Games That Depict Conflict Scenarios Best

[Jeux]

Hey guys,

 

I'm a college student taking my 3000 level English course. The theme of the course is focused on conflict zones around the world, so every student had to choose one specific event of conflict. (Wars, raids, rebellions, massacres, etc)

 

I first chose the issue with Somalia with the Somali pirates. I then switched to researching the 2012 Tuareg Rebellion concerning Mali, the Tuareg, and the MNLA.

 

 

After a few of the preparation essays we have to type halfway through the course, I talked to my professor and told her about how there is a lack of sources and information on my topic (nevermind the fact that it was a tad bit boring), and the fact that I was swamped with other things in my life. She stopped me and asked what was taking up all my time. I told her being a full time student while working two jobs, juggling a social life, AND modding a large scale fallout new vegas mod was doing just that. She asked me about modding, and game development in general. It turns out her house mate is a graduate student writing her thesis on game development and player interactions.

 

She then propose that I drop the Tuareg Rebellion topic and instead center my research around the following:

 

1) How we can escape into the virtual world to simulate conflict scenarios that resemble conflicts in our world. How we can escape into another persona to experience things differently and act in a way we would not usually act...take risks we wouldn't usually take (a hunter in a jungle, a lone soldier in a dominated battlefield, an investigator questioning civilians)

 

2) (minor) A brief discussion on the difficulties in the development process of video games, especially indie game development and "large-scale modding"

 

3) (minor) A brief description of the conflict situation I have in the narrative on my mod (tying in wit the second point)

 

 

 

So, what I need from you guys...suggestions for some AAA titles that have come out that represent some good conflict situations between groups of people without the story being too..."complex", or "video game-ish"

 

Good Examples:

 

-Homefront

-Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (cold war) or 3

-Far Cry 3 (survival)

-The Last of Us (apocalypse)

-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (kinda, a bit complex, lacking an obvious conflict)

-Deus Ex: Human Revolution (augments or no augments)

-Grand Theft Auto

-Assassin's Creed (maybe? with the right explanation?)

 

 

Good Examples that would just confuse my audience:

-Fallout

-Final Fantasy (in SOME cases...)

-Mass Effect

-Shadow of the Colossus (No major, obvious conflict)

-LIMBO

-Silent Hill

 

Bad Examples: katamari damacy

-Resident Evil

-Elder Scrolls

-Minecraft

-Tetris

 

 

...uh, yeah. I'm really not coming up with good examples here (at work). As long as you get the general idea, and the point of this project, I would appreciate suggestions for reference material I could use in my presentation and overall final research paper.

 

Thanks.

[Illiad86]

I guess The Witcher 1 and 2 would be too fantasy styled for your paper. But, they do depict kings fighting over land, political mess-ups, assassinations, plague, etc. It might be a bit confusing though...as you have to read quite a few of the books beforehand to understand why the lands are at war.

 

Other than that, I can't really think of many AAA titles, I don't play many games anymore.

[hoofhearted4]

what about Star Wars. Empire vs Republic?

 

also Assassins Creed might work. depends how realistic the conflict has to pertain with the real world?

[Vagrant0]

I would however point out one flaw with this line of research; that many of the games mentioned involve conflicts where the player has no clear choice of sides nor any strong personal attachment to tribe or family involved in the conflict. It is not really the same case when you are talking about, for example, a conflict in Africa that is started because one warlord is trying to get more power, or because some group does not like the way the government is being run. In these conflicts the sides become more ambiguous, and personal ties to home groups become much more important than the overall politics, or the sides are clear, but a persons personal or religious beliefs play a factor in which side they are most likely to support. In comparison, nearly every example provided in games is very shallow representation. Even in Skyrim, where the conflict has in some cases personal meaning with the player from their interactions with the world, and the player can eventually see both the futility of the conflict and its necessity, it is incredibly shallow because the player can, at any point just walk away without repercussions. Even in the case of Eve Online, one of the most conflict oriented games, the conflict only exists between players, over resources, and wanes as players either stop playing and the corporation falls apart, or they get bored of fighting the same groups and adjust their alliances to find someone else to fight.

 

In the case of GTA, the world outside the mission storylines has no real consequences for any action, even regarding actors who would seem unique (killing the annoying 2@ girl in GTA4 doesn't stop her from just respawning, killing any of your contacts just hurts reputation with them about as much as if you missed a date), and even as far as the storyline goes, it only has the consequences that it has allowed for. There are countless games where you know who the villain is, and are given many chances to kill them or destroy their operation, but are prevented from doing so simply because of storyline or game mechanics. So really, these games have no risk for taking various actions because the results are set in stone and there are no lasting repercussions.

 

 

Regarding your paper, I would say that the biggest problem would be that you are picking a very new conflict that few people know about, so of course not much would be known about the inner workings or overall situation aside from brief news reports. What I might suggest instead is looking to some of the earlier African conflicts which still have cultural implications today. The easiest of these would likely be some of the conflicts in Nigeria as this area is one where you have three tribal groups, plus remnants of a colonial rule. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a better example of a localized conflict that was both as clear cut and bloody.

[Vindekarr]

Spec Ops: The Line

 

World In Conflict.

 

Ghost Recon, Future Soldier.

 

Those three games, in that order, for me handle conflict scenarios better than any other, especialy The Line. If you've played it, you'll know what i mean. It really forces you to think out your moral decisions; you can't get away with just shooting everything, there's moral and personal consequences, and you have to be aware of how people will percieve your actions because you can't simply press X to difuse a situation in which civilians could be hurt. Rather, in attempting to do so, you might trigger a riot. People are portrayed as brittle, craven things, and for me, it's one of the most absolutely compelling games I've ever played. A pity they don't advertise it for the storyline, since that's the real drawcard.

 

World In conflict feels more like a good movie-for an RTS, it had a remarkably tellable story, which had some truly excellent characters, and acting. Ghost Recon doesn't really focus on storyline, but manages to portray a world on the brink of war in a respectful way; it's not a gung-ho blast 'em up, rather, it portrays conflict without glorifying it, as well as exposing the player to the victims of other men's wars, such as a level that forces you to creep through a refugee camp.. There's no "congratulations! you killed a WHOLE LOTTA PEOPLE!" in any of these three.

 

All three also stand strongly on their merits as games, though they aren't perfect, they are strong titles and I know I'll remember all three for a long time to come.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Vindekarr

[TK622]

A good conflict game is 7554. It's a Call of Duty like game from a vietnamese developer. It's set during the Indochina war and the player is a soldier of the Viet-Mihn Troops fighting the french collonial army. It's intendet to tell the story of the liberation of Vietnam in a historic correct way without being to boring. It's full of background information, has good gameplay, is pretty hard and realistic. You have very limited ammo and low health wich creates a good feeling of danger and delivers a great feeling of underpowerdness (<- Is this a real word?!) The downside is, that the whole game is in vietnamese (besides the menus), and the subtitels are sometimes a bit bad, but still understandable.