Furburt said:
Actually, I think the reason that the typical war game is in WW2 and has the Americans doing heroic stuff against De German Schweine isn't to do with sales or the developers own political views, just a question of laziness. It's a lot easier to copy paste a generic WW2 story than it is to explore the subject with any sort of complexity. As someone who loves story in videogames, it annoys me. The reason why WW2 is chosen is because it's basically all laid out for you. American won the war, they looked cool doing it, the Nazis are assholes, M1 Garands go 'ping' when they're out of ammo. It requires no imagination. I'm not saying that the standard jingoistic war game plot always means that it's going to be badly written, but rather that if it has a standard war game plot, odds are the story isn't really that developed. Not always the case, but a reasonable assumption.
I think lazyness may be
a reason, but certainly not the only nor most significant reason why there have been so many America-centric WW2 games.
1)It's a war with clear "good guys" (Americans) versus "bad guys" (Nazis) were the good guys clearly win. It's not like Korea which was not exactly a victory for America and the UN, nor was it like Vietnam where it was sometimes a bit unclear who the good guys really were.
2)It is a world war, with varying enviroments and foes. This makes level design more interesting as you can make levels in the African desert, snowy Norway, French farms, tropical jungles, beach landings and and Belgian forests. If you were to make a WW1 shooter, your choices are
generally restricted to WW1 trenches, against the Germans. In WW2, you have the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians or even the Vincy French to fight against. Not only do you have a wide choice of enviroments to choose from, but you have quite a few different enemys to fight against.
3)There is a good variety of weapons. In terms of weapons technology, WW2 was on the point between early industrial warfare (where we fight with bolt action rifles and prop-planes) and modern industrial warfare (where we fight with automatic rifles, missiles and jet engine planes) This means that you can combine the two eras together. You can have bolt action rifles, semi-automatic rifles and sub-machine guns, and then throw in the worlds first assult rifle as a unique weapon. Nowadays on the battlefield all the infantry fight with assult rifles, but due to ww2's postion in technological history, you can get a taste of both old industrial warfare and modern industrial warfare. This is especially true in combat flight sims, in
Secret Weapons over Normandy you can fly bi-planes, prop-planes and eventually jet aircraft. So not only can get a wide choice of enviroments and enemies, but also a wide selction of weapons and other toys to play with.
4)Finally, America is the worlds most powerful economy. It's own domestic economy can confortably support highly American-centric games like the MOH series or Fallout 3. But on the other hand, non-American games developers, living in a country with lesser economic and cultural power, has to take a more international perspective and make a game that both non-Americans and Americans will be able to relate too. I will be very surprised if i ever came across a British made shooter or a combat flight sim about the Falklands War. However, for the sake of argument lets say the Falklands war involved America, if that was the case then i think we can surely say that there would be a number of American made games out there focused on the Falklands war. The Americans can make games about themselves, the only other nation that can do that is Japan. Other Western nations, like Australia and Canada, or even the economically united Europe can not compete with this, we can not make games specific to ourselves. Here's another exhample affirming Americans cultural dominance, Assasins Creed 2 is a Canadian made game with an American protaganist...why? Why wouldn't the Canadians make a game with a Canadian protaganist? It seems you need an increadibly powerful economy to have the freedom to make games about your own country or culture. America has that ability to make highly America-centric patrotic games, which is why we have seen games like MOH, telling the American story of WW2.
