Sometimes, Extra Credits gets it wrong.

[notlamprey]

I'm no fan of The Division, and I also happen to like a lot of the content that EC makes. However... this time, they done goofed.

Watch the video for yourself, instead of just listening to me describe how it's way off base.

For whatever reason, I kinda want to talk about this because of how badly EC got it wrong. Those of you who have played The Division will know a lot more than I do, but it seems to me like they've totally ignored a lot of stuff about this game for the sake of making a political point.

 

[Sixty5]

I stopped watching them after I realised they were using their influence to push their agenda. 

Games should be games, not political statements 

 

Well i just started watching the video and the guy has used the word "problematic" 3 times. For the love of RNGesus, its a GAME not a statement about the world we live in. Games are meant to allow you to do what you want, not cram morality down our throat.

Next thing you know someone will start calling Warframe anti-Semitic for having us gun down the corpus

 

I wonder what they think about Grand Theft Auto? Since that glorifies stealing, murder, torture and drug use. 

Edited April 19, 2016 by Sixty5

[notlamprey]

It's a damn shame, because I like Extra History, and Dan's concerns are good ones to have.

We have incontrovertible evidence that the world is run by a few hundred gigantic prolapsed anuses who hold the rest of us in contempt, and we absolutely should be looking out for each other against governments and corporations who don't care at all how many of us suffer and die so they can have their status quo.

Trouble is, this video is jumping at shadows. It's embarrassing, because even I know better than to think this way about The Division. My only contact with the game has been press coverage, and it's painfully obvious that none of the stuff Dan says here is true about this game.

He's not wrong to be concerned about the encroach of repressive government, but there isn't any to be found here.

[TheErebus.]

Never liked EC. 
Now I really don't like them. It's like they completely ignored the actual setting of the game. Where it's in an apocalyptic setting where due process of law is irrelevant. 

[Artekkor]

I probably will check this out later... For curiocity.

I love Extra Credits, many of their videos are on point and they rarely goof it up.

So i really want to see the video now...

[Artekkor]

Watched the video.

I didn't find any problem with it. Everything that they said seems legit.

Agree, they went a little bit off-topic, but that's Extra Credits. They do this all the time. They truly believe that games let us explore ourselves and our society, even if the game developer never intended that.

They are simply... Love to go deep. VERY deep. So yeah, i pretty much enjoyed the video and didn't find any issues there.

I don't know, maybe they REALLY missed the point of the game? Because from the little information that i know, from those trailers and what not i watched - it seems that the game is pretty much what EC saw it as.

[notlamprey]

Some of the points made in the video's comments section highlight the biggest problems with what EC said. On the point of "killing US citizens without due process:"

Spoiler

Ok, so the enemies you are fighting are:

1 - Rioters who kill people to loot their corpses (there is even a guy talking on a radio saying he saw a rioter walk up to a woman and her child, shoot her in the back of the head and loot her while her kid is crying). These aren't disaster survivors, their victims are.

2 - Crazy people who are burning people alive. They think literally everyone who isn't one of them is infected, and everyone needs to be killed with fire to prevent the spread of disease. One mission has them corralling survivors in a subway so they can drop a tanker of napalm on them.

3 - Faction of murderers who kill people for fun. They murder JTF and hang their corpses around their territory to scare people. They play games to kill people, like drawing targets on the ground and throwing them off buildings trying to hit the target, or tying them to a wall and throwing axes at them, scoring based off where they hit them. They have graffiti around the town, stating the cost to get in the gang is a killing a cop and taking his badge.

4 - The LMB. A traitorous private military company that is basically acting like an occupying foreign army. They are taking civilians as prisoners and conscripting them, killing anyone who refuses. This isn't a police shooting unarmed people rabble rabble racism rabble rabble thing. This is a disaster event marshal law trying to maintain control and murderers taking advantage of the situation. Those innocent looters who were just talking that someone told you to go execute? Yeah, stand in the open, they shoot you the second they see you.

The game goes out of its way to establish the fact that the space you're playing in is a total disaster area. Even martial law has failed here. How would EC feel about martial law, I wonder? It happens only rarely, and I don't see it being used except in extreme circumstances. In fact, the federal government often waits a very long time before resorting to these measures - long enough that many citizens make accusations of negligent inaction. That merely means the government is properly aware of the dangers of misusing its power.

Spoiler

Hey I have a bit of an issue with this video- One with in the context of the Division the city is quarantined off to prevent the spread of a virus, people are sent in to help and the people you honestly are fighting are people who are killing, Burning, and taking over the city via Hostile Take over. Fighting Looters literally beating people to death on the side of the street or Killing people who are Burning people alive is wrong then I honestly don't know what else you could use to Justify this.

