If Silent Hunter 5: Battle of The Atlantic (PC, Ubisoft, 2010) is anything to go by, the mechanics can be made as deep or shallow as the player permits.
How deep down should video games explore topics in relation to their depicted subject material? Should the bulk of military-themed games limit themselves to exploring the narrative arcs of war? War is also really complicated and, at higher levels, involves lots of crucial subjects, not limited to: science, maths, probability (risk), algebra and geography – would learning and utilising knowledge of these subjects be too much to ask of the player? More so than any first person shooter difficulty level, war is hard, not just because of heroic self-sacrifice and traumatic mental torture, life and death scenarios, awful conditions and drill sergeants who attempt to be more terrifying than the actual enemy. Yes, even harder than Call of Duty: World At War on Veteran. That was my interpretation anyway – does it sound familiar to you?īut, this is often overlooked: apart from being likened to the sinner’s afterlife war is hard. War was ultimately a triumph, channeling necessary evil – lessons transferred via the narrative of many military-based video games. Ever since we were children, the societal consensus tries to teach that war was good for the victors, and bad for the losers, and that great minds, tactics and cunning lend themselves well to noble characters that may save us from ignorant oppressors with their unintelligent military brutality. It seems that we gamers (whether it be computer, console, tabletop etc.) love war, conflict and military excursions. “Technology”… besides that… “communication”… yeah, and?… “cultural and social liberation, integration and hegemony”… okay, but what about the… isn’t that just a vicious… “some cracking good books, films, TV and, of course, video games!”. Monty Python once asked: “What have the Romans ever done for us?.” By Joshua Yeldham-Smith “War games, what are they good for?” …Learning Trigonometry!
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