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Original post by onyxflame IMO, making something just because you think you can get rich off of it is wrong.

Let me take a stab in the dark and assume that you don't believe in capitalism ;)

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Original post by Warsong Why not has a game like a movie in how the main focus of the game is to hunt gay people? Or how about having a politically incorrect game and attacking Arabs like the game Metal Slugs does?

Metal Slug is even worse than you think, you actually end up joining forces with the Nazis in the end. But then again so did the Finns and nobody gave them any crap about it, I guess you can justify a lot of dubvious alliances with "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

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Let me take a stab in the dark and assume that you don't believe in capitalism ;)

I could concievably get rich by sticking straws with puppets on the end of them up my nostrils and having a nose puppet show, but why would I *want* to? :P

Two words:

Sim Auschwitz.

Discuss.

Err, anyone ever heard of GTA?

Of course politically incorrect games can be fun and popular.

There are also countless insanely popular and very politically incorrect Flash games all over the web.

I don't see what the big deal is

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Original post by Pxtl Two words: Sim Auschwitz. Discuss.

Basically you summed up the issue. There's a difference between "politically incorrect" and fundamentally hateful material. A game like Sim Auschwitz, where your goal would be, perhaps, to maximize the through-put of processing Jews would be so sick as to be indefensible. Period. Would it be illegal? No. But groups like the Aryan Nations can post their hate on the web legally as well. It doesn't make them a "niche market."

Some people here, including the original poster, have (purposefully?) muddied the waters on the line between what is simply "politically incorrect" and what is deemed fundamentally sick and morally bereft of any redeeming value by 99% of society. There IS a difference.

If someone feels that a game about killing Jews or Catholics or Muslims (simply because they ARE Jewish or Catholic or Muslim) would fill a market niche and that it is therefore ok to make such a game based on the capitalistic notions of the "market is always right" or "let the market decide," then that person needs to go back and make an effort to understand what personal ethics and morals even are. Because they obviously have no idea. Just because something can make you some money doesn't mean you should do it. If child porn is legal in some third world country and you realize you could make a LOT of money by moving there and making such material, is it justified simply in the name of "the market"? Of course not. It's a morally inexcusable pursuit no matter the reason you give.

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Original post by Spoonster Err, anyone ever heard of GTA? Of course politically incorrect games can be fun and popular. There are also countless insanely popular and very politically incorrect Flash games all over the web. I don't see what the big deal is

Because "politically incorrect" is the WRONG LABEL for a lot of what is being proposed. Please take a minute to read over some of the ideas being tossed around. We're far beyond simple poltical incorrectness.

That last post was mine. Not sure why it went anonymous between the two posts.

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The game existed because they thought they could make some money off it. There was no other reason.

Its nice to see that you can distort the facts to fit your perception of the world. If you'll scroll back up and actually read, you'll see that the game was banned in a number of countries, so obviously they didn't make alot of money off it. Now you could say "oh, but they made money off the initial sales". Well Postal 1 was similarly banned, yet they made a sequel, now obviously that sequel would have been banned before it was ever released given the content of Postal 1. Seems to lead credit to their desire to die penniless hobo's.. >.>

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Almost, but not entirely. We also have laws to protect the minority. That's part of the definition of democracy, namely, that it includes protection of minority rights. Otherwise you just have a rabble.

Democracy is not above corruption, and those laws are also a product of society. Fact is, a society can isolate minorities, either out of fear (Muslum Terroists), or out of political rivalry (Pakistan/Israel, Russia/Chechnia). Even democracy here in the West is strained sometimes with Native American's, Gay couples, and many others. It doesn't take much to skew and warp ones views enough to produce a Nazi Germany, or an Iraqi dictatorship. Any society, much like the people who create it, isn't perfect.

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Actually it's ok to attack Nazis because they exterminated 6 million Jews and started a war that killed tens of millions. There's a difference between Nazis and the other groups you mentioned like Catholics generally or Muslims generally. A BIG difference.

Big difference? I guess you skipped history in school, or you would have noticed the large number of people murdered during the Witch Trials and Inquisition in the middle ages by the Christans. They did the same thing the Nazi's did, dissassociating a particular group (in this case Witches) as being the 'enemy' for one reason or another, and proceeded to ruthlessly kill them in a genocidal fasion, among others (The Kathars). Not to mention that today, Muslims go on suicidal Terrorist assaults demonizing the 'West' as greedy heretics, World Trade Center anyone? And don't even get me started on mental institutions run by the Catholic Church during the 1950's and 1960's.

