"Real" Real Time Strategy?

Mr. Fluffyhead writes "This hardcore RTS gamer's rather thoughtful wish list asks the question, if somebody made a 'real' war sim, would anyone want to play it?" From the fake Newsweek cover story about the "Ultralisk Rape Scandal" to Mr. Wong's yearning to break the Geneva Convention in pixel form, this one's a humourous yet realistic look at real time war games.

Comments

Real Real Time?

[Vargasan]

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want to play a game that takes 5 - 8 real-time months to build a barracks. Might lose it's feel.

Real != Fun

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I have always thought that a realistic real-time war sim would be nothing like the Warcraft/Comand & Conquer type games, because those give you way too much control. In real warfare you can't control individual soldiers. As a general you can map out a very general battle plan, and then kind of sit back and hope it works out. Even with the best communcation systems in place at best you could give orders to individual soldiers, but you wouldn't have any control over how they carried them out.

Now, how much fun is it to play a game where you basically sit back and watch the action, rather than being able to interact with it?

Interesting way to make a political statement

[the morgawr]

Guys, in case you didn't realize, he's not talking about any game; he's making a political statement. I did find the satire and the backdrop of a video game a very interesting way for the author to express his opinion.

Re:Interesting way to make a political statement

[protohiro1]

No kidding. To that I say to Mr. Bush: "oh, you mean you are really damned if you do, damned if you don't and you are trapped in an unwinnable quagmire? Well boo hoo, if you'd listened when we told you this was a bad idea and not lied your way into this situation you wouldn't have to deal with it."

I really disagree with him on a lot of his political points, but you've gotta love the "you can't handle the truth" hot key. I love that movie and I really love that scene. But I always interpreted the point of the scene differently. I thought the general looked pathetic, that he really believed that his mission to protect freedom made the ends worth the means. Of course, his mission was to protect Gitmo from cuba, which is a pretty damn useless missions.

But I really like the idea of Donald Rumsfeld, standing in front of some congressional commission:

Senator McCain: Mr. Rumsfeld, did you order the homorerotic abuse?

Rumsfeld: I did the job you sent me to do.

Senator McCain: Did you order the homorerotic abuse?

Rumsfeld: You're goddamn right I did!

Re:It has to be said...

[dangermouse]

Which is, of course, crap. It is not only possible but also moral to make value judgments. It's not only possible but moral to say that killing a hostage brutally and cruelly on videotape is worse than putting a bag over a prisoner's head for three days.

I keep hearing this. I guess you're the thousandth person to have said it or something, because you're the lucky winner of my response.

1. Bags over the prisoners' heads was the least of it. Prisoners at Abu Ghraib were attacked by dogs, isolated for long periods of time, and tortured to death. So let's not pretend the torture at Abu Ghraib was some minor infraction of niggling rules.
2. You cannot justify, excuse, or mitigate the torture of prisoners by pointing out the barbaric acts of an unrelated group of people.
3. You cannot justify, excuse, or mitigate the torture of prisoners with events that happened after the torture occurred.
4. You cannot justify, excuse, or mitigate torture.
5. Judging the unquestionably barbaric actions of one group relative to the unquestionably barbaric acts of another is a really shitty way to go about morality.

6. Call me a "radical leftist", I guess.