WW1 games where are you?

victor

victor

Antediluvian as Feck
Orderite
Is it just me, or is The Great War very unpopular in the gaming industry? Same thing with Hollywood. There are about a million movies about ww2 and Vietnam and whatever, but not really ANYTHING even remotely involving the war that started it all and led to the world we have today. I think it's a damned shame. The trench wars, early aviation, no man's land... All these things would be great for a game, especially an FPS. Thoughts?
 
Last game I remember was Red Baron from Sierra Online. It's about time someone made a strategy game though, infantry warfare in trenches would be great fun. I don't like FPS, but it could turn out okay, I guess.

Possibly a RTS/FPS combo, coordinate your forces, then attack. You could switch to first person when you command a soldier to man a machine gun, or even a carbine if you wanted. Throw in a simple flight simulation for recon and bombing.

Go old school with an overview map of the battlefield showing the battle lines. From here you could command whole divisions, and see the results. Click on a portion to go to a more conventional RTS map (a la Starcraft, C&C) to micromanage smaller units.

Damn, I'm getting a little worked up, gotta stop. Nobody would make a game this complex.
 
Is the idea of massive casualties the appeal here? Does anybody know what the British suffered on the First day of the Somme offensive? 62,000 casualties, including 21,000 dead! And it was a 6 month battle! the total British casualty list for the Somme was around 660,000 thousand casualties! Do you know what they gained for that many men sacrificed? 10 miles! So many men sacrificed for nothing! Just wondering what the appeal of wasting so many lives is? :scratch:

Now the opening battles of the war when maneuver was possible is a valid subject, or the East Front where there was more maneuver room.


Cheers Thorgrimm
 
Well, the casualties at the battle of Verdun exceeded a million (dead), both on French and German sides. They gained absolutely nothing for that either.

Anyway, it's not the "massive casualties" that are appealing, it's just the whole setting. Dirt, grim life conditions, "primitive" weapons (the Italians I think it was, still had medieval weapons), horror. I don't really see why this setting hasn't been used yet.

And as for casualties, WW2 and Vietnam were a bit more bloody. But I agree if you're referring to the density of the casualties.

As for Red Baron, it is one of the greatest (and first) games I've ever played. But I still think it should be an FPS, Flight Sims are so "far away".

I'm not sure about the first part of the war either, trench wars would probably be more original (and fun!).
 
Blue Byte made a game in 93 called the Great War, in the 70's SPI made a WW1 expansion for their War in Europe monster game, GRD has an entire series of games on the Great War, SPW a German company also has an entire series on the Great War also, in the Eighties People's Wargames had an excellent gmae on the Russian campaign in East Prussia called The Cossacks are coming, and just last year a Russian game company released a WW1 game like Cossacks on WW1. So there has been a lot of games out on the First World War. :wink:

Btw in Vietnam the US and Seato ally casualties were right around 75,000 and the communist side were estimated and confirmed by the Vietnamese at about 1.5 to 2 million, so that statement about Vietnam is wrong, and if you take out the civilian casualties, Germany lost about the same roughly 4 million casualties, Britian's were significantly less, only russia had substantial increase in military casualties. The reason it is called the Great war i have been told is because Europe lost most of a generation of valiant men.

Cheers Thorgrimm
 
There is a game coming out called Entante, it is an RTS. To bad it sucks.

Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun is a bit disappointing but it covers the Great War really well.
 
Baboon said:
"primitive" weapons (the Italians I think it was, still had medieval weapons)
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Medieval?
Pistols
glisenti.jpg

beretta.jpg

Machine Pistol
mpistols.jpg

Rifles
model91.jpg

Machine Guns
mgun_fiatrevelli.jpg

mod1914a.jpg

Mortar/Grenade launcher
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grenadel.jpg
 
Id love for someone to make a WW1 game but for some reason they think that it wouldnt have a huge crowd to buy it. Ashame really.
 
Well considering millions of vietnamese civilians died compared to about 50,000 americans I'd say it was a bloodier war (relative to the population of Vietnam and the type of casualties).

Also, there were more casualties during ww2 (16 million in the Soviet Union). The reason it's called (was called) The Great War is that it was the first of its kind, and never seen before. It was the first major conflict of the industrial age, and a very major one at that.

I know there are games about WW1, but they're old, and they're not FPS games (Battlefield 1918 is only a mod after all).

When I was talking about primitive weapons I meant the not-so-very automatic rifles, and the close quarter bayonet combat that often occurred. I mean people just didn't walk around with OICW's and M60's. Hitting anything (unless you had one of those Vickers Machine guns that probably overheated every 2 seconds) was quite a challenge.

All FPS games (with the exception of the now hopefully dead ww2 genre) today have these modern uberweapons that can zoom all the way to Mars and hit a target in another galaxy. All those hight-tech toys are fun at first, but get kinda boring after a while. There doesn't seem to be any challenge in shooting an opponent.

I just think a ww1 shooter would be an original idea. You could build a great atmosphere with trenches and all.
 
Baboon said:
When I was talking about primitive weapons I meant the not-so-very automatic rifles, and the close quarter bayonet combat that often occurred.
Click to expand...
Primitive, yeah
It was the Medieval comment that struck me as wrong :D

There doesn't seem to be any challenge in shooting an opponent.
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How about even earlier?
Think of the challenge of a FPS with single shot muskets (and a 20 second relaod time).
 
WW2 was more a war about good and evil, WW1 was a war of pointlessness. Producers like to make games where there is a "bad" guy that can easily be identified as evil. You don't have to worry about offending anyone when you're killing nazis. No side was really "evil" in WW1.

You wanted to know why there are more WW2 games than WW1 games, and thats why.
 
I saw a picture in a book once that showed (I think it was Italian) soldiers fighting with steel weapons such as clubs and morningstars. They also had chestplates. Maybe they found it more useful considering the close quarters combat that often occured in the trenches. I'd put the image online if I found the book again and had a scanner.

And yes, I thought about 18th/19th century warfare too. The napoleonic wars would make an excellent FPS, with the gigantic battles they had at that time. Might get kinda slow paced with the long reloading time though. :)

Finally, calculon00 said there are more WW2 games because the nazis are evil (I agree). But what about Vietnam games? You can't say that the Vietnamese people was "evil".
 
I think that 50 years of cold war can give "evil" characteristics to communist Vietcong. Plus, another reason is because WW2 and Vietnam were more recent.
 
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