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Swamprat -> RE: Player discomfort? (1/14/2006 11:37:42 PM)
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It is worth remembering that the war was won by the 'west'. And this game's contributers nearly all are westerners.
It may seem a glib observation, but the subconscious aspect of this, even among the most well-meaning, should not be ignored. The Germans we can relate to, in spite of the holocaust, because we put that down to a 'minority' elite element who were clearly mad. The Soviets were on our side, and even the Italians can be cuddly once you overlook Mussolini. But in the anals of the west, in most of our books and programs, the Japanese are 'odd' to us. Gassing jews in specially made chambers looks scientific and neat, even if the intentions were perverse. But slicing open POWs with samurai swords and charging tanks and aircraft carriers with explosives strapped on looks 'other' to us. The west does not understand the east, so we can portray them as savages of a kind, brutal in battle, illogical with their suicide, despicable with their 'stab in the back' at Pearl Harbour. We can portray them, and we do, much as we portray the Vietnamese, and the Chinese with their 'hordes' (which must mean they are inhuman, right?).
I've read and heard much that explains and, in a way, excuses Germany's reason to embark on a second world war. But the explanations for Japan are much less forthcoming. The mitigating circumstances aren't shouted so loudly, if at all. Perhaps we don't want to know the truth (it might be more embarrasing than we realise). Or perhaps we've portrayed the Japanese as such savages that we don't need a reason - it's clear, like so many James Bond baddies, that they just wanted to conquer the world because they were evil.
But SPWAW is just a game right? Right. But it's designers and contributers are human. And although all well meaning, are all bought up in the west and infused with the west's collective learning. And perhaps getting too fascinated with the Japanese is a bit too uncomfortable - like wanting to play the Serbs in a Bosnian war.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into this.
But my father-in-law, now passed away, fought in WWII (he was not my wife's natural father) on HMS Nelson; in the Atlantic and mediterranean. He didn't serve in the pacific. But he was at peace with the idea of Germans being friends again and fellow europeans, but to his dying day, he swore he could never abide the Japanese. And I'm not sure he ever met a Japanese person in his whole life. It's odd these cultural walls. Invisible, yet not intangible.
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