Most war journalist take on multiple roles, including reporting the truth, gathering intel and being actively or passively involved in propaganda. All while secretly carrying weapons to ensure their safety (most opt for handguns, a few choose knives). Since representing them in gameplay same as civilians tends to upset players forced to face reality who claim “It’s just a game”, 99.9% of war game designers ignore their existence.
As far as I know, Decision Games may be the only one publishers to introduce the mechanic of war journalist, utilizing the Media Counter Effects Table and Media Counter in a simple design, making it easy to integrate, and as always, morally questionable.
But at least it serves as a reminder not to get lost in the dice violence
I thought there was a Fallujah game that had media counters that caused penalties when Coalition forces took certain actions nearby. but on checking Battle for Fallujah: April 2004 it just had a Media track that increased when Coalition operations got successes with heavy weapon. higher track meant more political pressure for a ceasefire
Out of wargame, I recalled a game with media counter not a track: Civil Power by Brian Train. The new version seems to even added an Active Denial System counter. But I don’t own it.
Although camels have been used as symbols for people and buildings, many camels indeed died during the Gulf War. You can see this LTV A-7 Corsair II in Tillamook Air Museum in Oregon or Airforce Delta game series.
And, we can unlock the XF-0002 Phosphorus aka Vic Viper in the game.
I think i played about 20 minutes of it when I got it because it was on sale and the game is like 100 dollars normally like the game is mostly NATO based scenarios that play out like every war the US has fought since Vietnam which I think is really boring. so from time to time i like to check in on peoples community scenarios because they are extremely, bizarrely telling of the person who made them even though i dont play the game, like I hope you like reading paragraphs about how the US has the highest tax rate in the world in the middle of your mission briefing because an 800 year old boomer made it. like of course the typical shit people make is like about the IRAN-AL QAEDA ALLIANCE or Rhodesia, like literlally the kind of thing you expect from stuff like this, but i think my all time favorite stupid user made scenario is this one
what compels a person to design a scenario in which you destroy the entire military of Trinidad and Tobago because they wouldn’t extradite a fucking murder suspect? the briefing says your doing this to teach the government they cant act with impunity and have to respect international law before a mission in which you engage in an unprovoked act of war against a sovereign nation and then extrajudicially murder a prisoner. I think about this a lot.. these old men need their computers taken away. The guy who made this must have had a terrible vacation there.
The world is bipolar, the CIA is everywhere, subversion is recurring, wars around the world are imminent, we close to the edge only 90 sceonds, and justice nations is always U.S.
and then, you know, ww2 IR degree clausewitz civil war overland campaign analysis etc.
perhaps it was inevitable i would turn out this way
friend was into wargame red dragon for a while
i’m deeply suspicious of all these WW3 simulators and the like, the truth is there’s something about me at this point that can’t stomach them, i guess ww2 and civil war games are some of the ones i can still stomach but whenever we start getting much past the 1980s it all starts to get a bit too close for comfort. did we really need israel and apartheid south africa DLCs. who are these people and how can i avoid them
most of Eugen’s games suck after European Escalation. i’ve tried to play Red Dragon but can’t because it expects you to care about this boring metagame bullshit even for the singleplayer campaigns, along with being able to play competitively if you actually want to get anything meaningful out of it
Graviteam’s depictions of various Cold War conflicts in numerous expansion packs for Mius Front are far better and more respectful, because they don’t jack off about how Isreal or Apartheid-era South Africa is awesome or whatever. Do you want to play as FAPLA in the African-themed Cold War DLC’s for Mius Front? You can do that. Do you want to play as either Iran or Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War DLC? You can do that. Graviteam absolutely rules at depicting fairly obscure Eastern Front battles, but seeing them experiment more with Cold War stuff and avoiding what everyone else is doing is highly refreshing
oh this sounds cool! thanks will check these out. yeah the samey-ness of a lot of the stuff aimed at the grognard demographic + actually cool and interesting historical forces not getting content while we get the nth iteration of imperialist forces is part of the reason i’ve hesitated to dip my toe in these waters. paradox games as well to a lesser degree
ignoring everything else wrong with them, eugen uses AI art in their games
the thing about ww3 games is that they are all by western developers usually European so they are all inherently biased towards NATO and it’s allies which is why they put Israel and South Africa in their games and pretend like the Warsaw Pact didn’t know what anti-air is. They all started getting popular in the 2010s right as every dumbass politician started talking about gearing up for a war with Russia again. go figure. it’s an entire genre of game dedicated to lost causing for a war that the united states was unable to start. they have no value whatsoever. it also lets them get away with contemporary-ish warfare without being blatantly disgusting like combat mission black sea so that’s the other reason they do it. but all these ww3 sims are ideological as fuck. ww2 games have the same problem. with wargames, it’s inescapable
Yes, once you start to pay attention, you’ll find that many of the videogames we’re familiar with are deeply infiltrated by the military. Actual imperialism and violence have deeply woven through into our mind. In the face of the collective moral doubts and imperial worship of wargamer, my approach is also to pay attention to the harm done to people and the world while playing these games as a counterbalance. The cost is that the enjoyment of the games diminishes, it’s a mixed blessing for hobby.
