Thoughts and Questions about the Decades Challenge (Emotions, Ethics and Historical Perspective)
I've been thinking a lot about the Decades Challenge recently and I have an interesting setting in mind that I'd like to play one day (not anytime soon though... I would have to read a bunch of books first and wait for For Rent to get fixed, lol)
But I have some thoughts and questions...
Has anyone played the challenge from a European point of view? If so what did you change about the historical events to make it more suitable, especially regarding the second half of the 20th century?
As a European I can't really imagine to play it from an American point of view since my historical and personal knowledge would be quite limited and it wouldn't feel right.
That kind of leads to the second questions...
Should stories that inevitably involve war, dictatorship, loss of home, persecution and genocide be told at all with a cutesy video game?
I feel like from the American point of view the wars are dealt with in a quite distant way (send your young men to a different lot and roll a dice to see if they return) whereas from a European point of view you'd have to roll for all the civilians too and probably also roll if your house gets bombed or not... I am wondering if it's possible at all to tell these stories in a respectful way.
How do you feel emotionally about historical events in the challenge that are closer to the current time?
I'm especially wondering about the Vietnam war, since I can imagine that a lot of people's families have been affected (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess it's a lot easier to tell stories about WW1 than a war that happened not that long ago. I think I feel that way about WW2, because my grandfather had to go to war as an 18 year old, never could return to his home afterwards and my mother told me stories about playing in bombed buildings when she was a child... There are just more emotions involved.
Or don't you think about something like that at all and just play for the vintage aesthetics?
No judgement. I might a have mild case of overthinking here, lol.
But I have some thoughts and questions...
Has anyone played the challenge from a European point of view? If so what did you change about the historical events to make it more suitable, especially regarding the second half of the 20th century?
As a European I can't really imagine to play it from an American point of view since my historical and personal knowledge would be quite limited and it wouldn't feel right.
That kind of leads to the second questions...
Should stories that inevitably involve war, dictatorship, loss of home, persecution and genocide be told at all with a cutesy video game?
I feel like from the American point of view the wars are dealt with in a quite distant way (send your young men to a different lot and roll a dice to see if they return) whereas from a European point of view you'd have to roll for all the civilians too and probably also roll if your house gets bombed or not... I am wondering if it's possible at all to tell these stories in a respectful way.
How do you feel emotionally about historical events in the challenge that are closer to the current time?
I'm especially wondering about the Vietnam war, since I can imagine that a lot of people's families have been affected (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess it's a lot easier to tell stories about WW1 than a war that happened not that long ago. I think I feel that way about WW2, because my grandfather had to go to war as an 18 year old, never could return to his home afterwards and my mother told me stories about playing in bombed buildings when she was a child... There are just more emotions involved.
Or don't you think about something like that at all and just play for the vintage aesthetics?
No judgement. I might a have mild case of overthinking here, lol.
