1841

Bohemia Interactive Studios (BIS) and Bohemia Interactive Australia (BIA) are different companies, BIA is the one who makes the military version. One is in Czech republic, the other one in Australia, pertty far away. Though of course as they are “sister” companies i suppose the exchange of technology and resources is usual.

1842

No question mark, so it wasn’t a question… but it certainly wasn’t agreement either. Welcome to the internet.

1843

Again with this thread.

Because Arma 2 is in the Steam offer of the day. 50% off to both Arma 2 OA and Arma 2 Combined Operations (Arma 2 + OA). So 15€ and 20€.

edit: 50% discount also in the BAF DLC.

1844

??

I don’t think they were designed as games to have a “nefarious hidden agenda”, they were pretty open about them being simple recruitment drivers when ArmA first came out. Looking at the games i’d say ArmA 2 aims to continue in that tradition, but having not played it i can’t say for sure, maybe it is more ‘gamey’ than the first game?

1845

So because is realistic instead of gamey it means is a recruitment game? That’s some… interesting logic.

Simulation games = covert recruitment tools. Damn Microprose, you almost had me!

1846

Hey atleast i havent heard of any stories of US recruiters calling you if you were pretty good at the game.

1847

I’d have thought the more realistic the simulation of war the less potent of a recruiting tool it would be.

1848

Do these games have any sort of serious MP activity? Is there any persistent community that a newb can join?

1849

It gets to that line from Jarhead… “even the most anti-war movies are prowar.”

1850

So I just picked up the combined pack. I’m thinking about grabbing the british one too since it’s only $5. Any advice for a noob? I’ve actually played a little bit (a couple missions) before and I used to play Operation Flashpoint a lot when that was new. Any good community missions or mods I should know about?

1851

Well, if you have played Ofp, you already know 70% of all you need. Lots of things have improved, but the basic eskeleton is the same.

I liked the British addon. Nice recopilation of new soldiers, weapons, vehicles, 4 mission campaign, and a 9 extra sp and mp short missions. Buy it now or never, as it’s also with the 50% off.

First play the boot camp, the second set of missions, from E01 to E15. Play the other set after, if you want, but it’s the same but not as well explained.
After, the single player missions (not campaign). From 01 to 04, and from E01 to E07 (the E missions are from Operation Arrowhead).
You can try a bit the Armory or the rest of sp missions. Or the showcases to see all the hardware.

Then, play the campaigns. You have Arma 2 (which try to put a bit of rpg and open adventure in the game, but fails around the end), OA (more varied and better polished, but less ambitious and with less focus on plot), two missions from a pseudo official campaign called EW (pretty well done), BAF which like OA is polished (for Bohemia :P) and very fun gameplay wise, but kind of without character.

From the user made missions, i am trying to remember names without a lot of success. Search Black Forest mission and others of the same author, and the bardosy campaigns. There were a few ones more which surprised me, but i can’t remember more names.

The ultra realism mod is called ACE, if you are into that kind of thing.
There was a good sound mod called JRSS or something like that.

1852

Sweet, thanks. I picked up the brit pack a few minutes ago too. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to download them but this should be fun.

1853

Do the boot camp, but don’t worry about finishing everything, then start the Harvest Red campaign. Don’t do the scenario missions first, some of them can tear newbies apart and they can exhibit Arma’s trademark of random occurrences putting you in a nearly unwinnable situation. Avoid the armory, do simple quick missions instead.

1854

My mistake i thought ArmA was another way if saying America’s Army, so yeah this is a different set of games, not a game designed by the american army as a recruitment aid.

I’d still argue all these games are basically recruitment tools/propaganda at some level, but yeah in this case i had mistaken the games. Sorry for any confusion caused!

1855

by “these games” do you mean simulators or all shooters with real weapons?

1856

Well, the BIS games have shooting in them, and they take a lot of military money from VBS. It’s not exactly a Hero game like Call Of Duty where you’re supposed to use your regenerative superpower to kill half a city at a time. It’s over on the other end of the scale where for the vast majority of the time you are probably better off sitting in a corner to avoid some petty, random death from something you couldn’t reasonably have done much to avoid.

1857

A bit of both. After 9/11 in particular there were a slew of violent fps type games, some famous, high profile and popular, but most of a ‘second tier’ in terms of AAA games(that game with the ‘deck of cards’ of bad guys etc).

Over the years i’ve wondered about the deluge of these type of graphicly violent and ‘real-world’ based fps games. Is it really simply a case of customers demand? or maybe there are people/organisations that fund ‘politically motivated’ games? It’s happened in movies before, so why not in games?

It’s just a theory of course, based on looking at gaming patterns over decades and knowing just how good games are at disseminating information.

1858

ROFL. Crackpot thoery.

  1. Shooters are popular from Doom / Quake times. From Halo onwards, they made the jump to consoles, when consoles went mainstream in success, shooters went along.
  2. Real world shooters are popular from CounterStrike and Medal of Honor, which were before 9/11. Just because MW1 was a huge success and it was launched after 9/11 doesn’t make it related to 9/11, it surely would have the same result if it was released a few years before.
  3. It’s true there is now more graphicaly violent and visceral games, do you want to know why? Because now we have the graphical power to make it so, before we only had lowres shit.
  4. Some low budget shooters have tried to profit from the success of other bigger games and also from the real world climate (terrorism menace, wars in middle east, etc) and its prevalence in the daily news, but nothing particularly important, it’s par the course.
  5. Yes, it’s consumer demand.
  6. “Politically motivated” movies were a product of a specific time, when there was a world war or a cold war with the URSS. It’s not the same case now.
  7. It’s true there are actual movies where the US Army collaborates. But it’s not like the movies are payed by them. It’s more… if the script of the movie puts the army in a favorable light, in exchange they collaborate a bit (borrowing a tank and a few jeeps, letting film in a base, etc). If the movie puts the US army as the bad guys, the movie still can be done, of course, but the studio have to build a fake militar base, etc.
  8. Who would be the people/organizations that fund the games? For what purpose? What would they win? You are vague on this point, making you sound like a conspiracy freak.
  9. Don’t use false assumptions like “games are good at disseminating information”. I could say it’s the other way around, games are kind of bad disseminating information, as in the end embedded information is extraneous and people focus on pure gameplay.
1859

Please cite as many factual examples as you can.

1860

lol, well maybe you are too young to remember the actual era, but you have probably seen a bunch of those old WW2 movies with John Wayne in etc?

Here are a few links to get you on the track of the role that propaganda plays in our modern societies, as used in film and other mediums:

http://wapedia.mobi/en/American_propaganda_during_World_War_II

All countries use this type of indoctrination of course, and i think we see it in games also.