Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdash | Hacker News Reader

What is wrong with depicting a confederate flag in a game about the civil war?

It is worth noting that what is commonly thought of as the confederate flag today was actually only adopted as "a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia"; the historically accurate confederate flags are different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_State...

The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election.

But it's also worth noting that it has successfully become the symbol of the Confederacy in the minds of most modern Americans. If you show a map of the Civil War and designate Confederate units or territories with the first national flag or the Bonnie Blue flag, you'll just confuse the people trying to understand your map.

And, if you use the second or third national flags, well, you know? I suspect that Apple wasn't going to let those ones through either. It's not as though they have any distinctive pattern BESIDES the battle flag.

hmm.. In my mind it is the symbol of budwieser, cutoffs, rusted pickup trucks, twangy guitar music and rascism. I think I picked up on that growing up before I even knew it had anything to do with the civil war. As far as games go I think simply the use of blue and grey units would suffice for most games. They could use icons of their hats for example. I own several WWII boardgames and none of them feature swastikas and I don't feel confused or cheated by it in the slightest. Just my opinion tho.

I've seen a lot of WWII games that simply use the Iron Cross of German coat of arms as the symbol of Germany.

That said the CSA had a real flag, there's really no reason to continue using the flag of its arguably most famous army to represent the entire thing.

I think the people interested in Civil War games, would appreciate the realism in using the actual CSA flag.

Nothing imo, it's historic facts. But what is wrong imo is using the situation for PR purpose.

This is the point you were trying to make and I completely agree with you.

How are they using the situation for PR purpose? All they did was posting that Steam put their game on the front page, which any sane game developer would do.

Not at all. Steam is showing off the fact that it isn't led by vapid idiots.

It's important for gestures like this to happen to fight against the growing threat of 'social justice' fueled censorship. There's a big difference between not selling to people who want to wave the battle flag to trying to erase every depiction regardless of context. Standing up against such foolishness is important.

Is it a good game? That's all that matters. Maybe it's great, I personally don't know. I'll give the benefit of the doubt here that the featured algorithm uses controversy as a metric.

What would you call the move by Apple?

I don't see this as Valve using the confederate flag for PR purposes. Valve is saying "hey look, we're not swept up in this flavor of the week hysteria over the confederate flag, especially in the context of a historical game." I'm really glad they did this. Art is under assault by well meaning idiots who want to remove anything that challenges them or their preconceived notions. I'm glad Valve is backing up the developers who fill Steam with content, not leaving them hanging out to dry. If I ever want to publish art that is even a little bit controversial, I (and anyone else who's following this) know where to go.

I'd have interpreted Valve's move as saying "unlike product management at Apple, we understand the context of gaming enough to know that in war games, it's typical to use flags to represent opposing sides, and that there is no reason to believe that people are making or buying such games to make a racist statement" Apple's PR moving in banning the games was to make the statement "we are a sensitive company" but their unintended subtext of their actions was to highlight that that don't know or care to take into consideration the context of developers of gaming apps, and are happy to hurt them to make this statement, while not being willing to do the same to truly important partners, like the makers of the television show Dukes of Hazard, or any of the other TV shows, or movies, or books where that flag is displayed.

No one who actually cared about not glorifying the Confederacy would continue to sell Gone with the Wind, as Apple is doing.

> But what is wrong imo is using the situation for PR purpose.

Be clear that you are not implying Valve is doing this without offering any proof.

Also, what is your opinion on Apple using the shooting in Charleston for PR purpose?

But apple is the one who used the situation for PR purposes. Valve would have published the game one way or another, and that linked page is just how newly released games are displayed on the valve store. No special PR here -- someone from the developer probably paid to advertise it there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com