AHC: WWI video games more popular

WWII games, games against terrorist, communist, and insurgents dominate the gaming market. WWI games are very rare, and tend to sell poorly.

I've heard it argued that this is because of how entrenched/static the war was, and how limited it is compared to WWII. But the Eastern Front, Middle East, Balkans, and German invasion of Belgium were all fairly fluid at times and didn't have the same trench system the Western front did.

Between the trenches in the plains of France, the sheer scope of the East, the Alpine Warfare in Italy, the deserts in the Middle East, and the limited wars in Africa/the Pacific, I believe there is enough diversity to create an interesting game.

Is there any way to make WWI games more popular? Perhaps make a Call of Duty WWI game?

PoD: 2000
 
WW1 was mainly fought in Europe, as such its less exciting or attention grabbing then WW2, which has a SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE VILLAIN in it.
 
I don't play many shooters (like at all, I've never played a WWII shooter) but from what I can tell WWII games are just easier to make. More recognizable and spectacular people, battles, and events. Heroes and villains already written by life for WWII, rather than the confusing grey on gray conflict in WWI. Faster, flashier, and quicker gameplay as the technology is better.

Maybe the games should be focused on the run and gun shooters like the WWII games are, maybe they should take different directions, for example:

-Turn based strategy, focus on surviving and building up your side in the trench war.

-Stealth games, more about infiltration, assassination, and getting away then killing an entire army on your own. Alternatively, finding and sneaking Lenin back into Russia would be an interesting game on its own merits. Guerilla warfare could be interesting, if boring at times.

-Old timey dogfighting, speaks for itself.
 
I don't thinks it's possible with a 2000 PoD.

If it wasn't the case a central power's victory could make this possible.
 
i've always thought that a COD game set in WW1 would be a good option for either Activision or Treyarch to make (particularly because horse-riding was introduced in Black Ops II, so there's precedent for its inclusion on a larger-scale in a WW1 game)

getting to the point, what would need to be done for a WW1 FPS to work would be to just focus campaign missions on the actual conflicts. i mean, when people says that WW1 is a too entrenched and slow war to make a game out of, they're assuming that the full experience of the trenches would be the bulk of the game. it wouldn't be. WW2 may have been more fast-paced than WW1 (despite actually being longer than the former) but COD, for instance, still focused on actual engagements and not the time inbetween. Black Ops focused on the actual secret operations of the story and not on the careful planning inbetween (the closest thing to that is meeting with Kennedy when he authorizes the assassination of Dragovich).

anyway, for the setting and gameplay, the player character and immediate allies would just need to be elite soldiers rather than common grunts so that they realistically spend more time rushing other trenches rather than waiting and popping off a shot every once in a while, though hiding in trenches would have to be a gameplay mechanic in order to get closer to a machine gun nest, for instance. the trenches could also have more strategic uses in a given campaign mission (i'm not gonna touch on a multiplayer mode) such as tricking an enemy tank into falling into the trench and getting stuck so that you can run up and destroy it via a grenade down the hatch (kinda like how you can stick a grenade on a tank in Halo). speaking of tanks, using those in at least a few levels would be a must, perhaps along with airplanes. a German portion of the campaign could very well have the player as a member of Jasta-11 and fighting alongside the Red Baron himself, with one of the more (intended) emotional parts of the game being Richtofen's death at the Somme. there could also be an easter egg where, if you hover the cursor/sights over a German soldier running past you (in a German campaign) it says "Pvt. A. Hitler", with him playing no role in the story.

