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ltmurnauFound this linked off the BBC online magazine feed:
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/06/lesson-in-revolutionary-politics-from.html
"Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Lesson In Revolutionary Politics From Video Games
I realize[d] something today about revolutionaries, and this realization can be entirely attributed to video games.
I saw [the] trailer of Just Cause 2, and I was thinking how much fun it would be to actually take over a country in a revolutionary action. I mean, I'm in the process of taking over a planet in Red Faction: Guerilla, but I'm not really the leader -- more the main ass-kicker, really. So the idea of actually leading a revolution is entirely appealing.
Then I thought about how much fun it would be to lead a revolution in an action game, but then be able to run the country in a real-time strategy game. So you go from Just Cause to Tropico.
It was at that moment that I understood, more fully than ever before, why revolutionaries succeed and then fail. It's because they're switching genres. They take over the country in a third-person (or first person) action game, but then they have to play an RTS to govern the country.
That's an entirely different gaming skill set. It's much easier to wreck than to build, and not only do they have to build, they also have to stop all those first-person action heroes who want to lead their own revolution."
This is so superficial and puerile I don't know where to begin. I may design games about revolutions and civil wars, but I'm under no illusions that I am teaching or trying to simulate more than the barest beginnings of what actually happens in the real thing. And I do not do it via FPS, RTS or any other whing-dang-doodle techno-gimcrackery: my route is ideally the BOGSAT (Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around A Table), though I am trying to work up some way to do this via linked workstations.
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/06/lesson-in-revolutionary-politics-from.html
"Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Lesson In Revolutionary Politics From Video Games
I realize[d] something today about revolutionaries, and this realization can be entirely attributed to video games.
I saw [the] trailer of Just Cause 2, and I was thinking how much fun it would be to actually take over a country in a revolutionary action. I mean, I'm in the process of taking over a planet in Red Faction: Guerilla, but I'm not really the leader -- more the main ass-kicker, really. So the idea of actually leading a revolution is entirely appealing.
Then I thought about how much fun it would be to lead a revolution in an action game, but then be able to run the country in a real-time strategy game. So you go from Just Cause to Tropico.
It was at that moment that I understood, more fully than ever before, why revolutionaries succeed and then fail. It's because they're switching genres. They take over the country in a third-person (or first person) action game, but then they have to play an RTS to govern the country.
That's an entirely different gaming skill set. It's much easier to wreck than to build, and not only do they have to build, they also have to stop all those first-person action heroes who want to lead their own revolution."
This is so superficial and puerile I don't know where to begin. I may design games about revolutions and civil wars, but I'm under no illusions that I am teaching or trying to simulate more than the barest beginnings of what actually happens in the real thing. And I do not do it via FPS, RTS or any other whing-dang-doodle techno-gimcrackery: my route is ideally the BOGSAT (Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around A Table), though I am trying to work up some way to do this via linked workstations.
