>>>Panzer General takes pains to completely ignore the evil present in the actual history. You're not asked to engage with the darker parts of your psyche at all
What is the alternative, from a game design perspective? Every time one of your units takes a Victory Point on a town, a window pops up: "You captured $townname! Do you want to execute all of the civilians here? [Yes/No]" If you click YES, it shows you a real image of a mass execution from WW2? Can you imagine the uproar THAT would cause? I suspect that players would either click YES on all of them, or click NO on all of them, so as a mechanic it adds no meaningful choices. If you just want to force exposure to the brutality, you could throw in a random "You clicked 'NO' but your soldiers disobeyed orders and killed everyone anyway" and display some shocking content, but all that will accomplish is to turn off some segment of your customer base. The point was to sell a product, after all. If people really want to understand the nastiness that happens during a conflict, they'll find it via other mediums anyway (VHS snuff films before the Internet, BestGore et al. now).
Rome: Total War doesn't let me grapple with the moral issues of crucifying Christians and Jews. Is that omission also a problem? Why/why not?
What is the alternative, from a game design perspective? Every time one of your units takes a Victory Point on a town, a window pops up: "You captured $townname! Do you want to execute all of the civilians here? [Yes/No]" If you click YES, it shows you a real image of a mass execution from WW2? Can you imagine the uproar THAT would cause? I suspect that players would either click YES on all of them, or click NO on all of them, so as a mechanic it adds no meaningful choices. If you just want to force exposure to the brutality, you could throw in a random "You clicked 'NO' but your soldiers disobeyed orders and killed everyone anyway" and display some shocking content, but all that will accomplish is to turn off some segment of your customer base. The point was to sell a product, after all. If people really want to understand the nastiness that happens during a conflict, they'll find it via other mediums anyway (VHS snuff films before the Internet, BestGore et al. now).
Rome: Total War doesn't let me grapple with the moral issues of crucifying Christians and Jews. Is that omission also a problem? Why/why not?