling, and that winning is thrilling. But I think of fun as ’something I’d prefer to do to pass my time,’ and I don’t think war satisfies that requirement for anyone.
Put your hand up if you have been to war or a warzone
i have and when you talk about it with hindsight yes those scrapes and near misses were fun when retold, heck i find job interviews worse then crossing the kuwait/iraq border, in fact the former was a rush.
er i may have got that the wrong way round lol
With most respect to you, I completely understand why it’s fun to look back at, but what some people are arguing here is that being shot at is an entertaining passtime. (For instance, It can also be fun to look back at a job interview.)
While I can easily see that dangerous situations, or situations where you have to kill, are extremely exilarating, I think it’s a huge disconnect from reality to call it “fun.” I have never been in war and have said so in these comments, but I do know a little about what happens to the brain in stress situations. If you prefer to talk about real experiences, I’ll gladly shut up and listen :)
My girlfriend’s grandfather served in the Pacific and has related to me many of his experiences there. Not once has he said anything in detail about being in combat, though he did show me his two Purple Hearts. Somehow I very much doubt he’d use the word fun to describe what happened there.
So if you don’t mind killing someone evil, or if you don’t sympathize with a member of the SS, or if you agree with the cause of a war, or if you are not squeamish about gore, you are a sociopathic murderer? I’m no fan of gore, but I’ll shoot someone guilty of genocide any day of the week. And twice on Sunday!
“Don’t mention the war” Fawlty Towers
Damn I am still too stupid to figure out how to quote right. My post above should have contained qoutes from RealHorrorshow.