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[SolidusDave]

I'm certainly critical when it comes to private military organizations, but I don't really get the backlash. How's that any different to all the things individual soldiers of virtually all armies have done? I don't care about this game at all, but with that logic you would need to stop playing all war games.

 

[kamorra]

Yeah, this. Blackwater is a scummy company and I do not like them or their game, but calling them all murderers is unreasonable.

Aren't this guys who getting paid to, well, kill people? Sounds like a mobster. You getting paid to protect your boss and sometime you have to kill someone. But what do I know? I'm not american.

 

[I should be doing hw]

How can something be 'somewhat' murderous?

Also, I don't understand how PMC activity is legal if they are working outside the sanction of the government. How do they work?

 

[fabricated backlash]

I came into this thread, saw those posts and felt disgusted, I was going to rage but am just going to leave and try my best to ignore it.

Same here. My ignore list got suddenly larger.

 

[FoneBone]

Ahaha at the thread title change. Happy now, folks?

 

[Wolves Evolve]

Wow, the only part of NeoGAF that's worse than the fanboy wars is PoliGAF. A whole bunch of ad hominems coming out of nowhere. We get trained to take sides very quickly in these things, when both sides have been ideologically betrayed by both political political parties in the last decade. The US Government prosecuted two wars (one for no reason) and outsourced most of the dirty work to unaccountable contractors, making taxpayers foot the bill for large scale lethal fraud. Both sides have an ideological responsibility in this - the left to stop war, and the right to win wars efficiently. Both failed, equally.

Not everybody at Blackwater is a murderous scumbag. But the organisation is unethical. Its directors are unethical. The US used Blackwater to do unethical things. ALL of this is public account and bipartisan all the way down the line. Don't bother quoting words from this post and insinuating 'i have an agenda'. I'm an adult, that shit doesn't work on me.

The fact that Blackwater / Xe have a videogame is no surprise. The World Bank made an ARG last year - The World Fucking Bank! - and had the temerity to make it about helping poor people in Africa to start businesses. The game had comics set in the very same countries the World Bank had openly paid to decimate not a decade before.

Games are everywhere. Bad people will make them and play them. Part of games growing up is this:

"We aren't all on the same side."

 

[bengraven]

Wow, since I left and returned to this thread, it really feels like I'm in the OT now, not gaming.

Wow, the only part of NeoGAF that's worse than the fanboy wars is PoliGAF.

I wouldn't say worse. PoliGAF is more offensive and WILL make you angry, but fanboys are usually uniformed and trolling.

Wait, no, that's PoliGAF as well.

 

[domlolz]

Wow, the only part of NeoGAF that's worse than the fanboy wars is PoliGAF. A whole bunch of ad hominems coming out of nowhere. We get trained to take sides very quickly in these things, when both sides have been ideologically betrayed by both political political parties in the last decade. The US Government prosecuted two wars (one for no reason) and outsourced most of the dirty work to unaccountable contractors, making taxpayers foot the bill for large scale lethal fraud. Both sides have an ideological responsibility in this - the left to stop war, and the right to win wars efficiently. Both failed, equally.

you could say...the answer is somewhere in the...........middle?????

 

[bishoptl]

AstroLad wins again, as usual.

 

[RustyNails]

I like how you assume I have no knowledge of this group. Let me guess, you are the expert because you read a book by Jeremy Scahill and played MGS4?

Whatever, the drama and hypocrisy in this thread is fucking absurd. Apologist my ass; not everyone who works for a military contractor is a roiding nutjob with a hardon for Jesus and Arab blood.

Is that so hard to understand?

Yep, you have zero knowledge about the organization. Either you're a blackwater employee or someone close to you is one or is a paramilitary contractor. Blackwater/Xe is scum, get over it. People joining it do so for monetary reasons, not defending the country and upholding our freedoms and protecting our apple pies. Are there people in Blackwater who do logistics or transport and are not sticking electrical wires on Iraqi torture victims? Absolutely. Does that mean they're not part of the scum? Nope. It doesn't.

 

[Quicksilver4648]

Kotaku just linked to this thread. So, hello lurkers.

But to be on topic, how is it this game is being developed while Six Days in Fallujah was canned due to controversy. All we ever got was a handful of screenshots. I would say Fox News would pull their typical "video games are evil" angle on this but know them they would probably say "Blackwater [the game] is a testament to the men and women who fight for us overseas" while saying military contractors are a good idea because it helps the economy.

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

The fact that Blackwater / Xe have a videogame is no surprise. The World Bank made an ARG last year - The World Fucking Bank! - and had the temerity to make it about helping poor people in Africa to start businesses. The game had comics set in the very same countries the World Bank had openly paid to decimate not a decade before.

Games are everywhere. Bad people will make them and play them. Part of games growing up is this:

"We aren't all on the same side."

The World Bank is an evil, evil organisation. Forcing countries to immediately undertake free market reforms and heavy privitisation in return for loans is an insane and destructive idea to anyone with half a brain, yet they try to paint themselves as a force for good. Absolute scum.

 

[The Nature Roy]

The top of the line of those who work for Xe are de facto CIA and & JSOC operators/operatives/officers.

There is a quirk in the budgeting for the CIA and the Pentagon that makes it significantly easier to pay someone with unique or very rare talents and skills what they are worth as a contractor. One day, someone who is helping to plan a JSOC raid is a U.S. Army solider and the next he is a Xe contractor. He still works at the same place and sits in the same seat and has the same responsibilities. Nothing has changed in who he is or how he functions, but now his pay check is bigger and it says Xe Services on it.

However, the legal ramifications are such that it's much simpler to have in-house CIA/JSOC people actually pulling the triggers. So most of what people want to throw on Xe is actually being done by the CIA/JSOC. You know, stuff like killing Bin Laden (and there were almost certainly Xe Services contractors who helped advise William McRaven and the rest of JSOC plan that operation.)

Now that budgets are being slashed and contractors have such a bad public image, expect the budgeting quirks to get ironed out, the contractors to largely disappear (well, come back in-house), and the same people to continue doing the same jobs, only with a different entity listed on their pay checks.