Should Stalin and/or Hitler be a leader in Civ?

[Rommel2D]

Apparently they're going with the straight-forward 'greatest leaders from history' rather than 'greatest 2 leaders from each of the requisite x civilizations'- rolls off the tounge a bit better...

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor I must ask again, as in the other thread, "Who would really want to play as Hitler?"

This is where I'm puzzled by the uproar over the subject, especially among those familliar with CIV. Leaders are mostly window dressing in the game. The only representation of a given leader in evidence when played by a human is the image shown on another player's diplomatic screen in multi-player games. The important characteristics to actual gameplay are the leader traits that are extremely abstracted and shared with many other leaders.

I guess there are some who view Civ as their religion and the leaders represented in it akin to a godhead, but this is a problem in itself that won't be addressed by leaving one or two controversial figures out...

[Alexander I]

This is why I was trying to discuss this subject gingerly, because it's a powderkeg and always blows up in our faces.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

This is where I'm puzzled by the uproar over the subject, especially among those familliar with CIV. Leaders are mostly window dressing in the game. The only representation of a given leader in evidence when played by a human is the image shown on another player's diplomatic screen in multi-player games. The important characteristics to actual gameplay are the leader traits that are extremely abstracted and shared with many other leaders.

I guess there are some who view Civ as their religion and the leaders represented in it akin to a godhead, but this is a problem in itself that won't be addressed by leaving one or two controversial figures out...

In the game, the leader "personifies" your civ, for "centuries" of gameplay. I guess I agree with the people who say we are letting Genghis Khan, or even Roosevelt, off lightly, but they have not been demonized the way Adolf Hitler has. My big concern is for the health of the game, which I think already took a beating with Civ4's unreliable graphics and memory leak, the tendency to emulate RPG's and RTS' and a rather mediocre map generation and terrain and unit depiction vis-a-vis Civ3. (The 3D does not impress me, or many other critics, who have written on Apolyton.)

I must continue to refer back to the American television miniseries, which I now have looked up, ("Hitler: The Rise of Evil," broadcast over two nights on CBS, May, 2003) and the accompanying international media furor, as an example of what Firaxis might go through with an internationally prominent computer game (essentially a cross-cultural "media" in itself, given all the nationalities represented on this board.)

Maybe, as Locutus mentioned earlier, the "leader art" is sophisticated, but it tends to be humorous and cartoonish, (look at Bismarck or Peter the Great, when they are "talking" in diplomatic mode, for example.) They are, in essence, "humanized" and this is exactly what critics of the miniseries seized upon to wholesale condemn that "creative product" -- the attempted "humanizing" of Hitler. See my comments above also about the peculiar preponderance of documentation in recent decades dealing with Nazi crimes, to a greater extent than other tyrannical leaders/regimes.

[potoroo]

Originally posted by Zoid
Oh, man you?ve done it now. Markos is gonna ban your ass

Pfft. The city I live in has the third biggest Greek population in the world and I'm used to contemporary Greek stupidity over Alexander. That the modern Greeks are trying to rewrite history by pretending the greatest general of the ancient world was one of them rather than a "barbarian" who kicked their arses without raising a sweat doesn't change the facts. According to all the ancient sources the ancient Greeks did not regard the Macedonians as part of Hellas and neither did the Macedonians.

This issue pops up here every few years, usually during a slow news week. To my dying day I'll never forget the Greek lady who indignantly insisted that not only was Alexander Greek but "he was a good Christian too!"

[alva]

Originally posted by Willem


He was worse. I just did a quick read from a Google search and he was responsible for the deaths of over 7 million Ukrainians alone. The total number given in the article was 30 million people murdered by his regime, to Hitler's 6 million Jews.

Could have quoted a couple of other posts, but this one will do fine.

And Hitler ended up in a ditch, covered in petrol, on fire. So, that’s fun. I think that’s funny. Cause he was a mass-murdering ****head. And that was his honeymoon as well! Double trouble. Eh. “Eva let’s marry.” “Where should our honeymoon be?” “Well, in a ditch, uh, covered in petrol, on fire. That – I’ve already arranged it upstairs.” “Oh, how romantic, Adolf.” “Yes, I know.” Bhpppthppp whoooo! Fun! What a bastard. And he was a – a vegetarian and a painter, so he must have been going, “I can’t get the ****ing trees – damn! I will kill everyone in the world!” And he was a mass-murdering ****head, as many, uh, important historians have said.

And, um, but there were other mass murderers that got away with it! Stalin, killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done indeed. And the reason we let it – them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we’re sort of fine with that. Ah, help yourself, you know. We’ve been trying to kill you for ages! So kill your own people, ohh, right on there. Seems to be, Hitler killed people next door – awwww…stupid man. After a couple of years, we won’t stand for that, will we?

