9/11

[Bomb Bloke]

One day however many years ago, I got out of bed and wandered down to my living room. My little brother was in there on the computer (he's not quite the tech head I am but we share our gaming addiction) with the TV on.

 

"A plane flew into a world trade center building," he informed me.

 

"Righto. What's that?"

 

"Something in America."

 

And if only because the computer chair was already taken I sat down in front of the TV. But it was no good, all the channels showed the same thing (I assume everyone remembers the video I mean, repeated endlessly). All it meant to me then was that there was nothing to watch so I stopped paying attention altogether (thinking the news would pass just as every other disaster did).

 

Move onto today, the dawning of '08. 9/11 is a date everyone knows. It catapulted a war using the same sort of ignorance that made everyone think the y2k bug would end civilization, dealt serious blows to airlines and even the world wide oil price hikes can probably be traced primarily back to that date.

 

Ok, so fair enough, it was a preventable disaster. People died. Or, to be more exact, they were killed. And that sucks.

 

But the bloody date has integrated itself into western culture and I think it's gotten beyond a joke.

 

One of the first examples of this was a Spiderman movie in production about that time. A trailer had been released where the sticky superhero had slung a web between the two towers and snagged a helicopter fleeing from a bank job. This was pulled and of course the scene never appeared in the movie. Fair enough, the towers no longer existed, and using them on the big screen would hardly attract glowing reviews ever again.

 

Move onto today (well actually a week ago) when the source to the original SimCity has been released. Normally I'd be sticking this link in our general gaming section as it opens the door to all sorts of ports and mods, but this one line set me off:

 

The plane crash disaster has been removed as a result of 9/11.

 

How is this justification?!

 

Planes crash from time to time. It's a thing that happens. This is also true of cyclones and hurricanes, tornados and fires, earth quakes and nuclear meltdowns. You get the general idea - humanity has seen many different tragedies on many different fronts. And just like 9/11 many have been mostly self-inflicted. Take the disaster that was Katrina, for example - It didn't have to get so far out of hand. It ended up turning into something akin to a war zone, with snipers taking shots at ambulances.

 

Should all possible 9/11 referrences be removed from games and movies, or is the event really getting undeserved attention over other calamaties? If all this really is deserved, should all the other disasters be pulled for the same reason? Will this mindset of "9/11 this, 9/11 that" ever really die down?

[Space Voyager]

Will this mindset of "9/11 this, 9/11 that" ever really die down?

 

Not untill the excuse for war and feeling hurt is needed in USA. Otherwise much bigger catastrophies and mass murders happen elsewhere but 9/11 is sooooo important...

 

I can't help myself but I feel disgusted with the abuse of 9/11. The victims must be turning in their graves when they see how many were killed "in their name".

 

But ok, to stay on more moderate grounds... The levels of demanded "respect" toward 9/11 have gone beyond all proportions in all fields.

[FullAuto]

I think I can understand the dent 9/11 has made in America, because although they've had some terrorist incidents before (even some fairly decent size ones), there hasn't been one quite as spectacular, especially when inflicted from an external threat.

 

I assume whoever released the source code is American, and they're obviously still quite sensitive about the issue.

[Pete]

They really should have removed the earthquake disaster from the game due to that big San Francisco earthquake in the early 20th century that completely levelled the city killing thousands (and is set to again any time soon), then you should remove fires because of WACO, floods because of Hurricane Katrina, then remove the tornado because it'll remind everyone of the film Twister *shudders*.

 

I think that leaves the UFO as the only disaster event in the game (unless I'm getting mixed up with Transport Tycoon there ).

 

If you apply the same rules to Hollywood blockbusters as you could to SimCity with the above list, that doesn't leave much in the action department.

[Strong Bob]

SimCity used a "Monster", not a "UFO". But the point you make still stands, regardless. That is, until we suffer a UFO invasion. (In which case... Would a lot of us even be interested in seeing science fiction movies or playing sci-fi games for a while afterwards?)

 

It has been almost seven years. However, I am the type that doesn't believe that the passage of time should have any bearing on how much you are affected by something. The 9/11 incident affects me now just as much as it did all those years ago.

 

I remember it well. High School. I was in shop class when suddenly, a teacher from another room burst inside just minutes before the period was over, where he announced that a plane rammed into the World Trade Center, and into the White House. (Yeah, I don't know where he heard about the White House getting hit.)

 

Then while my next class was in progress, the rumors were abound. Planes hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the UN building, Mount Rushmore, and a whole mess of military bases in the United States. From the eyes of my peers, we were being attacked at all fronts and even a widespread panic was about to ensue. (Quelled by a police presence not even an hour after the original said announcement.) The rumors never ceased, I think it even got as bad as people claiming to hear on their radios that Korea was the culprit, and they were launching nuclear devices at all our biggest cities, until the end of the day where we went home and finally had access to a news station.

