They better have female soldiers...

[Aisling 1]

That is YOUR opinion. Other people DO feel bad to shoot women in a military simulation. How would you feel if its child soldiers you can shoot at? Is that ok for you too? Just asking no personal attack. I personally don't really know until I would play it.

You're not shooting women. You're shooting targets. I would hope any human with a conscience would feel bad shooting another human regardless of gender.

[BinaryCode64 1]

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Edited March 10, 2013 by BinaryCode64

[IAshford 1]

That is YOUR opinion. Other people DO feel bad to shoot women in a military simulation. How would you feel if its child soldiers you can shoot at? Is that ok for you too? Just asking no personal attack. I personally don't really know until I would play it.

What are you on about? Shooting a defenseless child is different then shooting a woman who clearly has the intention of shooting you. If a woman has military training, qualified, and there soley for the purpose of combat then hell yes, that gives you the right to shoot her. That goes for any man or woman. Whether that gives you some personal moral dilema, thats what you have to deal with. A child would never be put under those circumstances, moreso in a video game situation anyway.

If a woman has you tied down to a chair and is repeatedly punching you in the face, gender doesn't come into question when all you want to do is escape by any means necessary.

[batto 17]

Doesn't make theirs opinion any less valid.

IRL you can't choose your enemy (mostly) so IRL this opinion is completely invalid.

[BinaryCode64 1]

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Edited March 10, 2013 by BinaryCode64

[celery 8]

That is YOUR opinion.

Doesn't make theirs opinion any less valid.

Again that is your opinion. [...] Its an OPINION. You can't argue against.

If you call your statements opinions to shield them against arguments and call others' statements opinions to deny their relevance, your ramblings have very little value in this conversation. If you want to convince anyone to even think about the things you say, I suggest using proper discussion methods or to take a break to learn them.

[instagoat 133]

As above. Males have a higher protective instinct to protect women and even more so for childeren. You can supress that instinct when its live and death. But it would effect you afterwards.

Not really. In the evolutionary sense, males of rank should (and do) feel protective about everyone in their "family". Females are biologically wired to especially care about their offspring.

I know from friends who are in the military that they are extremely protective about the wellbeing of their buddies, and squad-level commanders for the wellbeing of their subordinates, at least in western militaries. However, in the natural world, men are only protective of those attached to them. Read up on bronze age history: women, children and men outside of ones clan are fair game to be enslaved or worse. The bible especially provides a good account of the rules of the land in that time.

Anybody -outside- your group is, like Aisling said, nothing more than a threat and in the military sense, a target. What their plumbing is like doesn´t matter, plus, in the heat of battle, everbody turns into a silhouette anyway. If you take time to let your brain adjust and actually discern the gender of who you´re shooting at (you should check first if they´re actually a threat), you´re likely bound to turn into swiss cheese.

Most reasons against women in the military are, I think, hollow and ring of a bygone age. There may be objections to mixing women and men because of deep seated socio-cultural reasons, but that would again be no argument against women serving on the frontlines. They did in the soviet army in WW2. The difference between the western nations and russia at the time was a mere mindset. And I am aware of no accounts that document that the all-female units of the soviet army in WW2 that went into combat actually did worse than their male counterparts. Mind, I am not fully informed on the army, as my interest so far lay with the Air Forces. The VVS had all-female Fighter and Fighter-bomber (Sturmovik) regiments. Latter were obviously the harshest place to serve, and women served in that role with distinction.

As far as child soldiers go, to implement those would simply be bad taste. There is a -huge- difference to child and women soldiers: child soldiers by definition do not have the capacity to consent to whatever is happening to them. Adult females can, unless you subscribe to the pre-20th century (even then discredited) notion that only men have souls.

Also, I feel this is a much more flammable topic than I ever suspected it to be.

... Its an OPINION. You can't argue against.

Sorry, that´s bunk. In that case any discourse, even informed discourse based on any data, would be useless to hold. The Idea of human exchange is that you weigh your own opinions against those of the others, and see what has merit, and what doesn´t. Not arguing about opinions is a form of censorship.

Edited June 5, 2012 by InstaGoat

[Fenrisulven 1]

How is it that this subject is the most discussed? Personally I don't care if we see female soldiers or not but as someone already mentioned. You shoot at targets and eliminating the enemy is equally important regardless of gender of the target.

[BinaryCode64 1]

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Edited March 10, 2013 by BinaryCode64

[rübe 127]

Considering ArmA is pretty much a sandbox (dare to disagree?), I see absolutely no reason why women shouldn't be able to do shit. It's the mission designer that decides if he wants to put a weapon into the hands of a female or not. And then it's up to you, what missions you like to play.

Anyone arguing for restricting female animations is simply an ignorant hillbilly with questionable ethics. :cool:

[BinaryCode64 1]

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Edited March 10, 2013 by BinaryCode64

[nodunit 397]

You should read some of these posts. Some people just don't like shooting women in such a real simulation. Its a protective instinct thing.

You can still shoot them, they can't shoot back. And they need to get over it, if it has a gun and enemy uniform, it shouldn't matter what gender the combatant is. People keep talking about how war is cruel, so they want dismemberment, blood and gore, but they can't stand the thought of shooting a female combatant?

If they're view if being protective then they should be protesting against having female characters in the game at all. Again, if they are mechanicly crippled, then there is no point in having them at all.

Edited June 5, 2012 by NodUnit

[BinaryCode64 1]

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Edited March 10, 2013 by BinaryCode64

[Aisling 1]

You should read some of these posts. Some people just don't like shooting women in such a real simulation. Its a protective instinct thing.

Yea we get it. You don't want to shoot women in a GAME. But does that mean we should punish all female gamers(yea we exist) who would like to create a character to their liking?

