I'm sorry for your friend.
I would hope my friends would never use me to say otherwise.
Overall feels net-positive.
I know meta-comments are discouraged, but I wanted to encourage managing emotions during discourse with clear emotional fuel.
That said, I did not find the game fun. It was laggy, UI elements seemed a bit sloppy and cut off, and the purpose of buttons wasn't very clear. Also, I saw mostly brown tiles rather than buildings, maybe it was already all destroyed.
They can't at all compete with some off the shelf kids toy costing $30 with a HEAT round attached. The cost differential here with a 35 million euro tank is beyond pale.
Edit: typo
Like, if a bunch of kids caught a stray cat, tied him up, and started shouting in his ears and laughing, would you stop them? And if they complained “no fun allowed”, would you think that was fair? What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp deepfake representations of your friends and family? Do you not agree it would be reasonable for some people to find that in bad taste, including those who have suffered from domestic violence in real life?
You may say that this is just a game, but media affects people too. There are thousands of games where you can shoot at fictional infrastructure, is there really that much to gain from destroying representations of real buildings?
The previous incarnations of that, like "videogames cause violence", "superhero comic books cause juvenile delinquency", "D&D causes satanism", "rock and roll caused a decline in youth morals", are nonsense that was discredited long ago.
God damn, why must HN always assume the worst? Engage in good faith for once, stop assuming every argument is made by an imbecile and that you understand everything and are the lord of reason.
If you’re offended by this, maybe you should just not engage with it. Why does the onus fall on the creator?
Take a look at Battlefield. Should we take that down because it simulates war? Maybe we should remove guns from ever appearing in media because people have died from guns. Should we remove color from media because it may be insensitive to the colorblind? Why don’t we just remove all words everywhere because someone has had their feelings hurt by words. Where do we draw the line?
I’m not offended by it. I am in fact very politely and cordially inviting the commenter above to consider a different perspective, and my approach to this subject in this entire thread has been one of compassion and curiosity, which is easily verifiable. I recommend doing that before launching on tirades of bad faith argumentation.
It’s been my observation that people who accuse others of being offended are themselves the most easily offended. Very much like the people who call others “snowflakes” have the thinnest skins themselves.
> maybe you should just not engage with it.
Despite it not being my case, those who are offended can and should very much still engage. Suggesting otherwise is nonsensical and a tool of those who promote hate. There is no societal progress if those who see something wrong do not speak up.
> (…) Should we take that down because it simulates war? (…)
I said in my comment that we already have thousands of games like that. I didn’t say that was bad. You are arguing in profound bad faith and are not even doing a good job of hiding your repeated straw men. I recommend you learn to engage with the arguments, instead of making up new ones in your head and fighting those.
You were lambasting the HN community with various pejoratives like "blowhards" and "putrid" in a comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50390997 ) in this thread 5 hours ago? There is no good faith interpretation for that I'm afraid.
You misunderstand the entire premise of my original comment, presumably on purpose. Oh well, I guess that’s just how online discourse is now.
You are talking about directly harming another living creature who cannot fight back.
> What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp deepfake representations of your friends and family?
You are talking about "harming" a collection of north and south facing flips on a disk, a few ones and zeros in a RAM chip. Hell, we used to actually make Quake characters with our real faces on back in the day so you really could blast your real-life friends and family to pieces.
No, you missed the point. It has nothing to do with the entities in the game, it’s about the player outside of it. Look, it’s all well and good to blast your friends in a game and call each other rude names and whatnot, have fun! But you understand that’s OK because you have consent, right?
Here’s a story for you. I have omitted unnecessary details because outing anyone isn’t the point. There was a guy who played a certain competitive game. He was a good person, but he had the habit of describing a big game loss as a “rape”. He wasn’t trying to be malicious, he described himself as having been raped too when he lost big. But he threw it around too casually, and one day he played against a rape victim. Now, can you put yourself in the other person’s shoes and understand how having a traumatic experience thrown back at you casually can make you feel? And even if you believe it wouldn’t bother you personally, can we agree that everyone is different and that we shouldn’t ignore how they feel their pain? That there are little things we can all do to make other people be comfortable, and in turn they may do the same for us?
That’s all I’m saying, that we should practice some empathy. I’m not even saying this game shouldn’t exist, I’m only asking that we recognise that it may affect some people in major ways most of us on this website can’t possibly understand (and we should be thankful for it, not derisive) and that we should take that into account. In short, remember other people exist and share the planet with you, and try to not be a dick to them.
That said, whoever made it might not be thinking about that. A kid could vibecode a game these days. I wouldn’t hold it against them.
Moreover, many AAA games glamorize war (Call of Duty, Far Cry, Battlefield…) or crime (GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Payday, Hitman…).
This used to be so ridiculous it was satire.
The Call of Duty series gives a much more detailed view of the battlefield, with a lot more blood, and it doesn’t get a reputation for being cynical because it doesn’t force your hand with a choice that feels like mockery of the situation. This game’s emoji defaults slightly do, whether it was intentional or not.
Would give better perspective if your own virutal geographical building was equally destroyed as destroying others.
Would also be better if RL names where replaced with fictional random names.
This is just wanton destruction and has nothing good in it.
Rampage and its sequels were pretty much also just "destroy buildings, the game," and also great.
My kids enjoy building with tiles and then knocking it down.
If you've ever shot a gun or detonated some explosives in real life, you'll know that's fun too despite these things being used to hurt people also.
Now, it would certainly be in poor taste to ask for your friends old address so we could destroy their virtual house, but I don't see anyone doing that here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50390997
If your friend would be willing to share their thoughts, I’m interested in learning. Of course, if they don’t want to share or you think it would be disrespectful to even ask, don’t. I’m just thinking the perspective of such people should not be ignored.