None of these groups are free of blood on their hands, and singling one out over another is simply a matter of preference.
The Act of Disassociation is a common tool used by the Righteous and Dictator's alike to justify violence and genocide, its all a matter of perspective..

"Be careful not to become the evil you choose to fight."
http://www.freedommag.org/english/canada/reports/page01.htm

[Edited by - Gyrthok on November 12, 2004 1:28:09 PM]

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Its nice to see that you can distort the facts to fit your perception of the world. If you'll scroll back up and actually read, you'll see that the game was banned in a number of countries, so obviously they didn't make alot of money off it. Now you could say "oh, but they made money off the initial sales". Well Postal 1 was similarly banned, yet they made a sequel, seems to lead credit to their desire to die penniless hobo's.. >.>

Wrong, it's nice to see you don't understand why games are even made. They are made to make money. Period. They gambled that the money made would be worth the controversy or even enhanced by it. The fact that countries banned the game AFTER THE FACT has no bearing on anything. In fact, it reinforces my point that there are CONSEQUENCES for choosing such a path.

EDIT ADD: Making a sequel knowing that the first got banned in some countries is STILL nothing more than a market driven decision.

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Democracy is not above corruption, and those laws are also a product of society. Fact is, a society can isolate minorities, either out of fear (Muslum Terroists), or out of political rivalry (Pakistan/Israel, Russia/Chechnia). Even democracy here in the West is strained sometimes with Native American's, Gay couples, and many others. It doesn't take much to skew and warp ones views enough to produce a Nazi Germany, or an Iraqi dictatorship. Any society, much like the people who create it, isn't perfect.

And so what's your point? Of course no system is "perfect". That doesn't mean that protection of minority rights isn't a normative feature of democracy in general simply because we sometimes fall short. Pakistan is not a democracy. Your example has no bearing on my comment. Chechnya is not a democracy (Russia's claims not withstanding). Your example again has no bearing on my comment. You are pointing out that sometimes in democracies minority rights don't get enforced the way they should. Um, ok. So what's your point and how does your response have anything to do with my comment to which you were responding?

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Big difference? I guess you skipped history in school, or you would have noticed the large number of people murdered during the Witch Trials and Inquisition in the middle ages by the Christans. They did the same thing the Nazi's did, dissassociating a particular group (in this case Witches) as being the 'enemy' for one reason or another, and proceeded to ruthlessly kill them in a genocidal fasion, among others (The Kathars). Not to mention that today, Muslims go on suicidal Terrorist assaults demonizing the 'West' as greedy heretics, World Trade Center anyone? And don't even get me started on mental institutions run by the Catholic Church during the 1950's and 1960's.

Once you start going back hundreds of years you begin to muddy the waters. Is your average Catholic today in any way associated with witch trials 400 years ago? No. If you make a game about killing religious zealots who were hunting innocent people, that would be one thing. If you make a game about killing Catholics today, that's another altogether. Nazism was a movement that existed recently. We are still seeing images of it every day on TV. There was a show on the concentration camps just in the last day or so on the Discovery or History channel or one of those education networks. It is still routinely invoked in political discussion.
There are 1 billion Muslims. There are thousands of terrorists. Again you try to distort the facts in order to justify hateful material somehow have relevance. Or what IS your point aanyway? You bring up Catholic mental institutions...why? Lots of crap has been done by lots of groups. If you give an example of some black group, the Panthers for example, doing something bad, does that mean you can then paint all blacks with that? Did all Catholics know about abuses in some mental institutions back in the 50's? No. In fact, almost no one but the people running them did. In any event, comparing Catholic mental institutions of the 50's to Nazi concentration camps is a non-starter for your position, whatever that position may actually be.

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None of these groups are free of blood on their hands, and singling one out over another is simply a matter of preference.

No, it's more than that and you are simply hiding behind obfuscation.

[Edited by - Ned_K on November 12, 2004 2:50:09 PM]

Just as a note, although Stalin was considered "a good guy" during the WWII, he killed and/or starved to death more people than any other dictator in the history, including Hitler. And those were his own peope, russians, not an ethnic group selected as an enemy to scare the public (jews back then or muslims today).