Where is rest of the world?

[InProgress]

So i would like to talk about state of world war 2 games. Every game, even from smaller studios is not west front, sometimes east. But that's about it. Then people cry that they are sick of ww2 games and it's always the same. New CoD ww2 - D-Day and more west campaign on usa side. Post Scriptum - Market Garden, still europe. Hell let loose, Festung Europa. Many strategic games also focus there, Company of Heroes 1 and 2, sometimes there are games that get few missions around the world like Blitzkreig series but still most of it takes place in europe.

 

It's really sad that the same campaigns are rehashed over and over again. Soon there should be 2 interesting games, Close Combat blood red one and burden of command. It will take us in africa/italy and later europe as well. But at least africa and italy was not skipped. I am really excited about Africa in CloD and Pacific in BoX, finally something new and fresh.

 

There is really big hole in gaming world when it comes to ww2 and theatres like africa, italy even battle of france. But mostly i miss pacific, it's really a shame that japanese now only care about making anime and hentais... sad that no one there bothered in making game based on their history, normal game not flying ninja with 3m tall swords and combos flying all over screen. I don't even know if there is any game that let you play as japanese, yeah strategy games but nothing like 1st or 3rd person game. There is so much to show, not only usa vs japan on iwo jima but fighting on dutch east indias, china, russia...

 

People today would be really butthurt about german campaign but japanese could be possible (tho i heard battlefield 5 is going to indroduce first ww2 german campaign in FPS game, would not be suprised if you switch side... but it could be a beginning of german single player games).

 

So yeah... it's kind of sad that we don't see any new ideas and game developers stick to same old story that will sell. So many stories to tell, but we will only see another D-Day games until people will get sick of it again and ww2 game will be gone for next 10 years, after that someone will make D-Day game again and everyone will buy it. And over and over again

[rolikiraly]

Check out Rising Storm

[InProgress]

1 hour ago, rolikiraly said:

Check out Rising Storm

 

 

But it's still not what i meant. Of course you will play as german or japanese in multiplayer ww2 game. There is no other option. My point was single player experience mostly. We just replay dday in every game, then it's soviet union. While games that take place in italy, africa, pacific are at best strategy games. Even then bunch of great locations are skipped, fall of Singapore, Dutch east India, siege of Budapest and much more. 

Edited September 17, 2018 by InProgress

[DetCord12B]

I mean we've played everything in WWII from the standpoint of the Americans, then the Americans again, and of course the Americans, then again as the Americans, then the Russians, then the Russians as bad guys during WWII, then the Americans again, maybe the Brits kinda, back to the Americans...on and on and on.

 

It's a valid question, IMHO.

 

Granted, Soviet Forces committed heinous acts against the ethnic German populace (rape on an industrial scale of 2 million women) as they entered the Reich, but it doesn't negate the fact that there were Russian soldiers and units that distinguished themselves during the war. The same goes for the German and Japanese side. But you'd be hard pressed to base anything on an empire or country that entered into a war with the explicit goal of genocide, which was the case of the Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

 

Not only is it in bad taste, but it seems, to me at least, to be empirically wrong. Because no matter how it is represented, it will always be viewed as apologetic, regardless of the manner in which it is depicted.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Much of it is just a matter of numbers. There are some 400 million English speakers, compared to about 200 million Russian, 100 million German, and 100 million Japanese. Naturally, people gravitate to media portraying characters with a common language. Assuming that all these groups were equally interested in military games, it would be economic suicide to not cater to an English-speaking audience. 

 

Although the political incorrectness of protagonists from the Großdeutsches Reich certainly plays a part, it may be less important than people imagine. After all, the Il-2 games have Luftwaffe campaigns complete with decorations instituted by Adolf Hitler himself. In the case of 1946, the briefings even have substantial political subtexts sometimes. However, they all exist alongside missions focused on other factions. Games dedicated entirely to Axis forces are rare, although they certainly do exist, e.g., SH5.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Mitthrawnuruodo

[Finkeren]

51 minutes ago, Mitthrawnuruodo said:

Much of it is just a matter of numbers. There are some 400 million English speakers, compared to about 200 million Russian, 100 million German, and 100 million Japanese. Naturally, people gravitate to media portraying characters with a common language. Assuming that all these groups were equally interested in military games, it would be economic suicide to not cater to an English-speaking audience. 

