Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 August 18

= August 18 =

WWI games
Why are there no good first person shooters based on World War I? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.189.90 (talk) 04:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Being facetious - because it would be boring.
 * You have enlisted
 * You have been given a one shot rifle (or if you're very lucky - a Lewis or Browning)
 * You have been posted to a trench somewhere in France
 * Wait around
 * Wait more
 * Line up with everyone else in one suicidal advance
 * Go over the top of the trench
 * Get shot at by enemy guns
 * Die
 * There is not much scope for a realistic shooter that involves you running around and shooting people for fun as that type of fighting just wasn't what happened.
 * There is one game that's been in development for over 2 years called "To End All Wars" but it's starting to look like vapourware. Nanonic (talk) 12:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

There was Iron Storm (video game) - was it good though?83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:02, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Seriously, even in the trenches in France there would be patrols, probes, raiding parties etc. Not much scope for individual action, but some. Or you could get transferred to the tank corps (Your tank has moved forward ten feet. It has stopped. You hit the engine with a hammer. It starts again.) DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:07, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Exciting ;) Library Seraph (talk) 14:18, 18 August 2009 (UTC) Maybe a cavalry regiment in the Middle East would be more exciting for that war. Googlemeister (talk) 16:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * There are no games based on the Lafayette Escadrille? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 18:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It is an interesting question. The semi-facetious objections by Nanonic and DJ Clayworth seem to be based on how un-fun a realistic WWI game would be, though realism is decidedly not part of WWII games like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault ("MOHAA") and the Call of Duty ("COD") franchise, in which your abilities are essentially superheroic; so I would reject that line of reasoning.  It is not disputed that the tsunami of WWII games commenced after the movie Saving Private Ryan, after which MOHAA exploded onto the scene; all publishers now wanted to do WWII games; the developer 2015, Inc. fragmented into multiple developers, including Infinity Ward, who created the enduring COD series.  Momentum has been one reason for the popularity of WWII games.  I would think the lack of WWI games is mostly because the more modern weaponry of WWII lends itself better to the genre.  Portable automatic weapons and bazookas are more fun for the "barbarian" players.  A sniper game would be equivalent as far as this goes, but most of the missions in these games are not sniper missions.  This line of reasoning about weapons, though, suggests that games in the Korean War and Vietnam War and Gulf War II would be even more fitting for gaming, but to date, few publishers have added these games to the tsunami, and certainly none have been as popular as numerous top WWII games.  I think another reason must be that in the US, the largest video game market, World War 2 is popularly identified as a heroic war against tyranny, whereas World War 1, much less so.  The Korean War, Vietnam War, both Gulf Wars &mdash; all are treated with ambivalence by a large segment of the US population, whereas in World War II, it's more like, "I'm fighting the Nazis.  Backstory no longer required.  I am on the side of right.  Fire away."  This must be a factor when publishers decide where to invest their development money.  So, I'd summarize with my view:  World War I had worse weapons and is much less known by the video gaming public; and World War II had Nazis to kill.  Tempshill (talk) 19:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I remember playing Red Baron, and our article leads me to Category:World War I video games - which suggests that WWI games are often flight simulations. Another possibility may be that the US was not heavily involved in WWI, and there is no "World War I culture" in the US, by which I mean Americans were not united as a country because of it, they didn't lose millions of men, it isn't the biggest news story of the day when one of the last remaining centenarian participants dies, etc etc. If Canada was a bigger video game producer I'm sure there would be lots of WWI games, since in many respects it is a much more important war than WWII, at least in popular mythology. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Purely in the interests of accuracy, there has never been a war in which the US list millions of men. WWII figures are about half a million. I think Tempshill has probably hit the nail on the head. DJ Clayworth (talk) 13:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I was exaggerating; but there are countries that did lose that many in WWI. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't matter that the majority of soldiers in a real war are doing mundane things. Games are never about those soldiers, they're usually about some soldier that through accident or design winds up in a situation where he's cut off from the main body of soldiers (usually behind enemy lines) and has to complete some important, and exciting mission. A regular soldier winding up in a position where he has to be a cross between Rambo, superman, and a special forces team. It seems like that could be made to work for any game. APL (talk) 17:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally, I keep hoping for a good game about the American Revolution.  I would have thought that with the surge in patriotism since 9/11 people would be begging for such a game, but no one seems to agree with me.  APL (talk) 14:53, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * 3 shots a minute just does not seem that exciting. Googlemeister (talk) 14:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it wouldn't be exciting in Quake. But 3-4 shots/min would be more than enough for a more "serious" game like the Tom Clancy series.  You'd also have a bayonet.
 * Or they could take a little artistic license and make it only a little bit slower than the bolt-actions in existing WWII games, but that seems like it'd be cheating. APL (talk) 17:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * As I expected there are HL2/Source mods . There's also mods based on the US Revolutionary War which I believed I've played before (or maybe it was BG1) and older stuff semi-historical stuff (i.e. not fantasy) like Age of Chivalry although there are standalone FPSes that fall into that category I believe. As an aside, DOD and other WW2 mods and I presume games have bayonets Nil Einne (talk) 16:40, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Luke Vibert sample
Hin all - the latest Luke Vibert Album ("We hear you" - for which we have yet to get an articloe) has a track on it called "Porn Shirtwee" (a title of which the dear Dr Spooner wouldno doubt approve). It uses as its main basis a sample which I'm sure is from a television theme... probably a current events programme, possibly from the US rather than the UK. For the life of me I can't work out what the programme was, though. Anyone able to help by identifying it? Thanks in advance... Grutness...wha?  07:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

We Made You
Who's the actress with the big ass in a Green dress sitting in the restaurant? (I don't mean porn star Lisa Ann acting Sarah Palin). 217.132.157.88 (talk) 12:46, 18 August 2009 (UTC)