Some have even pointed out that the game does make a point of being self-aware, perhaps rendering this entire video redundant.

Spoiler

This video completely ignores the obvious terrible design of the game(and wish could be better)like it's economy, loot drop, and content in general and goes somewhere else... The plot already establishes the city is under martial law, the people you are killing are killing/kidnapping innocent citizens(missions are about securing supplies and rescuing kidnapped folks). Sars, ebola, and other diseases were not as devastating as smallpox which the game itself says its a more lethal/contagious version than the original which also had no known cure. The guy in the radio in every safehouse or place with a radio is already constantly talking about how bad Directive 51 is and brings every point this video is making. What a waste of time by Extra Credits.

Again, it looks like the usual well-informed discussion of the game has been discarded in favor of making a point.

Spoiler

OK, normally I agree with you. This time I have to ask: have you actually played this game?

If you pay attention, all 3 enemy factions are not "minor" criminals. The rioters are made very obvious that they are from the higher security (and thus more serious criminals) areas of the prison. They even mentioned at one point how the minor offenders were either killed for not joining up or escaped back home.

The LMB is the detention of enemy combatant. They were American soldiers turned private military turned rogue. They are killing citizens for simply disagreeing. They are, by our own rules of combat, armed combatants. Furthermore, they are also traitors.

The cleaners are also not doing what the player is doing. They indiscriminately kill people because they assume they are infected. And by the way, you don't solve this issue by incinerating live people. You incinerate the corpse after treatment failed to save them.

You as a division wave 2 agent are talked with wiping out hardened criminals (most with life sentences anyway), armed traitors, and a group of people INCINERATING INNOCENT CIVILIANS. You can't so much as shoot at a civilian. You give them aid. You save them in a couple of missions. You aren't the same as them. Not by a long shot. They even question the logic behind their own authority, but even they agree they are the final line of defense against total anarchy and rampant slauter. They are what comes when S#&$ hit the fan so hard that the fan broke and spread that S#&$ everywhere. So again, have you even played the game? You don't seem to understand the individual groups. Nor did you look into their descriptions.

At one point, Dan mentioned Geraldo Rivera's "don't wear hoodies" comment without context, which was a very bad idea. Rivera is a stooge and attention @#&*(, but Dan falls victim here to the very same sin of "trivializing a complicated issue."

If the hoodie is contributing to tensions between police and public, you can de-escalate those tensions by not wearing it. Sometimes, in order for peace and understanding to have a chance, one side (or even both) will have to give up a point of pride to make the other willing to trust them. De-escalation is a very specific point on which U.S. military are now very thoroughly trained, and it is absolutely crucial in avoiding needless loss of life from civil unrest.

Dan just ignored all of that, and unintentionally send the message that anyone wanting to make the other party at ease in a tense situation is being cowardly. Since he's going to hold The Division responsible for messages sent unintentionally, I'm going to give him the same treatment. He fails that test, and doesn't have a leg to stand on because of it.

Point of SJW bull@#%&: Some of us might remember when James went off on a tirade against John Bain during the heat of the Gamergate conflicts. Not only did James tell outright lies, calling TB a "leader of gamergate," he completely fabricated the idea of TB being shadily compensated for promoting Guns of Icarus. EC isn't what it used to be, sadly.

[Freelancer27]

I don't take these people too kindly especially when this someone tries to peer into my moral compass, explain how the world works then take their personal perspective to it, and then, immediately gives a beating out of me as I watch my own compass being shamed out for no reason but for the sake of getting influential credit.

I used to trust Extra Credits before since they brush out, sort of, when it comes to the Pay-2-Win economics system. Now, I think they not only owe me an apology but also a beating out of their moral compass and a dump to their toilet for mesmerizing my life choices over something that is not even there in Real Life.

[Mr.ToastForPresident]

The videos that actually talk about video game design are great.

When they post stuff like this, not so much.

I mean, come on. Those guys are game designers. They should  just focus on videos that stick to their strengths, and not try to become philosophers.

[TheBrsrkr]

Extra Credits has never really been entirely accurate in all things, even in discussions of game design. It's not to say that everything they say is wrong, in fact a lot of their videos are very accurate and informative, but there's a lot of agenda pushing in there too, especially in the more recent years. Game design and philosophy are two very different things, and intersect only when the developers say they should. Not every game is a statement. Not every arc is a reflection of today. Not every sign is a symbol.