Profile of CombatMuffin

I simply point to the bastion of progressiveness and personal freedom that modern Russia is today.

Those "people" make my case for my really.

That's funny since I just happened to meet a person form Russia and spent some days socializing with her (dwelling into topics, from WW2, to education, to Putin, to Military Service, to the custom some Russians have of drinking before hopping into a flight) . My home city also welcomes hundreds of Russians every single week, and I've met several Russians in other countries, as well as people from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, etc., which have Soviet cultures and traditions.

None of them fit inside your proven marquee of attitudes and personalities. I've had the chance to meet, discuss and socialize with people from every single continent in the world, and all I have met is people being people, with opinions and differences. None of them fit a specific pattern.

It doesn't mean I liked every person, or understood every culture, but it wasn't something I would dare encapsulate into a single sentence or even paragraph...

There's little point in doing an educated discussion if you don't try to see both sides of the coin at least once. You keep insisting that they somehow libeled/insulted all countries from the former Soviet Union because their work is not an exact representation of what you have studied or been told.

They are being "authentic" to the setting, not to history itself. Authenticity is not realism, I was very careful in my choice of words, I said they made things look similar, but in no way are they doing exact replicas, even if they aspired to.

The setting is a base for inspiration and if Relic had chosen to have Drop Pods full of Space Marines/Blood Ravens rain down on the Ostheer, they damn well could have. Its called artistic freedom. They would've needed Games Workshop permission, which they likely wouldn't have given, due to the the setting, but it is possible.

This will probably be my last post on this thread, but I'll leave one last thing for naysayers of the topic at hand to reflect on:

Do you not think, for a second, that this game went through the proper channels of these countries prior to its sale and distribution? Do you think the equivalent of the Ministry of Culture, Education, Communication or whatever Office responsible for distribution of commercial software did not inspect, review and approve of the product and its contents?

Games in many countries (from the U.S. and Germany, to Australia) get censored or even banned for bad depiction of their culture or country, and if you are telling me former Soviet countries are very protective of their history and traditions, and they saw this product and approved it for distribution... well that tells me everything I need to know regarding the subject at hand.

You can't deny something that's not proved yet, you see?
If there WAS a single documentary proof on such things like NKVD elimination teams directly behind the soviet forces, or soviets been burning civil buildings on retreat, there won't be any arguments.

Relics insist that's the story is authentic granting no proof. They don't even give away their true sources.

So all we do ask is either grant us the documentary proof on all the matters we're arguing about or make a 'fictional story disclaimer'. As we're aware that there is no proof to that we're cutting time to the disclaimer thing.

They don't need to prove anything. That's like asking George Lucas to prove that Hans Solo shot first, man. Its a work of fiction, meant for entertainment. It is inspired by real events, but at no point in the game (anywhere, afaik), do they state this is a documentary or do they try to "educate" the masses as to the accuracy of their story.

They said they were going for authenticity: The uniforms, the geography, the vehicles and other assets are supposed to look similar to what they looked back then.

Even games that try to be very historical accurate, such as the Total War series, sometimes walk off the path of historical accuracy for the sake of gameplay and/or entertainment. That's why you can deploy ninjas in a battlefield, or deploy Katana Samurai Heroes, etc.

It's a game, not a documentary.

The news you watched on Vietnam, were not daily news, most likely. You could not watch "live" broadcasts of the War, either. People during WW2 received coverage of the war, but it was largely edited and approved by the State.

Sure, nowadays footage and reports from war fronts are still edited and approved, but there's little you can do when a soldier pulls out an iphone, records and uploads it (Syria) or when you have an ambush or two during live satellite TV. Information travels A LOT faster now.

I live in Mexico. During the height of the violence here, Ciudad Juarez (north of the country) either matched the casualties in Baghdad, or even surpassed them at some points. Stuff got out of hand in certain, isolated parts of the countries, but it was very bad.

My original point is that humanity has no learning curve when it comes to wars, not violence as a whole. A large part of violence in earlier times cannot be classified as "war". Daily average casualty rate measures the average death toll per day per war, thus making it easier to compare wars over time.

The problem, however, is that estimates of casualty rates of recent wars are far more precise, when compared to earlier wars. This holds for the total world population as well.

Additionally, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined approaches the subject from an overall psychological point of view, whereas I have an event-based approach, adjusting for war participants only.

Casualty rate has indeed increased, because of the lethality of modern weapons, but you also have to take into account that wars, in general, take a lot less time. Some major campaigns in ancient history could have garnered more than 50,000 casualties in a single large battle alone. The conflict in Syria has barely surpassed 100,000 deaths.

Human rights DO matter, because while it is true that it is only a legal term, it is peer pressure and social pressure that inhibits illegal conduct. Given the chance to steal and get away with it, most people would do it, but the social system prevents you from doing it. The same applies to war, although to a much lesser degree.

The learning curve exists, but like I said, it is extremely "slow" comparable to our lifetimes. The world today, is A LOT less violent in general. Wars CAN be affected by everyday violence, as a failure in perceived security/safety in society can bring about civil unrest (The Arab Spring is complex, but the spark that lit the fire was a case of self immolation, not exactly the most traditional declaration of war, civil or otherwise). I live in a country considered to be one of the most violent in the world in the past 7 years (it has "receded" recently), many people were wondering if we were a failed State, and some were even starting to take it into their own hands.

Wars today, excepting the two world wars, are largely less violent than before. There is also a factor that we are not taking into account (Although The_Riddler mentioned it indirectly with regards to precise count): The media. We are so connected now to what happens in the other side of the world, that the world seems more violent, but these daily live broadcasts of war efforts only truly began with Gulf War in the early 90's, when CNN provided satellite coverage I believe. Hell, in World War 2, a considerable percentage of the casualties were not even directly related to combat engagements (pillaging, famine, disease, and other various actions against non combatants).

This is all off topic now, though, as interesting as it is discussing it.