in fact, there could very well be two WW1 games like this, one where you play as the Allies and one as the Central Powers, both being the same game but each having a unique campaign and some special multiplayer maps, though multiplayer would work between both games (as opposed to only with their own game). kinda like how Nintendo always releases two titles in the main Pokemon series, with both being identical except for a few differences of what you can get in-game and occasionally some differing story elements. the Allies game would, of course, have the player as the British, French, and Russians (and maybe the Serbians to mix things up a bit, depending) while the CP game would have them as Germany, Austria, or the Ottomans (duh). notably, the US could/should be excluded because its honestly overused and, in the context of WW1, they came to the war very late, whereas there were still three more years in WW2 when they joined
 
i've always thought that a COD game set in WW1 would be a good option for either Activision or Treyarch to make (particularly because horse-riding was introduced in Black Ops II, so there's precedent for its inclusion on a larger-scale in a WW1 game)

getting to the point, what would need to be done for a WW1 FPS to work would be to just focus campaign missions on the actual conflicts. i mean, when people says that WW1 is a too entrenched and slow war to make a game out of, they're assuming that the full experience of the trenches would be the bulk of the game. it wouldn't be. WW2 may have been more fast-paced than WW1 (despite actually being longer than the former) but COD, for instance, still focused on actual engagements and not the time inbetween. Black Ops focused on the actual secret operations of the story and not on the careful planning inbetween (the closest thing to that is meeting with Kennedy when he authorizes the assassination of Dragovich).

anyway, for the setting and gameplay, the player character and immediate allies would just need to be elite soldiers rather than common grunts so that they realistically spend more time rushing other trenches rather than waiting and popping off a shot every once in a while, though hiding in trenches would have to be a gameplay mechanic in order to get closer to a machine gun nest, for instance. the trenches could also have more strategic uses in a given campaign mission (i'm not gonna touch on a multiplayer mode) such as tricking an enemy tank into falling into the trench and getting stuck so that you can run up and destroy it via a grenade down the hatch (kinda like how you can stick a grenade on a tank in Halo). speaking of tanks, using those in at least a few levels would be a must, perhaps along with airplanes. a German portion of the campaign could very well have the player as a member of Jasta-11 and fighting alongside the Red Baron himself, with one of the more (intended) emotional parts of the game being Richtofen's death at the Somme. there could also be an easter egg where, if you hover the cursor/sights over a German soldier running past you (in a German campaign) it says "Pvt. A. Hitler", with him playing no role in the story.

in fact, there could very well be two WW1 games like this, one where you play as the Allies and one as the Central Powers, both being the same game but each having a unique campaign and some special multiplayer maps, though multiplayer would work between both games (as opposed to only with their own game). kinda like how Nintendo always releases two titles in the main Pokemon series, with both being identical except for a few differences of what you can get in-game and occasionally some differing story elements. the Allies game would, of course, have the player as the British, French, and Russians (and maybe the Serbians to mix things up a bit, depending) while the CP game would have them as Germany, Austria, or the Ottomans (duh). notably, the US could/should be excluded because its honestly overused and, in the context of WW1, they came to the war very late, whereas there were still three more years in WW2 when they joined

As small as America's military impact was in WWI relative to the rest of the world, I think that the US would have to be included for it to be commercially successful. They might not have much of a role in campaign mode, but I think people would want to see America's late contribution and to play as the US online. Just giving two levels to the United States sounds fair, IMO.

Also, do you think that having a few levels set in Africa featuring guerilla warfare would add anything? Just as a change up.

And perhaps included Japan briefly in the siege of Tsingtao?
 

Incognito

Banned
WW1 was mainly fought in Europe, as such its less exciting or attention grabbing then WW2, which has a SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE VILLAIN in it.
Myself, I'd love to see a Red Alert-style strategy game where you could field all the crazy weapons that were used in small numbers or never even made it onto the battlefield in real life (e.g.: Tsar tank, German troops wearing "pantzer" body armour, giant Zeppelins, etc.) as well as units based on speculative fiction from the period, like this for example:

135992.jpg


Just as in Red Alert 2 the characters were parodies and stereotypes of the period, same can be done with characters in the hypothetical WW1 game (just don't take it to Red Alert 3 levels of nonsense :()
 
As small as America's military impact was in WWI relative to the rest of the world, I think that the US would have to be included for it to be commercially successful. They might not have much of a role in campaign mode, but I think people would want to see America's late contribution and to play as the US online. Just giving two levels to the United States sounds fair, IMO.