I don't care if you think women need your protection. Keep your male chauvinism out of video games.

[max power 21]

BinaryCode64

Your entire argument can be blown apart by the simple fact that women and children are frequently victims of war artocities, and killing men isn't exactly a party for soldiers either. As Aisling pointed out in her comment about targets, people in the armed forces go through a rigorous process of dehumanizing the enemy in their training, because it is necessary.

ArmA has frequently been about the character of war. Part of portaying that character has been exploring ideas in themes like war atrocities committed on civilians, the duplicity of the armed forces decision makers, uneasy alliances, out-of-control nationalism, and the like. If all that stuff didn't make you uneasy but shooting a woman soldier who is trying to kill you in a videogame makes you depressed, I think BI better take a look at their plots. They don't need cartoonish supervillain strawmen to murder your friends or mass graves of civilians to reflect on the horror of war. All they need to do is make you shoot a bunch of women characters.

[BinaryCode64 1]

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Edited March 10, 2013 by BinaryCode64

[max power 21]

animation (which I don't exactly get.. it's not like female soldiers strut around like run-way models.. and every game I can think of with female option use the exact same animations as their male counterpart.. Mass Effect.. Rainbow Six Vegas..).

I am an animator- well, I'm a generalist but that's a different story- and men and women do move differently. It's not about accentuating those differences to outlandish proportions like the way runway models are trained to move, but more about characterization. And I do agree, ArmA lacks quite a bit of characterization, and using the same animations probably wouldn't be the end of the world. Women do have a different centre of gravity and so they do have a different gait and so on, which has nothing to do with overtly sexualizing a character. Ideally, animation gives the viewer information about the player's identity, even in a complete silhouette: whether they are old, young, proud, depressive, heroic, scheming, innocent, angry, sad, bored, etc. I think that an important part of being a female soldier, to the person herself, is being female therefore having motioncapture done by females would certainly add to the art.

[IAshford 1]

@Max while that would be ideal to have femanimations, it's not necessary. Just look at DayZ, the female model has the exact same animations, yet it looks perfectly fine cause the animations don't look like a gorilla, it's pretty gender nuetral. Loads of games have used gender nuetral animations, so it's not really a problem. As I said, it'd be ideal, but it's not necessary, especially when people are already bitching about 'how much work it'd be for the poor developers' cause god forbid that they're actually developing a game for a variety of players.

@BinaryCode as people have already stated, if its gonna shoot you, you're gonna shoot back. Gender is irrelevent, and if you have a problem, then really thats your fault. Everyone shouldn't suffer because of your need to protect. And I've already stated, this is a GAME. I'm sure most of us have killed a bunch of pixels that represents a female before, so no matter how much of a simulation you claim this to be, it's still a game. Still, the simulation arguement can and will backfire, because most people WOULD shoot a woman, granted she had the intention of killing you, so why should that not be present in a SIMULATION? You may see it as brutal but war is brutal, and survival is everything.

[Beagle 684]

Regarding any hesitation in shooting women I suggest to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_the_Women_First

The title is named after advice supposedly given to the sharpshooters in Germany's GSG 9 anti-terrorist squads after the olimpic summer 1972 incident.

http://www.amazon.com/Shoot-Women-First-Eileen-Macdonald/dp/0679415963

This advice is especially valid in competietive wargames where the "female" is quite often a male player counting on the 2 seconds of hesitation on he oponent side...a hesitation that is unprofessional if you take the above GSG9 sharpshooter advise into account.

SHOOT THE WOMEN FIRST.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Beagle

[pathetic_berserker 4]

You should read some of these posts. Some people just don't like shooting women in such a real simulation. Its a protective instinct thing.

I have to say I have some issues with this whole male protective thing. From what I've seen this sort of male reasoning is often closely tied to male competitiveness wich can also ride over nearby inocents if they're caught in between no matter the age or gender. It seems silly to argue such points when we know women and children will at some point be killed if they (us males) are to stay a course. But I digress a bit and we're talking about a MilSim Sandbox game, not about saving the world.

[rye1 21]

And some people can switch off empathy and instinct through conditioned responses (behavioural defaults).

[Ish 11]

Playing Arma 3? Lol.

Nah, I agree, women on the frontline in 10-30 years (near future setting) would probably be more feasable. Aren't some already allowed? And the story line sounds like a lot has kicked off, probably aiming towards the guerrilla war scenario which would accept female soldiers in the equation. I don't see why not...

You're joking..? I'm not familiar with the Australian armed forces, but in Sweden it's encouraged. Try being a man and talk to a woman in Afghanistan. That could be dangerous for both the man, and especially the woman if the wrong people see her speaking to him.

[batto 17]

You're joking..? I'm not familiar with the Australian armed forces, but in Sweden it's encouraged. Try being a man and talk to a woman in Afghanistan. That could be dangerous for both the man, and especially the woman if the wrong people see her speaking to him.

Did you notice that war in ArmA3 does not take place in Afghanistan?

especially the woman if the wrong people see her speaking to him.

I don't understand this. Who are those wrong people (in Afghanistan)? Why would it matter if they saw a female soldier?

Edited June 7, 2012 by batto

[Ish 11]

It sounded like women in the army was a big deal. A3 scenario aside. As for the second statement, it's something I've been told by real life army personel, and if they say it's so. Who am I to say it isn't. I guess it'sa cultural thing, where foreign men aren't supposed to talk to their women [possibly giving out information].

[batto 17]

It sounded like women in the army was a big deal.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

A3 scenario aside. As for the second statement, it's something I've been told by real life army personel, and if they say it's so. Who am I to say it isn't. I guess it'sa cultural thing, where foreign men aren't supposed to talk to their women [possibly giving out information].

You're right. In Afghanistan it would probably piss off local citizens even more and complicated further cooperation.