When we combat role-play in games and virtual worlds, we often forget the real-world real-life consequences of death and damage in war. Much of game RP is all about racking up a kill-score. This is why I'd love to start a WW2 RP region that was mission oriented and not kill oriented.
In RL, war-fighting is all about accomplishing a mission and winning the war for your side as quickly as possible. But even when your objective is saving your home country and pushing back a terrible enemy, as in IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, empathy can creep into your mind.
Even though your cause may be righteous, there may also be sadness and loss.
With that in mind, this is a very thoughtful YouTube video from a regular player of IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover...
From the description:
Published on Feb 4, 2015
This moment will stay with me for some time.
As I saw this helpless, straggling bomber spiral down towards earth, its fate doomed, I was struck by the horror I was watching. I could not stop thinking about those real men who would have been trapped inside, never to see their loved ones again.
Even in a flight sim, the resemblance to reality can make me quite emotional: the joy to successfully avenge the destruction the bomber brought upon innocent people, mixed with the agonizing thought of those ordinary men no different to me, being trapped alive in a burning cage, plunging down towards their inevitable death.
Caused by my actions.