And I th – Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can’t even deal with that. I think, you know, we think if – if somebody kills someone, that’s murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that’s what they do. Twenty people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can’t deal with it, you know? Someone’s killed 100,000 people. We’re almost going, “…Well done! You killed 100,000 people? Ahhh. You must get up very early in the morning. I can’t even get down the gin! Your diary must look odd. Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, lunch…death, death, death afternoon tea…death, death, death, quick shower.”

Eddie Izzard - Dressed to kill

[Rommel2D]

In the game, the leader "personifies" your civ, for "centuries" of gameplay.

Assuming the player puts in their own name or nickname when prompted, what is there of the historical leader in evidence after the game starts? Your example of a movie about hitler involves the consumer sitting passively and watching a character earnestly portray Hitler constantly for the better part of x hours. Movies hypnotize and pursuade, they were a great contribution to what gave Hitler his power- I accept the point of view that the miniseries is extremely contreversial. But I don't think a personality in CIV comes close to approaching this- I sure don't see Alexander or Ghengis as warm fuzzy people I wish were around to run for some office today because of a 15 second cycle of animation I've watched repeatedly. The world is full of hollow souls who thrive on excitement but have nothing within themselves to offer. I'd be really disappointed to see a company and franchise I respect so much water down their product in anticipation of some fringe wingnuts starting a 'lets judge this book by it's cover' crusade...

In case my main point was lost in discussing the game's underlying theories, I think that path Firaxis/Take 2 seem to be taking- Stalin in the XP and Hitler not- is consistent with the main CIV design and true to the games heritage. A disservice would be done not by placing Hitler's name and image in a video game, but by equating him with leaders who achieved much greater ends. Not doing a WWII scenario is a bit meek, but a main goal of the game is to create a strategy game platform, so leaving the subject for the mod community to make the call on is a savvy business manuever. I wouldn't say Firaxis has missed the mark with this at all.

[Rook]

I think the point of this discussion is moot. Including Hitler means having him do all the cutisie little animations that all the other leaders do and outside of a reality based WWII scenario, having Hitler in means at some point he will be demanding that your nation convert to Judaism. (Somebody brought that up in the original thread.) Firaxis isn't going to put him in the game. this means they will either not include a WWII scenario leaving it to the fans to mod one themselves, or they will include it and just not put Hitler in having someone else represent Germany.

It doesn't matter who committed more or greater crimes against humanity. Hitler just has the worst rep in the West and that's why he wont be in but Stalin will be.

[armchairknight]

I was seriously contemplating the comparative evils and bloody ways of Hitler, Stalin, and a few others when I realized that the part of the Warlords expansion that I'm most looking forward to are the Vikings. Now there's a friendly group of fellas! Suddenly I feel a little meek and less inclined to moralize. Ahem.

[swat-spas2]

Originally posted by potoroo

To my dying day I'll never forget the Greek lady who indignantly insisted that not only was Alexander Greek but "he was a good Christian too!"

Good one. Gotta love people and their "history". I had the peculiar experience the other day of witnessing someone saying she was putting her "John Henry" on a receipt. I was waiting for her to hit it with a hammer. It was a funny moment until I realized the other 10 people were staring at me as I laughed, apparently oblivious to the joke. Not a good sign.

As far as the warm fuzzy feeling from interacting with a friendly-cartoonish leader, they usually don't look very friendly to me. Probably I should stop bombing their cities

fyi, Bismarck and Frederick are in there already for Germany. They will and should stay there. Hitler is influential, in a peculiar and disquieting way. I recall a series that ranked the influential people of the last millenium, he was higher than FDR. Why? Because of the industrial manner in which he conducted and orchestrated a genocide. He whipped up a frenzy based on religious intolerance and nationalism to such a point that people were committing atrocities on an incomprehensible scale, often with minimal direction. It was systematic and in a way amazing how much propaganda and German dogma was built up and how diligent the people became at following it (whether this is from fear or simply brainwashing is another issue)

In the end, he actually does do something interesting and positive on this basis alone; the will of the people can be manipulated by a particularily clever and charismatic person to almost any endeavour desired by using mass media (and state education). That could be a good thing, it just so happens that he only did it for the most unholy of causes. Bismarck and Frederick to my mind are still ahead of Hitler in German greatness, simply because they forged a nation-state from disseperate city-states and then vaulted it into a world power very quickly (similar to what Alexander did). This is different from someone forging a state into their own personal cult, which might be a fascinating sociology study, but rather lacks taste and social functionality. Go ask the Germans who they would rather see as the leaderhead in game. There are effectively two standards to apply here, would the Civ'ing public of that country hold this person in some high esteem? And would civ'ing Americans (or others) know who that person is? (Besides Cupac, which isn't surprising since we are ignorant of the Inca in general). I don't see that as a double standard, but rather a business model.

