258: Everybody Dies in DEFCON

[Jonathan Glover]

Everybody Dies in DEFCON

DEFCON took the odd premise of playing out a thermonuclear war that kills all human life on earth and made a damn fine strategy game. Jonathan Glover talks to Introversion four years after their apocalypse-inducing title resulted in so many human casualties.

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[Antiparticle]

Woo! Introversion! I've been a fan of them ever since Uplink. I didn't care for Darwinia so much, but DEFCON was great again. I'm very happy to hear they're making another game. Should be interesting!

 

[thenumberthirteen]

DEFCON is a marvellous game. It has a brutal simplicity and the subject matter is chilling. I feel wrong for playing it as you are killing millions of people with a single move. Chess is an abstraction of war where large units and brutal violence are boiled down to wooden pieces making their way across the board. You don't really think about the lives of the pawns as they die to protect your king as you don't see them as people. For me the chilling part of DEFCON is when you first realise that you've stopped seeing your cities as people to save, but numbers on a board.

Slightly off topic did anyone play the "Wargames" game? It was an RTS for the PC.

 

[Daniel_Rosamilia]

DEFCON is a marvellous game. It has a brutal simplicity and the subject matter is chilling. I feel wrong for playing it as you are killing millions of people with a single move. Chess is an abstraction of war where large units and brutal violence are boiled down to wooden pieces making their way across the board. You don't really think about the lives of the pawns as they die to protect your king as you don't see them as people. For me the chilling part of DEFCON is when you first realise that you've stopped seeing your cities as people to save, but numbers on a board.

You pretty much summed up my entire thoughts about this.
It's really chilling when you watch as a bombardment of about 60 missiles launched from your country strike down on America and South Africa.

I'm still to acquire any other Introversion games, but I've heard their other titles are absolutely brilliant.
EDIT: Also, the Escapist theme is really cool, just throwing that out there.

 

[Jared]

Woo! Introversion! I've been a fan of them ever since Uplink. I didn't care for Darwinia so much, but DEFCON was great again. I'm very happy to hear they're making another game. Should be interesting!

Same here! Defcon was so awesome! I still play it every so often with friends!

 

[God_of_badgers]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

 

[theSovietConnection]

This is a great game. Really makes you think when you play it.

 

[Yeager942]

Pretty chilling article. I've been thinking about getting Defcon for a while now, but I've always been lazy. I think I may hit the steam store now...

 

[poiuppx]

Dang this sounds cool. I should look for a copy... it's sold through Steam, right?

 

[RobCoxxy]

Brilliant game, shame I have been unable to join without massive latency at uni. For six months. Bye bye, skill.

 

[Aenir]

Nice, DEFCON stuff. Great game, although people leaving is a problem.

 

[Oyster^^]

Always thought it was a great idea, and I totally agree that aesthetically it hasn't aged a bit, both in visuals and audio.

But I never got very good at it. I think mostly because there's almost no sense of satisfaction for successfully killing a few more million people. This I guess marks the only game I've ever played that is interesting even though I don't really find it overly fun. The Children Of Men of games.

 

[GenericAmerican]

I have that game on my flash drive. Small, simple, fun...kinda scary thinking about ending the world

 

[herpaderphurr]

Welp. DEFCON is the most messed up RTS I've played so far.

 

[KreacherOfbloodandRank]

Ive always had a soft spot in my gamer heart for DEFCON, despite the fact I suck immensely at it. Its just a beautiful game all the way through. The background music always gets me, the distant sound of a woman crying just evokes this haunting feeling.

 

[Yureina]

I downloaded the DEFCON demo a while back on Steam. Reading this article was making me think of going ahead to buy the full game. Does this game have an active mutiplayer community?

 

[Darth_Dude]

Hmmm, might pick it up on Steam..

 

[Darth Caelum]

Well.....Never knew this game before. Thank You then Mr. Glover. I am currently forcing my weak ass connection to download the Demo.

 

[HateDread]

This article is fantastically written! I especially enjoyed the overall build-up punctured by the 'DEFCON X' lines. It really encapsulated the spirit of DEFCON within the writing itself.

Well done, I hope to read more from you in future.

- HateDread