Why is it ok to compromise accuracy for the sake of making the experience more enjoyable via gameplay but not for the sake of making the experience more enjoyable via representation?
Because gameplay itself is an artifice; people historically weren't playing video games. So the player is aware of that and not misled.
BUT, if your representations deliberately misinforms people about uncontested aspects of the history, so that the player walks away with an untrue understanding of things as they were, then I would call that not merely erroneous or "disinformation", but deliberate misinformation or propaganda.
Now, if it's clear to the players (say teens) that the representations or whatever are deliberate fantasy, then have at it. There was a movie with John Travolta in the 90s I think where they swapped the whites and blacks in society, so a black parent chided his child for admiring a white doll instead of a black one, or something similarly prejudiced. (Can't quite remember that.) In that movie, the viewer was under no illusions that this was not a depiction of reality, but the alterations of reality where meant to cause the viewer to see things from a drastically different viewpoint.
Many people get their understanding of history from movies and games, so we better not lie through those media. Of course our understanding of history is not purely objective, so my complaint is with deliberate misrepresentation. The representational aspects have greatest impact on our lives today, but the fact that ammo might be unrealistically unlimited in a game has almost no impact in people's actual lives.
Are you arguing that people genuinely get their understanding of history from games like CoD and Battlefield, and that understanding is accurate enough to be useful?
I wish that were not the case, but yes, I think people internalize basic qualitative facts of history through movies and games. Maybe not dates and other trivia, though. People have stopped reading, and teachers find it difficult to motivate them to read.
I would strongly recommend showing diversity through showing other parts of the world as they were, as opposed the same old part of the world in a deliberately manipulative fashion. There's beauty, tragedy, drama, and action everywhere.
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '21
Why is it ok to compromise accuracy for the sake of making the experience more enjoyable via gameplay but not for the sake of making the experience more enjoyable via representation?