They aren't going to sell us a game that is going to have leaders in it that if we play we are going to feel conflicted about. We shouldn't be winning a game and feeling bad about it, and we would if it was a Hitler Germany, simply because its recent and the demons are still very real and very present. People are still alive from that time. Nobody living is an eyewitness to the carnage of Genghis and thus will hold greater ill feelings about that. Someone who is cognizant of the reality behind the game will always bring that consciousness into it, whether consciously or not, and that 'knowledge' will lead us into some dilemmas that game designers will not have intended for us to solve. This is a game, a form of entertainment, not a civics lesson or a moral dilemma. Winning it doesn't mean that we somehow made Hitler "better", but for many that is precisely what we might feel.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor

I would also remind those that had access to American television that two years ago, the CBS network tried to air a TV movie about the presumed life of young Hitler as an art student in Vienna. The outcry that Hitler was somehow being "humanized," was enormous, worldwide. The movie aired, after a script rewrite, but I would guess will never air again; becoming instead a footnote in American television trivia. Firaxis including Adolf, in the continued climate evidenced, is highly unlikely.

He should be humanised though, he was human, fairly unremarkable in most ways. There is very little to mark him apart from any other ambitious man except what he ended up doing.

As soon as we say we musn't understand him as a human we start losing the ability to learn from history.

I don't believe any of that has anything to do with whether he should be in Civ though.

[Martinus]

I don't think Hitler was worse than Stalin or Mao when it comes to being a murderous bastard.

Now, Firaxis may think otherwise, but that's hypocrisy.

However, personally I can see why someone would want to include Stalin but not Hitler - both were as murderous maniacs as, say, Genghis Khan, however unlike Stalin, Hitler was a failure, whereas Stalin made his country into a world empire and a superpower (evil empire, but still an empire).

That is why the game also doesn't have Caligula at the head of Rome (although an erratic "Klackon-like" AI could be fun), John Lackland at the head of England or Andrew Jackson at the head of America - not because they were murderous bastards, but because outside of being murderous bastards they were little more and essentially sucked as leaders.

[swat-spas2]

Originally posted by johnmcd


He should be humanised though, he was human,

As soon as we say we musn't understand him as a human we start losing the ability to learn from history.

This is an interesting point. Many people seem uncomfortable dealing with the reality and scope of the Holocaust because it was perpetrated by humans against other humans. Making someone(s) out to be a demon with no discernable human qualities makes it easier to swallow. We run into the same problem at the other end of the spectrum by hero worship. We invent and propagate mythical status to people who achieve something we feel good about. A star athlete, or popular writer/actor/scientist, etc. All such people receive some form of pass on some of the most egregious behavior we commit. It is not my suggestion that they are evil too, but that they are human as well. Its necessary to view people as just that, people. They are not rock stars, and they are not demons. But it is necessary to deal with both what makes us uncomfortable about their acts or what makes us inspired and worshipful.

But yes, from a game perspective this has little utility except to say that we 'have' dealt with the actions of some, but not yet those of Hitler, thus making his possible inclusion more difficult to swallow and therefore politically sensitive. Its easier to find people that are not so controversial and achieved more without this form of savagery.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by potoroo

Pfft. The city I live in has the third biggest Greek population in the world and I'm used to contemporary Greek stupidity over Alexander. That the modern Greeks are trying to rewrite history by pretending the greatest general of the ancient world was one of them rather than a "barbarian" who kicked their arses without raising a sweat doesn't change the facts. According to all the ancient sources the ancient Greeks did not regard the Macedonians as part of Hellas and neither did the Macedonians.

This issue pops up here every few years, usually during a slow news week. To my dying day I'll never forget the Greek lady who indignantly insisted that not only was Alexander Greek but "he was a good Christian too!"

I agree with you, I just like teasing Markos

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Martinus
I don't think Hitler was worse than Stalin or Mao when it comes to being a murderous bastard.

Now, Firaxis may think otherwise, but that's hypocrisy.

However, personally I can see why someone would want to include Stalin but not Hitler - both were as murderous maniacs as, say, Genghis Khan, however unlike Stalin, Hitler was a failure, whereas Stalin made his country into a world empire and a superpower (evil empire, but still an empire).

That is why the game also doesn't have Caligula at the head of Rome (although an erratic "Klackon-like" AI could be fun), John Lackland at the head of England or Andrew Jackson at the head of America - not because they were murderous bastards, but because outside of being murderous bastards they were little more and essentially sucked as leaders.

And Stalin was on the allied side in WW2 (after 1941 that is...) It´s all the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of thinking. It´s the dirty world of politics...