 

Well, clearly it was all bullshit. But when something big happens in these parts, chaos follows very closely behind.

 

Now, even after over six years, I have no problems with people that could still be traumatized by the incident. Loved ones were lost, deliberately killed, and due to false information from our own media, nobody knew who to blame for a very long time... And blamed whoever they were told to, until they realized what they had done.

 

Now there is a combination of factors that are a problem here. People are ashamed to admit they originally supported a war that has now been proven to be a crock from day 1. Ashamed to admit they believed whatever they were told to in a moments weakness. On this board (if any veterans can recall why political discussion was originally banned) there was even one individual that was unwilling to admit Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, long after it was proven otherwise.

 

There is even political outrage. We never went to war with Afghanistan, but the "War on Terror" demanded war on their soil. It was severe enough that we might as well have cluster bombed the whole country, so I don't know why we just didn't go blowing up the country anyways.

 

There is more to this than a simple terrorist attack. It was a catalyst to a series of events that finally showed us what the rest of the world thinks of America. It showed us how foolish we can be, and how easily manipulated we are, and all it takes is an explosion with someone to blame. Natural disasters, by comparison, are so much easier to cope with, after all.

 

*Checks everyone else's "Location" in their profile* Hmn... Speaking from the only American perspective in this topic, so far... I must say I agree that the 9/11 attacks have not been treated well. But the tone of your post, Bomb Bloke, seems to have more care towards the production of movies and video games than the lives lost in what was literally the first massive terrorist attack on American soil from an outside source. An eye opener for some Americans, even if most generally kept their eyes closed and followed whatever the Bush Administration told them to do.

 

Ok, so fair enough, it was a preventable disaster. People died. Or, to be more exact, they were killed. And that sucks.

 

Indeed it does suck. But any disaster is "preventable" by some measure. Just because it could've been stopped upon retrospect, it shouldn't be treated so lightly. But what are you more angry about? That people died? Or that you didn't get to see the Twin Towers in Spider Man?

 

I think all of you should look deeper than the 9/11 event itself. A whole mess of things happened afterwards that only piled on the bullshit. But also take another look at what we're talking about... SimCity isn't a game that is about planes crashing... It's a cityscape planning simulator. I have the game on my system right now, the original version, and the "plane crash" disaster is virtually the same as the "fire" disaster. (Except it does 5 fires instead of one.) What really has been lost here? One aspect of one video game? I still have my copy of Destroy All Humans, made long after the incident, and that game features all kinds of buildings and planes blowing up. Collateral Damage even came out shortly after 9/11, and that featured a motor cycle ramming into and blowing up a building.

 

So long as these "acts of sensitivity" are so few and far between, I don't really think it warrants so much outrage from us gamers and movie-goers. It has not affected my gaming experience, on any level. And one person out there with a different opinion about including "plane crashes" in a game where it wasn't much more than a tiny nigh useless feature isn't going to affect me much. Besides, if the source code has been released, you know someone is going to just put them right back in there. And out of spite, there is going to be someone that will feature planes ramming into WTC towers in a mod as well.

 

Or should I just chalk this up to the age old problem of gamer nostalgia? When they changed the stats to the Imperial Guardsmen in Warhammer 40K Dawn of War, I haven't heard the end of it since. The moment a change is made to an old favorite, for any reason, people are suddenly up in arms over it. Is this the case with Sim City as well?

[Bomb Bloke]

It's problaby true, these days I don't give a fig about the casualties. But I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one, and that everyone shares the same two reasons:

 

First off, the "selfish bastard" one. It didn't affect me. Sure I have to pay 50% more at the fuel pump and had to worry about getting drafted for a bit, but I didn't personally know anyone in those towers.

 

Despite this, however, the event might still have drawn some interest from me if it wasn't one of just so many. My primary point wasn't that 9/11 didn't deserve attention, but that it didn't deserve so much more attention then all the other disasters of the world. We still have modern genocides, floods and famines, but I for one would have difficulty listing them off. No one cares about those (I never expect to play SimCity again, though I'll admit to having the slightest touch of nostalgia).

 

My example with Spiderman (a movie I only ended up seeing because I got dragged along to it) was one of a justified edit. Such a scene no longer belongs in movies or games.

 

But should they be removed from those produced prior to the event? That's what's happening with this SimCity release, even though the referrence is far less direct.