 

If that was the case there should be countless games about the Sino-Japanese Wars or the campaigns in India and Burma.

 

Yet when it comes to the gaming industry, they almost completely leave out India and  China. The Total War series is only now getting around to do a game based on the war of the Three Kingdoms, when it should have been the logical next step after the original Shogun Total War.

 

I think it’s more a case of our writing of history being extremely Euro-centric, and hence that is what the gaming industry recreates.

[Cybermat47]

Some games for you to check out:

 

- The Silent Hunter series. Silent Hunter III covers the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Arctic campaigns from the German perspective, and, with the GWX mod, expands to feature the Kuban naval campaign and the Indian Ocean campaign. Silent Hunter 4 covers the Pacific and Indian Ocean campaigns from the US and German perspective, and Silent Hunter 5 covers the Polish, Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Arctic campaigns, and, with the essential Wolves of Steel mod, expands to include the Indian Ocean campaign.

 

- Hearts of Iron IV. Allows you to play as any country that existed on January 1st 1936 or 1939. The base game focuses on France, Britain, America, Poland, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union. DLCs expands the focus to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, India, Hungary, Roumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and China, which is split into several factions: Chiang-Kai Shek’s Nationalist China, Mao Zedong’s Communist China, Sinkiang, Yunnan, Guangxi Clique, Xibei San Ma, Shanxi, and the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

 

The WWI FPS Tannenberg is worth a look too. It’s set on the Eastern Front, and allows you to play as the Russians and Germans of course, but also the Austro-Hungarians and Roumanians.

[InProgress]

7 hours ago, Mitthrawnuruodo said:

Much of it is just a matter of numbers. There are some 400 million English speakers, compared to about 200 million Russian, 100 million German, and 100 million Japanese. Naturally, people gravitate to media portraying characters with a common language. Assuming that all these groups were equally interested in military games, it would be economic suicide to not cater to an English-speaking audience. 

That's not true at all. While if people have choice, they will mostly try to play as their own character. But like @Finkeren said, if it was about numbers, we would have spam of asian games because they are the one with huge numbers, china would make game about defending their country against japan. There is more chinese than european, americans and canadians together! And what diffrence would that make if someone speak english? Whole anime thing got really popular in usa/europe, while it has nothing to do with our culture.

 

6 hours ago, Finkeren said:

I think it’s more a case of our writing of history being extremely Euro-centric, and hence that is what the gaming industry recreates.

But we could still have game with british vs japanese on pacific. Yet everyone skips it. It's really weird because vietnam got a lot of attention even tho it's americans vs vietnam somewhere in far far asia. WW2 seems to have this stuck indea in publisher's head that everything must be in europe and have americans or won't sell. But even small games or strategy games fall into this idea. Every close combat game were in europe (but one in russia), now we should get blood red one that will take place in africa, sicily and europe so first time we should game most of the campaign in new place.

 

6 hours ago, PB_Cybermat47 said:

Some games for you to check out:

Unfortunately i have them all. SH is fun but still, you are on the water, so it does not change much if you are on the pacific or atlantic and it's not story driven game, more like sandbox (still love them tho). HoI4 is world game, it's fun to play as japan and have some fun in asia and pacific. But AI is game breaking. Did not play in a while but if i start game as japan in 1936 and i see germany being D-Day in 1939 by usa and losing in 1940... then it really makes you want to quit. Unbalanced, horrible AI, naval invasions with 1 divisions everywhere all the time. This game will be playable in 5 years and 300€ DLCs...

 

I got verdun but devs broke it later and after 300h in game they changed something and can't play it anymore due to crashes and lags... they rised minimum requirements for this game and i was no longer meeting them. So until new pc i can't even hope to play their new game.

