July 10, 2002
"Realistic" War Games
"Realistic" War Games
Lileks is at the top of his game today, with an article on first person shooters, "realistic" war games, and persistent online universes derived from such. As usual, he's excellent, but one point he made caught my eye (probably because it's right at the beginning):
While doing a radio interview about computer-game violence the other day, I came up with a good definition of a "realistic" war game: they ship 45,000 copies, and only 15,000 of the games allow you to proceed past the beach. That's it. No refunds, either. You get off the landing craft; your screen goes black; your computer seizes up and cannot be rebooted. Game over, man.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Titanic exhibit in Chicago, where I was doing some consulting. At the beginning of the exhibit, which was phenomenal, they gave you a slip of paper with a name on it. Like everybody else, I puzzled over it for a few minutes, then returned to oohing and aahing over the various artifacts that had been recovered. Even got to touch a piece of the hull.
Anyway, when you got to the end of the exhibit, there was a wall covered with names. I found the name I was given, which turned out to be a third class passenger, one of the ones who didn't make it. Kind of brought the experience home for me.
Something similar could be applied to the "realistic" war games. While I don't think that software publishers would go for a game as realistic as the one suggested by Lileks, there are some ideas in there that I think could be interesting. One idea would be that the game packaging would could contain the name of one of the soldiers that took part in the campaign that the game is simulating. At some point in the game, either when the soldier died or when you finish the game, you would learn how far the soldier had made it, and what had happened to him.
I know that's a very rough idea, and probably full of holes that I'm in too much of a hurry to look for. If you have any ideas, please drop them in the comment box. Posted by Dork at July 10, 2002 10:05 AM | TrackBack
I just read your article after finding it on a search engine, and I must say, it is a very good idea! With the games that are out now...take Sudden Strike for example, even though it's not a first-person shooter, it models real battles. I think it would really bring home the game to find out that there was a man in the campaign you just completed that fought and perished...That brings up a downfall also...Who would want to be saddened with the thought that they just sacrificed 20 men to take out a panzer that was holed up in a street, when you know real men and women died for the same thing...I don't know, maybe I'm not making sense...
Posted by: Paul Rotzler on January 27, 2003 03:11 PM