 

I can agree with FullAuto's point though. The programmer involved might well have removed the crash for his own personal reasons, and that's acceptable. Doing it for the sake of being "politically correct", I feel, is not.

 

I thought about the issue a bit more overnight and I might have worked out why people are still so raw over this event and not others.

 

The report as to why the WTC buildings fell is commonly critisized and the US goverment refuses to have it re-done. There is a TON of rumors surrounding the event, and so it's hard to sort fact from fiction. Many people still apparently believe "Iraq did it", and the fact that the war is still dragging on kinda makes it hard to forget what set it off in the first place.

 

As for what set 9/11 off in the first place, there's still debate over who flew the planes and even if they were what brought the buildings down. And I don't think anyone knows why they did it.

[Strong Bob]

I thought about the issue a bit more overnight and I might have worked out why people are still so raw over this event and not others.

 

The report as to why the WTC buildings fell is commonly critisized and the US goverment refuses to have it re-done. There is a TON of rumors surrounding the event, and so it's hard to sort fact from fiction. Many people still apparently believe "Iraq did it", and the fact that the war is still dragging on kinda makes it hard to forget what set it off in the first place.

Yes, there is that, as well as the examples I have already mentioned.

 

9/11 wasn't just a disaster, it was a hefty political event and a catalyst of a number of other disasters, both here in America and in the Middle East. We're not seeing much of it now, but after Iraq was blamed for the 9/11 attacks, some of you may have heard from somewhere that Middle Eastern immigrants (sometimes even civilians that were up to three generations American) were being publically harassed, humiliated, even murdered in on the streets and in their homes.

 

Hell, I distinctly remember going into a variety store run by a middle aged Indian man (The asian kind of Indian ) and he wouldn't stop going on and on about how sorry he was about 9/11, I felt so sorry for him, it was pretty clear he suffered from some ignorant Americans at some point. It was heartbreaking that the ignorance and prejudice seemed to be spilling to basically anyone with brown skin.

 

So it isn't just ignorant white America being too sensitive... Some of these people are ghastly afraid of coming off as too threatening.

 

If this was just a disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, then maybe I would be in a much greater agreement. But there is a much greater depth to the September 11th terrorist attacks, that I doubt we will be seeing any lift in the censors for a long time.

[Tifi]

The thing about the thing is this:

 

Various nutter groups have been doing stuff like this for decades all over the world, but the second it happens in the US everyone goes INSANE and uses it as an excuse ^H^H^H reason for numerous crappy things - such as the whole Iraq/Afghanistan waste, and the general stupidity of stamping on freedom for the sake of faux safety.

 

Yes, its a horrible thing to have happen to anyone, but it no different to, for example what the UK went through with IRA for countless years, or Spain with ETA, or the whole crapstorm in the 'holy' land. The list could go on...

 

There really is no delicate way of saying this, so I'm just gonna throw you in...

The US is not that much of a big deal. Get over yourselves. The rest of the world is sick of hearing about the whole US BAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWing about stuff we've been through and just got on with it like they're some kind of specially priveledged 'untouchable' group.

 

https://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/7/7e/Lol_terrorism.gif

[Strong Bob]

I take it, Tifi, you haven't been paying much attention to what both Bomb Bloke and I just said.

 

9/11 isn't a huge deal because it happened in US soil. (If that was the case, the numerous other terrorist attacks and disasters would be equally famous. And yet, some barely recieve media coverage.) It's a famous attack because it was a catalyst to a series of events that is affecting the entire world.

 

I would suggest looking into what happened during 9/11 and how it affected pretty much every country involved. It goes deeper than a mere explosion, and has affected more than the United States.

 

Also, you can say "Get over yourselves" when someone close to you dies in a terrorist attack of some kind. Every single example made in this topic (Primarily Sim City) depicts merely choices of individuals that likely still have the event fresh on their mind after losing somebody. Not people crying over United States pride.

[Tifi]

15th June 1996

Manchester

Been there, done that.

 

I would like to apologise if you interpreted my ranting as some kind of anti-US thing as it was nothing of the sort.

The reasoning behind it is that its being used as an 'excuse' for everything - whenever something happens that we don't like its dutifully trotted out and pointed at, and quite honestly we're sick of it.

Hell, this whole flying aeroplanes into buildings thing was used to make me redundant for fecks sake =P

 

OH NOES! WE CAN'T BUILD ANY MORE AS THEY'RE HORRIBLE INSTRUMENTS OF DOOM NOW!

[Azrael Strife]

This being the crux of the problem at lot of people have with the situation.

Had this happened in ANY other contry in the entire world it would have been in the headlines for a week, then business as usual foreverafter.

 

Its like the big kid in the playground at school.

