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Original post by Demonlir
When you look at strategy games both Turn Based and Real Time there always seems to be the same damn settings and scenarios being used. You know the ones:

- About 70 gazillion Star Trek Style Space/ Futuristic Empires
(Masters of Orion,
- a few billion classic fanatasy type games (Warcraft, Masters of Magic, etc.)

- A tonne of historical games that either rip off of Civilization by trying to make a game about all of human history (Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, etc.) or a few that actually centre around specific period of history - it''s usually the middle ages or the age of exploration however (Age of Empires II, Medival Total War)

And a while back I was reading how Stainless Steel Studios the guys who created Empire Earth are making ANOTHER similar type game called Rise of the Modern Era or some such. Personally I like historical strategy games way better then Warcraft type, but I''m getting bored of the same settings and topics.

So I was pondering why The Cold War isn''t used very much at all (as far as I know of) in games, particularly strategy games. I mean you have Red Alert but that doesn''t very accuartely portray the Cold War I think a game that allowed the player to control a Cold War Nation would be pretty neat you could really do a lot of with diplomacy, espionage, the United Nations and that sort of thing
- you could have the threat of nuclear war hanging over your head constantly and the player could choose to be a communist or capitalist nation. The design could even be worked out to make each type of nation play differently.

Personally I like the idea because I''m not looking forward to Cilvilzation 8 and Galatic Empires 26. I''m currently working on a bit of a design for a game like this actually hopefully something will come of it.

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I think also one reason some settings have not been used in games is for a very fundamental creative reason: people don''t know how to develop it, or their development skills are weak, or they are strong but they make poor design architecture choices, and the final output is weak. Essential to the quality of any topic is the treatment of the material, and that is where the rubber meets the road. Most people go back to more tried and true and secure genres or more widely treated subjects because there is more research to draw upon for development.

That is the way it is with pioneering a new concept. Hasn''t changed in aeons. I''m not saying it''s easy, devving in this way is one of the hardest things there is to do, evidenced by the prolific amounts of rehashes as you''d mentioned and the enormous amount of bad writing and design that is out there now.

A perfect example is my latest script, it was is development for seven years as a concept, outlines, treatments, drafts and notes and edits and storyboarding and more. I may be making a nice piece of change for my work, but spread it out over the dev time and I made 65K/yr. There are performance benchmarks in the sales agreement for the IP that could make me really a nice tidy sum should it be a major hit, but who knows. Maybe studio marketing heads and executive producers who have had this kind of experience before, but as a writer, I don''t.

Addy

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adventuredesign
...should it be a major hit, but who knows.

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There in lies the problem... God only knows.

erm, not to be rude or anything, but you *do* realise that the Cold War was called "cold" precisely because it was NOT about open warfare, right ?
The whole god damn point was that *if* open warfare erupted, everybody was scared to death of what would happen. See movies like Dr Strangelove, or Fail Safe, to see the sort of nightmares people were having i nthose days.

The whole period was rather about avoidance of direct conflict, and massive use of Diplomacy, and taunts/feints through indirect means (like the famous Cuba crisis, a typical case of a chain reaction that could have been triggered because of indirect conflict).

Spy games, political intrigues, assassinations, cloak and dagger stuff, but I doubt you could do a proper warfare game in that period...

*edit( Ahh... I see someone beat me to it, sorry )

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

[edited by - ahw on May 21, 2003 11:12:58 AM]

If you check out Konami''s Japanese site for Metal Gear Solid 3, it looks a lot like their game will be set during the Cold War... with its dates "1961-1964", mentioning events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Tonkin Resolution, and mouseovers showing Solid Snake draped in both the US and Soviet flags...

Just wanted to point that out

I was thinking out one way to add a bit of background and atmosphere to a game set in this time - it''s a very Abstract concept so it might be confusing to describe it - and definately it might be difficult to do, but the Cold War delt with a lot of major world "personalities" whether they be spies, assassins, world leaders (Kruchev, JFK, Mao), corporate leaders, revolutionairies (like Che Guevera), celebrities etc.

Now this concept needs to be really fleshed out but I''d like it if the game''s espionage system - rather then being just a general list of sabatoge such and such a building options - would allow you to deal with all these "world personalities" use them as informants, assasinate them, bribe them, imprision them, all sorts of things. And as the game went on of course the "list" of these "personalities" would be changed some would "die out" others would "rise to power or prominence etc." - to add some variety to the "list".

I realise this concept is extremely absract and not at all, in any way shape or form, fleshed out or developed but I think the Cold War really did feature this element of "famous personalities" such as hollywood blacklisting and all that.

I personally don''t see why the Cold War would be entertaining to play as a game. It would just be a political nuclear arms race....