Also, do you think that having a few levels set in Africa featuring guerilla warfare would add anything? Just as a change up.

And perhaps included Japan briefly in the siege of Tsingtao?
those are honestly what i'd include as either console-exclusive content (similar to the PS3-only Benedict Arnold missions in AC3). the pivotal battles of WW1 that the US was directly involved in and the siege of Tsingtao would be included as individual missions running concurrently to the main campaign, along with one or two secondary campaigns taking place in different theaters like Africa, all as DLC.

when i said "US not really included" earlier, i had meant as a playable faction in the campaign. i'd imagine for multiplayer it would just be "Allied Powers" and "Central Powers" with some different aesthetics and voice actors depending on the map; for example, a map set in Belgium would pit Allied French against CP Germans, whereas one based on Gallipoli would have Allied British against CP Turks.
 
The First World War was never glorified or romanticized in popular media to the same extent that other 20th century conflicts were. While you do see anti war novels and films set in WW2, they often seem like a minority compared to pro war media. The same absolutely cannot be said of WWI, whose depictions in media have always emphasized the perceived senseless brutality and destruction of that conflict. The only exception to the rule is the romanticized portrayal of the chivalrous "Knights of the Sky" aspect of the air war, which has already received extensive treatment in the flight Sim genre of gaming.
 
WWII games, games against terrorist, communist, and insurgents dominate the gaming market. WWI games are very rare, and tend to sell poorly.

I've heard it argued that this is because of how entrenched/static the war was, and how limited it is compared to WWII. But the Eastern Front, Middle East, Balkans, and German invasion of Belgium were all fairly fluid at times and didn't have the same trench system the Western front did.

Between the trenches in the plains of France, the sheer scope of the East, the Alpine Warfare in Italy, the deserts in the Middle East, and the limited wars in Africa/the Pacific, I believe there is enough diversity to create an interesting game.

Is there any way to make WWI games more popular? Perhaps make a Call of Duty WWI game?

PoD: 2000

WWI games aren't popular because the USA isn't massively involved in it; it was mostly just a typical war between European powers.
 

Zeph3r

Banned
I want a game where I can ride with Lawrence of Arabia. He did a lot of really cool guerrilla operations.
 
I guess if Battlefield 1942 was followed up by BF1917 instead of Vietnam, the initial fan rush might get the ball rolling. Probably not though.
 
No one's responded to my idea (post 3) can I get some feedback?

most of those have already been made, and were not successes, even among the given consumer base. For example turn based strategy (of the complicated kind), have procured some WW1 games but they have all been surpassed in success by the enormous amount of WW2 strategy games.
 
No one's responded to my idea (post 3) can I get some feedback?

IIRC, there used to be some games along the lines of the first & third ideas about 10-15 years ago, as well as some naval games, but those tended to be seen as a niche market, and the gaming industry has focused on other types of games since then, with most war games being shooters, RTS, or online setups like World of Tanks or War Thunder which go with WW2 themes because of their greater familiarity & popularity.

The only relatively recent WW1 games I've heard of in the last few years haven't come from the big studios, but small groups on the internet- a naval game that can be downloaded from the internet & some folks on the subsim forum trying to create a WW1 U-boat campaign mod for one of the Silent Hunter games.

As Color-Copycat said, to really get anything beyond some flight sims or naval games, with the occasional turn-based game for the grognard-level wargamer popping up every now & then, you'd need to do something to change the pop culture perception of WW1 beforehand.

ETA: I just took at Matrix Games' website, & they do have a few WW1 strategy games, one of which they released just this last November, but they're a niche publisher focusing on the serious wargamer
 
ETA: I just took at Matrix Games' website, & they do have a few WW1 strategy games, one of which they released just this last November, but they're a niche publisher focusing on the serious wargamer
and compared to the amount of WW2 games they publish it's a minuscule amount.
 
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