He goes round pushing other kids over and stealing thier lunch money, but the first time some kid turns round and smacks him in the face he makes the biggest fuss ever and paints himself as the victim.

 

Food for thought?

Well, it did happen in the empire of our days, so it's obvious it was going to happen this way.

 

Your example is incomplete, it'd be something like this:

 

Its like the big kid in the playground at school.

He goes round pushing other kids over and stealing thier lunch money, but the first time some kid turns round and smacks him in the face he makes the biggest fuss ever and paints himself as the victim, then resumes his bullying and stealing, but this time taking shelter under the excuse that he's a victim so he's entitled to, claiming that the kids he's stealing from were going to smack him next.

[Strong Bob]

15th June 1996

Manchester

Been there, done that.

 

And if somebody told you they had a fear of shopping centers or something of a similar sort, you would blow them off? Surely you would have more regard for personal trauma than that.

 

The reasoning behind it is that its being used as an 'excuse' for everything

 

At this point, I'm seriously wondering what excuse it is being used for at the moment.

 

Besides some people sensitive over what happened (Which I find to be more than an understandable circumstance) this seems to be taken as a bigger deal overseas.

 

Speaking as the only voice for America here, I can definitely say that 9/11 has mostly left our everyday thoughts, save for the annual tribute I notice occur in some places. (And if that's so "boo hoo", then we may as well just remove every single war, disaster, and idolizing memorial ever made.)

 

Its like the big kid in the playground at school.

He goes round pushing other kids over and stealing thier lunch money, but the first time some kid turns round and smacks him in the face he makes the biggest fuss ever and paints himself as the victim, then resumes his bullying and stealing, but this time taking shelter under the excuse that he's a victim so he's entitled to, claiming that the kids he's stealing from were going to smack him next.

 

While I can understand your hatred for American politics, let me try to be as neutral as possible in correcting your analogy.

 

Its like the big kid in the playground at school.

He goes round pushing other kids over and stealing thier lunch money, and shares a good deal of the spoils with a fellow bully, who in turn strikes back at first said bully. Bullies get into a fist fight, however, other kids on the playground sees the two go at it and pick the winning side in hopes for a share of the spoils.

 

Just look at how many countries are involved in the war on Iraq. It's hard for me to single out America as a money grubbing resource guzzling nation when even Australia has involved itself in the war despite having virtually nothing to do with the conflict.

 

Perhaps it's true, being the Empire of our time period comes with it's faults as being too much the center of attention. A cataclysm here is going to see presses worldwide no matter what the real case is.

[Bomb Bloke]

Keeping in mind here that the American leaders stood up in front of the rest of the world and said, "These guys helped those who hurt us, they're planning to hurt you too, we have proof that they have these weapons of mass destruction, come help us".

 

But I can certainly believe that the other world leaders saw their chance to get a piece of the pie.

 

As for what 9/11 is excusing at the moment, the last time (that I heard of) was about a week ago, where Bush once again implied that if a democrat becomes the next president there'll be another attack on America.

 

I also gather airline security procedures are still insane, Guantanamo Bay is still open, habeas corpus is now optional and you've all been wire tapped by the President's order. The memory of 9/11 will hang over average Americans (whether they know it or not) until they realise such crap is unacceptable and get it all shut down.

[Strong Bob]

Of course, it was used as a ruse to begin conflict elsewhere. That much is clear to even some of the hardcore American Republicans now. (Though I will still admit, there are still plenty that are dense enough to not be convinced.)

 

President Bush is a Republican, and thus will say anything in support of the Republican party at the discredit of Democrats. That is not an "excuse" so much as it is mere political mudslinging. (And if you want to fault America for that, just look at how bad politics are in a place like India. It's a freakin' nightmare and a half over there.) You will find mudslinging over almost any issue. Remember when John Edwards claimed Christopher Reeve would be up and walking around if a Democrat was in the White House instead? This is pretty much the same thing.

 

My defense has nothing to do with what happened because of 9/11, but what I am seeing here is a batch of people overseas seeing the problem in all the wrong places. I've not heard any media whining about the perils of 9/11, merely they occasionally state it as a reference point for things happening nowadays. Kind of like any other point in history, like the Gulf War.

 

However, if what Tifi says is true, according to this quote here:

 

And then, theres the whole thing of the entire world media making all the WOE IS US (pun intended) noise, as if no-one could ever imagine having an axe to grind re: US foreign policy.

 

Then it's the world media, not the US media, that is whining about all this. In which case, I can definitely say it isn't us doing all the "bawwing" so much as it is you guys. Am I wrong here? Someone please point out something more than just a few hurt individuals...