the only winning move is not to play
Yes, I still play videogames.
The state of the gaming industry is such that any videogame coming out currently can be easily categorized into about 6 different types, over and over again. Variations on a theme. And yet, I'll buy something used if it looks interesting enough. Sometimes an indie company will come out with something innovative, that pushes boundaries, most often inventing a new take on how strategy or action games are meant to be played, and this interests me more often than not.
There's a British developer, Introversion, that came out with a hacker simulation a while back that was interesting for a while. You'd hack into databases, Social Security Administration servers, criminal databases, performing illegal work for paying clients. It was all right except that the jobs would get monotonous after a while and it was all too easy to be punished by the game for not having the right hacking tools at the right time.
Then there was Darwinia, a beautiful and clever game (in the real-time strategy genre) set entirely in the digital world of the computer, a la TRON, where you commanded digital units to take over various locations inside the computer while fighting viruses and other malware. Wonderful execution.
But the latest -- DEFCON -- is a first for me in that I find it all too disturbing to play at all. In an industry known for casual violence, gore, and less-than-adult perspectives (I'm a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, for chrissakes, and no, L will not see any of this crap until he's old enough to handle it), the idea of global nuclear war in this game is too realistic, too well-presented.
Inspired by WarGames, there's a giant map of the world in which you set up radar installations, airbases supporting both fighters and nuclear bombers, missile silos that can be configured for both missile defense as well as ICBM launches, and fleets of aircraft carriers, battleships, and nuclear missile submarines, while the enemy does the same. That's disturbing enough.
And then there's the soundtrack -- very slow, mournful tones, and all the while you hear the faint sound of a woman weeping. Certain stages of the game are determined by the DEFCON level, also determining what actions you're allowed to take, but it's only a matter of time until DEFCON 2 (non-nuclear hostilities) and DEFCON 1 (nuclear war) are reached. You hear the weeping as you see blips move toward cities, and then big letters announce how many millions die. Your score is based on how many of the enemy's people are incinerated versus your own. The whole effect is definitely like watching the world end.
I downloaded the demo one night and sat about playing through the tutorials. Eventually my big test was playing North America against all of the Far East. I set up my installations and sent three fleets of ships steaming as fast as they could towards the Chinese coast -- and caught and destroyed two of the enemy's fleets in the process.
I couldn't find one fleet.
The final tally: I lost Detroit, Washington D.C., Phoenix, LA, and San Francisco.
The Far East lost everything, including Tehran, Tokyo, Bombay, New Delhi, Bangkok, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Hong Kong...
I lost my appetite to continue with it. It was all too unsettling playing this thing that allowed me, through my own omission (as well as the multiple sins of commission), to incinerate myself as well as countless millions in a world-ending holocaust. No thanks.