Well, I think what would work well to translate the atmosphere of the period would be to shift, not the goals, but the means of the game.
You still have to gather resources, strengthen your political power by making allies, and generally look more scary than your opponent to keep the status quo.
But the means would be non overt tactics. No big war against your enemy, or allies of your enemy.
That would lead to a lot of diplomacy to turn strategically placed countries to your side (Cuba, anyone ?), or get them there at any cost (anyone heard about Saddam Hussein involvement with the CIA in the 50''s ?)
Fuck ups have to be covered through media manipulation, black mailing, censorship, etc.

Opposing countries would constantly strengthen their armed forces, increase their stocks of weapons, nukes, develop new technologies, etc.
Some warfare could occur, but only in "neutral" countries that happen to not be allied to your enemy (say, you could nuke Switzerland if you could prove that they did something to you, without endangering the status quo. Russia trying to nuke France, on the other, would trigger a chain reaction involving the whole NATO and other alliances that France might have)

The one thing I can see would be that the whole concept of "trying to maintain status quo" might not be as appealing to the average gamer than the "destroy everything".
During the Cold War we probably built and developed more weapons than we had ever done, but the whole point was to NOT use them.
Kinda counter productive, for a game, don''t you think ?

Still, I am sure the period has some potential for cloak and dagger action ! I just doubt that the audience is that big :/

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

The thought crossed my mind while reading this, so I figured I might as well share it.

When basing a game on the Cold War, it most certainly could be an RTS. Don''t think warfare, thing espionage.

I also think that the Communist and Capitalist nations should each "play" differently - each have their own method for collecting resources, buying/constructing military units and buildings etc.

Also a lot of people are saying they''re should be any combat or minimal combat, I realise in the REAL historical Cold War there wasn''t a lot of overt combat but I think in a video game there needs to be at least a bit of "action" - relying on diplomacy and espionage to make the game "fun" might not work. Obviously the game should be constructed in such a way that getting into a major war would more or less be a bad idea and wars would be difficult to fight and extremely costly without a large alliance to rely on for aid. However even in the real Cold War there was the major chance that a war could erupt between the US and Soviet Union - and I would want that possibility to exist in game, and if it did occur I would want the player to be able to led their nation in such a war. The game SHOULD end in a draw or defeat for both sides if however a Nuclear War breaks out - but not a conventional war.

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Original post by Demonlir
I also think that the Communist and Capitalist nations should each "play" differently - each have their own method for collecting resources, buying/constructing military units and buildings etc.

Also a lot of people are saying they're should be any combat or minimal combat, I realise in the REAL historical Cold War there wasn't a lot of overt combat but I think in a video game there needs to be at least a bit of "action" - relying on diplomacy and espionage to make the game "fun" might not work. Obviously the game should be constructed in such a way that getting into a major war would more or less be a bad idea and wars would be difficult to fight and extremely costly without a large alliance to rely on for aid. However even in the real Cold War there was the major chance that a war could erupt between the US and Soviet Union - and I would want that possibility to exist in game, and if it did occur I would want the player to be able to led their nation in such a war. The game SHOULD end in a draw or defeat for both sides if however a Nuclear War breaks out - but not a conventional war.

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Again, I go back to the movie Wargames. "The only winning move is not to play". The problem with a war erupting between the USA and the USSR was that, when it was finished, there would be no USA or USSR left. I think I heard Einstein said something like "I don't know what weapons will be used to fight WWIII, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones". Basically, if you want a game in the Cold War era with a war between the super powers you have two options

- mutual annihilation
- completely forget about historical accuracy and the atmosphere of the Cold War

We stock-piled weapons so that they'd have to be insane to actually attack us. Basically, if we used any of those weapons, the weapons would have failed in their purpose. Their purpose wasn't to kill, it was to prevent anyone from killing anyone else. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. I remember on Discovery a few years back someone said that our nuclear weapons haven't been used because they've been doing their job.

Maybe you could set it up something like Mario Party, with an insane number of mini-games? On the "World Map" you do things like read the news, set production and research, contact allies and enemies, rally support, spread propaganda, etc. In the mini-games you fight battles (Shogun: Total War style) in neutral areas (Must keep Vietnam away from the communists), assassinate important people (Theif style), infiltrate a base (Fallout: Tactics style), etc.

Edit: I would also like to point out that I think a game, with a proper AI, could focus on diplomacy and be very interesting. My biggest complaint with CivII (Still one of the greatest games ever made) was that the diplomacy was crap. You couldn't initiate anything, and you had so few options. Still, it was one of my favorite parts of the game. I did very little actual fighting, I mostly talked my friends into fighting for me and sent my spies in to subvert the enemy cities. It was great fun.

[edited by - Way Walker on May 21, 2003 6:07:51 PM]