ID:189270
 
For those of you have played Rise of Nations, maybe you'll understand this. Maybe you won't care. I hope you do. For those who haven't played it, you may find this more interesting.

I was playing Rise of Nations and I had a scary experience. I'm playing a nation against 7 other nations in a campaign of progression from the ancient age to the modern age. Everything was moving along peacefully and quietly, nice music in the background. About an hour had gone by and the fighting started when the first guns were invented in the game.

Small battles here and there went on and I hadn't realized that the game was set on free for all until I looked around the game map and saw everyone fighting everyone.

Where it got frightening was when it came around to the modern age. All 8 countries had made it to the modern age. Here you go (read this VERY quickly to feel what I felt):

I'm sitting here looking at my screen. I'm defending my border from one of my enemies. My well-armed infantry are lined up, shooting everything that comes within range. My tanks are on the side blowing the crap out of whatever they can. The enemy then gets blasted from behind by a nuclear missile from another nation. They scramble back and my army moves in. The general siren is blaring. The infantry shoot up the farmers. The tanks blow up everything. Bombers fly in and destroy anything. Troops are dying, people are screaming, things are exploding, bullets are flying.


And then I just froze. I paused the game, and I quit. It was scary. It was about as close to actual war as, I believe, it gets. Folks, if you ever want to get as close to first hand experience of what war is really like, play Rise of Nations in the modern age. I don't advise such a thing, however.

What do people think about this? What about people who have played Rise of Nations; what is your opinion on that? I find the game frightening that it makes a very god effort to depict a real war setting. It really does. The sound effects combined with the chaos of the speed of the game is incredible. And horrible.

-Dagolar
That is true for *some* wars. That would be true for ruthless nations, which aren't any of the superpowers today.

That would be more along the lines of a world war 3, where some of the enemy nations decided to use nuclear warheads, dispite the risk of the end of the world. Also, most western nations try everything in their power to protect civilians.
Dagolar wrote:
What do people think about this? What about people who have played Rise of Nations; what is your opinion on that? I find the game frightening that it makes a very god effort to depict a real war setting. It really does. The sound effects combined with the chaos of the speed of the game is incredible. And horrible.

I also found Rise of Nations to be very realistic, and to have more realistic tactics than other games I've played.

It also got me onto my current game-playing spurt, which has resulted in playing System Shock 2, Fallout (not finished), Star Wars Galaxies...
And then I just froze. I paused the game, and I quit. It was scary. It was about as close to actual war as, I believe, it gets. Folks, if you ever want to get as close to first hand experience of what war is really like, play Rise of Nations in the modern age. I don't advise such a thing, however.

When playing a real time stratagy based on history what do you expect them to do :P. If you want a peaceful game there are options that let you disable combat and make the game a technology race if you really don't that, but I think combat is the main feature of an RTS. Also on one of my earlier games I found that on diplomacy mode computers are will leave you alone until you start stockpiling weapons or do anything threatening. But if you don't like this kind of stuff why did you even bother playing? I don't see that it's any less violent than a non-realistic RTS. It's like thinking by turning off blood in Mortal Kombat its no longer violent.

Anyway I highly doubt the real world nations will start to have skirmishes with everyone else in an all out war to control the world.

What do people think about this? What about people who have played Rise of Nations; what is your opinion on that? I find the game frightening that it makes a very god effort to depict a real war setting. It really does. The sound effects combined with the chaos of the speed of the game is incredible. And horrible.

I hardly think that a game that provides realistic gameplay that's also fun horrible.
Awesome. I've got to get that game! :D

Siientx
In response to Theodis
You've completely missed what I was passing along in my experience, as has everyone else. Not a single response addressed what I was talking about - I wasn't talking about the "funfactor" in the GAME.

Whatever...Again, another topic that I am sorry I bothered mentioning on this message board.

-Dagolar
In response to Dagolar
You've completely missed what I was passing along in my experience, as has everyone else. Not a single response addressed what I was talking about - I wasn't talking about the "funfactor" in the GAME.

Yeah you were addressing that it simulates war accuratly. Plenty of games have attempted that in the past and had various degrees of success and it's only going to get more and more realistic as technology improves. The point I was making is that it enhances the already good experiance and I don't see why it scares you.
In response to Theodis
What scared me was the chaos of it all. It wasn't just a good simulator of war, by god, it felt pretty damn close to the horror of what war really is! And I don't just mean the tactical aspect of it. The people screaming, the siren blaring. It was bloody frightening, and frightening that, for some people, that kind of simulated reality is entertaining...

-Dagolar
In response to Dagolar
Dagolar wrote:
simulated reality is entertaining...

Here's the key phrase...

It's not frightening that people like that kind of simulated reality... The fact that it's simulated makes it fine... As long as the person knows the difference between virtual and real, then everything's fine...

