Memorial Day is your typical American holiday. Though officially devoted to honor the sacrifices made by those citizens who have died in battle, it is mostly devoted to barbecues and beer drinking. It is the unofficial start of summer.<\/p>\n
In a twisted game-framed idea, this is a lot like strategy and war games. Even though they often deal with the most serious issues that face mankind (war, peace, imperialism) they never ask the player to connect with those digital people “dying” for the cause.<\/p>\n
In short, the soldiers who die for us in our games are expendable; a series of red-shirts who make no difference to us so long as the game ends in a victory. Whether the game is a long hard slog that is a war of attrition or a quick zerg-rush strike that ends the war in a moment, the casualties mean nothing to the player.<\/p>\n
This, of course, means nothing in the short run. Digital dudes are digital dudes. But I wonder if it does give strategy gamers and wargamers a peculiar idea of what it is like to send men into battle. In a game, no cost is too large and the best strategy is the one that works.<\/p>\n
I think that there is room for a strategy game that makes the gamer think seriously before committing men to battle. In this imperfect world, wars sometimes must be fought and many men and women obey orders and die for what they are told is a worthy cause. Strategy and wargames have none of this sense of sacrifice. There is never any onus on the player to minimize casualties or weigh the propriety of a war. Armed conflict is not only a legitimate option, but often the most efficient option. For all the grognard complaints about realism in games, there is rarely any critique about how realistic the cost of war is.<\/p>\n
I hope you had a nice Memorial Day and took some time to move beyond the burgers and beer that have come to typify this holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Memorial Day is your typical American holiday. Though officially devoted to honor the sacrifices made by those citizens who have died in battle, it is mostly devoted to barbecues and beer drinking. It is the unofficial start of summer. In a twisted game-framed idea, this is a lot like strategy and war games. Even though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-2l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}