@SilverGM I love Spec Ops The Line, I discovered it much much later in University because I study militarization and demilitarization, and it was regularly mentioned in academic papers as an anti-militarization video game and I had my friend @MattyF play it on stream and it was an amazing experience that really shook him to his core.

I also read a YouTube comment where the commenter said he played the game at a time when he was seriously considering joining the army, and after playing it he didn't enlist because he realized he's not as good a person as he thought and he wouldn't be doing good in the army.

@SilverGM @MattyF I also love just how unrelenting the game is. The gameplay is just good enough that it won't frustrate you to stop playing but the levels aren't "fun", they're a grind, and you just keep grinding and killing and it's a slog and at the end the game even asks you why you kept going

And like it changes the player mindset too, first like just getting used to doing horrible things and also feeling like "you have no choice" which is a common justification in war.

Like @MattyF shot and killed all those civilians who were throwing rocks at him. He said later that he thought he had no choice, the game was forcing him to do another war crime, "I guess it wants me to be a bad person". And I asked if he even thought about shooting into the air to scare them off and he said no.

@ami_angelwings @SilverGM didn't even occur to me.

That game changed me.

"I didn't mean to hurt anybody."

"No one ever does, Walker"

I was disoriented by the ending and didn't even make a choice bc I didn't want to anymore. I panicked and was like "idk what to do i don't understand!"