 

 

7 hours ago, Mitthrawnuruodo said:

Although the political incorrectness of protagonists from the Großdeutsches Reich certainly plays a part, it may be less important than people imagine. After all, the Il-2 games have Luftwaffe campaigns complete with decorations instituted by Adolf Hitler himself. In the case of 1946, the briefings even have substantial political subtexts sometimes. However, they all exist alongside missions focused on other factions. Games dedicated entirely to Axis forces are rare, although they certainly do exist, e.g., SH5.

We will see after battlefield 5. Shame this game is total crap and EA is evil, probably will kill battlefield like they did with dead space and many other games. But maybe that german campaign will be breaking point (like verdun and battlefield 1)  and if people will like it, more devs will consider making german campaign. No one says you have to burn people houses, but you can be "that guy" who does not agree with it but follows orders. We already had games where you could see bunch of war crimes, especially in CoD. Japanese killing PoW, concentration camp in CoD WW2, Company of Heroes 2 with russian killing russians, more mature games like brothers in arms where you could see civilians being killed too. It's not really problem to show it, it's more like being scared of controversy because you are german. But if someone will make it, some people will be angry and they will get bored after a while and no one will care anymore.

Like Medal of Honor where you could be Taliban but some people got angry and they removed name "Taliban" and put something else. Today no one will care if you play as real terrorist group in multiplayer. You had even game in Syria:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/485980/Syrian_Warfare/

And it did not make any huge controversy.

Edited September 18, 2018 by InProgress

[Finkeren]

A big part of this, which is intrinsically tied to our Euro-centric perspective on history, is pure name recognition. It is the main reason why our beloved series of flight sims kicked off with a game depicting the Stalingrad campaign, despite having to later backtrack with BoM, because that is the name that all people are familiar with, when it comes to the so-called Eastern Front in WW2. That's why the Battle of Britain, the Normandy Landings, the Battle of the Bulge have been the focus of so many video games, while many other, equally important, parts of that conflict are left out: Because these are the ones we've all heard about. This focus on name recognition is true for almost all historically inspired games. That also means, that when a historical period or historical phenomenon experiences a resurgence of public interest, producers of films and video games jump at the opportunity to create something fresh and new and pile on top of each other to get in on the action. We see it right now with the resurgent interest in all things Norse following the success of the TV series "Vikings". The number of video- and board games, films and TV productions trying to cash in on this topic, which was pretty peripheral just 7-8 years ago is staggering.  Name recognition of course has a tendency to reinforce itself through a feedback loop, so once the ball gets rolling it can often spiral into a virtuous cycle which then turns into a vicious cycle with the market drowning in similar games/films that all cover the same narrow topic over and over.

 

For what it's worth though, I think we have seen something of a trend in the last few years of moving somewhat beyond the safety of name recognition, especially with regard to video games, even among the bigger franchises. The aforementioned Total War: Three Kingdoms is an example  as is Assassin's Creed Origins and ofc. my personal favorite: Kingdom Come: Deliverance taking something as obscure as the invasion of Bohemia 1403 as its setting (Funny enough, despite being set smack-dab in the middle of Europe,  it still manages to feel strangely foreign - probably because as far as the Middle Ages goes, we are only really used to seeing a handful of specific areas and time periods: The British Isles, France, Renaissance Italy and the Crusades - with the occasional viking and Mongol invasion thrown in the mix)

 

Here's hoping, that this is just the beginning of a larger trend of historic video games moving out of the comfort zone of name recognition and start using the treasure trove of great untold stories from around the world for their game worlds. 

 

Because honestly it’s kinda sad, that for all the sci-fi and fantasy we consume, for some reason writers and producers seem to think, that we wouldn’t be interested in seeing any of the strange, alien, marvelous things that the actual history of the World has to offer, that lurks just outside the boundaries of our common knowledge about history.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Finkeren

[InProgress]

29 minutes ago, Finkeren said:

That's why the Battle of Britain, the Normandy Landings, the Battle of the Bulge have been the focus of so many video games, while many other, equally important, parts of that conflict are left out: Because these are the ones we've all heard about.

But we heard about them because they made so many of them in the first place.

 

But yeah, I hope some smaller games and smarter CEOs of bigger companies will take a risk (it also depends on us gamers) to make something new. I have big hopes for Africa in CloD, Pacific in BoX, some smaller upcoming games that should have big part of their campaigns in africa and italy.