While these resemble the FF-X7 Thunderbolt above, the Dropship 77-Troop Carrier is quite different from fighter jets. They focus more on hovering, I think they highly inspiration from the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne. Another classical the Solvalou ship from Xevious was also inspired by it.
it’ll probably be ages before the western-centric depiction most wars in computer strategy/wargames goes away. i’m always surprised when one from a western dev is actually competent and respectful in terms of how they render and depict a war in a game, such as John Tiller (rip); he did start out with numerous Civil War or late WW2 Western Front stuff, but then gradually expanded into far more lesser-known wars or theaters - and refused to render pop-culture-izied versions of things such as the Eastern Front (i won’t probably get over how awful Company of Heroes 2 is, or the how bad Enemy at the Gates is and its consequences on mass perception of WW2 lmao)
it’s been interesting watching Broken Arrow streams because the core dev team is Russian. so you get the same bias problem from the opposite side. fantasy version of tanks that have sufficient support to remain operational for an entire 45 minute engagement. helos have as much armour as a tank, plus anti-infantry anti-armoured anti-air & can transport a squad. MI-8s being hit with 4-5 stingers and shrugging
it’s funny to me you bring up broken arrow because all these games are balanced like every other shitty pvp game despite being Realistic Wargames so for months the steam forums have been full of guys complaining that america is underpowered and the devs dropped a patch nerfing all of russias tanks this month. matchmaking is now full of US vs US matchups
i think its important to point out that the audience for these games literally whines endlessly for the us/nato to be better than russia/pact in the game balance so its sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that every one of these games ends up turning into a bizarre performative thing where my virtual armys better than yours which means were better than you in real life too. I don’t get why its fun to have one side impeded arbitrarily. this is what i mean about this particular genre of game having zero redeeming value whatsoever. its just a pissing contest over old hatreds
The fans serious doubts about how companies convince governments to purchase expensive infantry assault equipment in a universe where even early age Gundam easily deflects Anti-MS missiles.
Considering the sad reality of freedom of speech, wargames or war themes inevitably center on the American-centric, which is not a bad thing caused rest of the countries could be make you in jail when you try to calculate the data of weapon. As long as one doesn’t only believe Western-centric, it’s not a big deal. I think this is not a problem for us in forum at all.
Depends on the type of game you want to play. The closer it gets to the tactical level, the global trade of weapons leads different countries to only on differences in organizational structures and training quality. Once you try to add some feature flavor, each national stereotype more or less is like suspicious racism.
IMO the bias of a designer provides a window into understanding thought patterns or noticing the overlooked detail for me. I tend to prefer unplugged not computer games, as you can always critically on the ideology presented and discover or get unpleased new thought through detail materials (like Stonewall Uprising did to conservative me). This allows for a DIY approach to find one’s points of enjoyment and balance.
The less flexible of video games makes all this more difficult, and most players create their own versions of lore through mods, eg the famous The New Order. But still, cannot escape the framework.
I don’t like to treat anything as a battlefield in Gramsci way. However, considering the current state of the world, it’s becoming difficult to avoid what happened to play the balance of enjoyment. Even the most conservative player in community, which would unhesitatingly send their children to Iraq, sometimes they doubts about the hobby too. So just start the game not so straight, a board game depicting the Hansa and then slowly move to a more contentious time era or topic.