No sane person would enjoy being in war in real life... But there's nothing wrong with that person enjoying a non-real representation of war...
In response to Dagolar
What scared me was the chaos of it all. It wasn't just a good simulator of war, by god, it felt pretty damn close to the horror of what war really is! And I don't just mean the tactical aspect of it. The people screaming, the siren blaring. It was bloody frightening, and frightening that, for some people, that kind of simulated reality is entertaining...

Well there are plenty of movies that do even better, but the fact of the matter is it's not real. Then again I've grown up seeing violent movies/cartoons/games so I'm pretty numb to artificial violence and I don't know what type of background you come from so you very well might not be as exposed to this kind of stuff as I am.
In response to SuperSaiyanGokuX
I think...when people are screaming for their lives, the general siren is blaring loudly, firebombs are being dropped on civilians and farmers - simulated. That stuff actually happens, and all I'm saying is that it is scary that people should derive pleasure and entertainment from such a thing.

Rise of Nations is so far the only game that has made me look at it from a point of view of analysis rather than that of a player. If you get by looking at it as a player, as I did at that moment, it seems like a whole lot more than just a computer game bought at the store. It's morbid. It's morbid that the simulation is designed to feel that real, and it's morbid that anyone would enjoy it. That's just the way I look at it.

-Dagolar

p.s.- I'm not a fan of grand theft auto 3, either, so I suppose I am coming from a "non-numb" perspective...For the numb-minded out there, you have my condolences.
In response to Dagolar
Yeh well you have MY condolences for being such a puss...pus..pers...personal person!! *Phew almost said a rude word!*

It's only little coloured dots moving on a screen! How could that scare or offend you?

~GokuSS4Neo~
In response to Gokuss4neo
It's only little coloured dots moving on a screen! How could that scare or offend you?

In the same way that a DVD horror movie -- which is also little colored dots moving on a screen -- could scare someone. Or, say, Resident Evil or Silent Hill or games of that ilk. Try playing one of those alone in a dark house at 1 AM and see if it seems quite so silly...

The practice of disregarding the obvious fact that you aren't truly involved in the events transpiring on the screen, and thereby becoming emotionally involved in the story, is called "the willing suspension of disbelief." A person who can't do it is likely to end up missing a lot of the point of a movie. I can tell you that now, at 33, I'm a lot more easily disturbed by horror movies or war movies than I was in high school. I think it's a pretty common evolution as people get older -- they simply have more experience to draw on, and thus they're better able to "put themselves in the other guy's shoes."
In response to Gughunter
I'm only 15, so that is probably why. I admit movies can sometimes scare me, but MUCH less so on games, because YOU control what happens, and the only real bit on movies which scares me is the sudden surprise, which doesn't happen much in games. But NEVER, I repeat NEVER have I been so scared I had to turn the game off, or have a fear to play it OR to be offend in any way!

~GokuSS4Neo~

P.s. The film that probably scared me the most was Dog Soldiers, but I was drunk, on my own, at 2 am :P
In response to Gokuss4neo
The only film that had me jumping, not scared, just jumping, was Childs Play.

The first, second and third Childs Play movies are the only films to have ever made me jump because of the sheer intensity of the film.

It was very intriguing and had you on the edge of your chair at every moment.

Although I do not get disturbed, offended or even scared of films, games, anything on the lines of virtuality. I do often find myself in the main characters shoes as Gughunter points out.

I am only 18, my youngest brother 12, and he is just as good as me at getting into the "other characters shoes", literally.

Me and my brother normally watch and play games together all the time, the only difference is that with films, we watch at night in a dark room with lights off, where it brings the film more to life. As for games, my brother watches me do the games, and complete them, then he tries.

He gets all his life experiences mainly from me, and I try not to make him a nasty person as I was when I was younger, and it is working. Although, the point here is that you lack the skill to emotionally watch films and play games.

--Lee
In response to Dagolar
Numb-minded? Thats quite an assumption for people who don't care if a video game is violent or not. Maybe you are to numb-minded to see that it doesn't matter if a game has extreme violence and bloodshed, it just matters that the players can derive the difference between real and virtual and generally enjoy it. Just because somebody plays the game doesn't mean they do it for the blood shed, they probably enjoy the value of the simulation, and if it is a war simulation, then shouldn't it show all that?


<<>>Kusanagi<<>>
In response to Kusanagi
Never mind...I had something to say here too but it's just a waste of time...

-Dagolar
A little off topic here, but if you want a scary game,
play System Shock 2, at midnight, with the sound up high,
trust me, you'll be scared.
In response to Dagolar
Yes, it's scary, but it's not that scary.

The big difference is that in a video game, there are no consequences beyond the video game... if reality had a reset button on it, everybody would have dropped "the big one" the moment they got it. Despite evidence to the contrary, the people with their fingers poised over the proverbial button aren't a bunch of 12 to 21 year olds out to conquer the world without all the responsibility of actually ruling it.
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