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/887490/Burden_of_Command/

http://www.slitherine.com/products/686/details/Close.Combat.-.The.Bloody.First

hmm i keep calling this game blood red one

 

And this will have german campaign, uboot but at least with some nice This war of mine style with crew menagment.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/494840/UBOAT/

 

I still have dreams about single player FPS, even if not on axis side, i wan't to have mature story and something more than gun and run crap. Kind of like brothers in arms but on the pacific, africa, early war etc.

 

I also got this a while ago

https://store.steampowered.com/app/365810/Flying_Tigers_Shadows_Over_China/

 

Fun to play some arcade games from time to time and china wow. Something really new, but game was killed by WT and people complaining about graphic and comparing it to WT... try making something new eh.

Edited September 18, 2018 by InProgress

[Finkeren]

2 minutes ago, InProgress said:

But we heard about them because they made so many of them in the first place.

 

True, name recognition is a self-reinforcing process, which is why I added the bit about vicious/virtuous cycle in my previous post.

[InProgress]

Just found this lol

https://store.steampowered.com/app/921550/Ovens_of_Hell/

 

That's something reaaaally original we will see how this will go.

Edited September 18, 2018 by InProgress

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

8 hours ago, Finkeren said:

Yet when it comes to the gaming industry, they almost completely leave out India and  China

Yes, but China bans many western games. Besides, games featuring Chinese protagonists certainly exist on the Chinese market. Gaming in the country is quite disconnected from the rest of the world. The video game market in India is underdeveloped, however. Therefore, it's not an entirely accurate comparison. Perhaps I should have stated it in terms of spending.

1 hour ago, InProgress said:

But like @Finkeren said, if it was about numbers, we would have spam of asian games because they are the one with huge numbers, china would make game about defending their country against japan.

See Glorious Mission, for example. There are many games that just don't leave the country.

[unreasonable]

28 minutes ago, InProgress said:

Just found this lol

https://store.steampowered.com/app/921550/Ovens_of_Hell/

 

That's something reaaaally original we will see how this will go.

 

That looks like a gigantic troll.  Military Operations RTS might be able to do worldwide stuff if it gets finished. Maybe you have seen this already. Looks like Battle of France in the initial screenies, but they are modeling the whole globe....

 

  http://militaryoperationshq.com/milops-rts-game/

 

 

[InProgress]

5 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

That looks like a gigantic troll

I know especially the title, ovens of hell..  but who knows, art style feels like it may be something artistic. And trailer did not look like troll. We will see i guess.

And i think troll game would be made pretty fast, it says almost december 2019 so kind of over a year in production still. Could be normal game if they take so much time.

9 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

Military Operations RTS might be able to do worldwide stuff if it gets finished.

It looks like these "Totally accurate battle simulators" or something like this. Hope it will be serious and not just spam 50 tanks and watch them drive around randomly and shoot.

Edited September 18, 2018 by InProgress

[Leon_Portier]

That MilOps game looks cool!

[Semor76]

This could be interesting as well. Eugine systems goes east!

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/919640/Steel_Division_2/

Edited September 18, 2018 by Semor76

[InProgress]

56 minutes ago, Semor76 said:

This could be interesting as well. Eugine systems goes east!

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/919640/Steel_Division_2/

Unfortunately reputation of this company is quite bad. They spam new game every year or so and abandon older title completely. Don't listen to community and won't add mod support as well. 

Edited September 18, 2018 by InProgress

[unreasonable]

9 hours ago, Leon_Portier said:

That MilOps game looks cool!

 

I agree - reading their blog posts I approve of the way they are trying to design AI to use historic C&C procedures, something games have generally been pretty bad at.  So it might end up being an interesting simulation. Whether it is also a fun game remains to be seen.

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

Advanced Squad Leader 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Squad_Leader

http://www.multimanpublishing.com/Products/tabid/58/CategoryID/4/Default.aspx

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/243/advanced-squad-leader

 

Covers EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE

[InProgress]

5 hours ago, Cathal_Brugha said:

Advanced Squad Leader

Covers EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE 

It's a board game ?