The Arma 3 Community Guide Series is, as one might expect, a series of guides – specifically, fourteen videos, roughly two-and-a-half hours of content – all about the Bohemia Interactive sandbox military sim Arma 3.
These videos all appear to have been written, recorded, produced, and possibly even conceptualised by a single community figure (presumably with at least some minimal amount of official oversight) that one must presume might be familiar to veteran Arma players, but who added nothing to the experience for me.
In each one of these videos, after having introduced himself, this narrator walks the audience through a minute aspect of the new Arma game in excruciating detail. My takeaway from all this is that he’s treating these videos as if he’s making real official training materials for real world soldiers, because that’s all Arma appears to be: digital toy army men for those who enjoy the power fantasy of modern imperialism but don’t actually want to commit either to enlisting for real, or even marching around an actual muddy field in their best costume with some likeminded war-nerds, I guess.
This, predominantly, was what struck me as the most irritating aspect of these videos, although I admittedly did get through about five or so or them before I was finally able to pinpoint the feeling: all these videos are, fundamentally, absolutely unnecessary instructions of playing a game, being implicitly treated as if they matter, and that therefore, the person making them matters and deserves any amount of respect. I, for one, really don’t appreciate all the tactical military-jargon being used to cover up something that is, at the end of the day, inescapably just a toy.
I strongly recommend no one, not even people interested in the Arma games themselves, waste their time watching these videos.
I will say, however, I’m sure the fan who made these videos most likely does have a respectable job outside of the game, presumably. Just as I have a good, decent, job outside of Reviewing sub-par Steam videos. And I mean no disrespect to him as a person, but his videos are very fundamentally bad.
