"What is missing is the chaos of battle"

Keith Stuart (Guardian games blog) posts a fine interview with Malcom Davis on "what a military expert thinks about modern combat games."  It provides us with a frame of reference to measure previous discussions related to combat in commercial MMOGs.

Read the full article on the Guardian site.

Quoting Malcom: I think that consumer military simulations are never going to be totally realistic because ultimately people don't really die or get injured, and thus the fear element is never going to be there.

1.  Permadeath.

Albeit vaguely related - one must mention the eternally controversial idea in commercial MMO design: permadeath (ref TN: "New York Times on Permadeath").  For the industry's steady rebuttle I'll cite Damion's eloquent pieces from a few years back (1. 2. ): "I  love the Terranova guys. I follow the site closely. But it seems that every fourth thread or so goes into wonkland."

2. Misuse of the "war" analogy.

I've commented on what I perceived to be the inappropriate use of the analogy of "war" to rationalize controversial conduct in MMOGs (PvP combat, ref "The Fallacy of War").

3. Pseudo-Heroism.

Will Rogers once said “We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by".  The Achille's heal of the MMOG combat system (MMOG vs Red Orchestra, ref "Statistical Heroism").

4.  Gnawing at the Big One

Malcom: I think one type of warfare missing from computer games, which may be used in the future is the weapons of mass destruction

Not there yet, but trying...  (Eve-Online, ref Strangelove)

Add your own below!

Comments

[Erillion]

1.

In EVE you have :

a) weapons of mass destruction

b) not-quite-but-almost-permadeath (lack of clone anyone ?)

c) massive scale warfare (15000 pilots anyone ?, 1000 in on system)

d) Heroism (of the backstabbing kind - but one pilot (=spy) can make a HUGE difference)

e) and the most obvious analog to real world war .... wars in EVE are won by logistics and strategy, not tactics

f) not to mention cheating and misleading the public (we have real life analogs for that too in recent times !)

Have fun

Erillion

[Erillion]

2.

More EVE - War analogs:

a) <<

b) fog of war - PLENTY of that in EVE

c) communication problems - voice chat server hacking anyone ? Broadband loud music on Teamspeak ? Random orders imitating fleet command that would result in massive fleet losses ?

d) Module lag / jump in queues ... the MMORPG equivalent of muddy roads, broken down equipment, slow response times of elements of your army

e) Intercorporate Bickering .... what a great training ground is EVE for anyone participating in a multi-national peacekeeping force ..

Have fun

Erillion

[Verilazic]

3.

I would say that WoW combat tends to be rather chaotic, though the similarity probably ends there, what with different mechanics than a shooter (healers, etc).

As for the fear of death, that obviously can never truly be present in a game, because even with permadeath, it's still a game. However, when I used to play Counterstrike, I was extremely aware of my... fragility, and I'm betting that's about as close as a (non-MMO) game can come to fear of death.

[Adhar]

4.

@Verilazic: In FPS games, though, when you die, you come back into the next session tabula rasa, all sins erased.

I'll have to agree with Erillion that the harshest (closest) analog to permadeath is likely to be EvE Online, at least in the current crop of MMO's.

From an awareness of "fragility" perspective, a few seconds in an EvE fleet engagement can easily result in the loss of literally months of game play / effort. Economic Permadeath, anyone?

-Adhar

[Chas]

5.

Permadeath may not be THAT much of an issue- soldiers already often train by getting injured, getting recycled, and going back out after a spell. They're used to that.

The "Zerg" is more of an issue- the rapid redeployment to battle, to the point that "conservation of resources (including oneself) is less considered.

The lack of "friendly fire" in my book is a much more critical failing- grenades that only hit the bad guys really alter the course of battle.

Fear? From my own experiences I'm not sure. Fear IS a huge factor... particularly preceding your second and subsequent engagements (you're usually too unaware of what you're getting into the first time). Once engaged, many soldiers will tell you of a numbness that goes over them and lets them execute their orders.

Afterward, the fear returns... along with the introspection on what you'd just been able to do and the realization that you felt so little while doing it.

What you fear most is knowing you'll eventually have to do... be... that again.

[nate_combs]

6.

Enrillion>
(A)nd the most obvious analog to real world war .... wars in EVE are won by logistics and strategy, not tactics

Chas>
The "Zerg" is more of an issue- the rapid redeployment to battle, to the point that "conservation of resources (including oneself) is less considered.

Adhar>
From an awareness of "fragility" perspective, a few seconds in an EvE fleet engagement can easily result in the loss of literally months of game play / effort. Economic Permadeath, anyone?
----------------------------

To my awareness - the sense that power in the Eve-Online universe is palpably tied to economic stength: The ability to field (and lose) fleets and to marshal individuals to 'operations' rather than "making a living." This is the most strategic game.

Yet here is the paradox - it goes to a point suggested by Chas - the 'invisible hand' is largely invisible when it comes to an individual encounters. Folks seem to make local heated decisions: wtf, zerg everyone! Perhaps "strategy" when it percolates down to that level is a subtle influence.

I can see why awareness of it might constitute a sense of the health of the tribe. Yet the transfer of that sense to the individual might be subtle. Perhaps it too varies with time.

[Thomas]

7.

Fear is the number one thing that made Counterstrike a success.

And it's the ONLY element of success that all the copies haven't noticed.

They think Counterstrike's success was because of its counterterrorism setting, the realistic weapons, etc.

But really it came down to:

1: Being fragile (and feeling powerful when killing the other guy)

2: Having to wait 5 minutes before next round if killed.

[Matt Jenkins]

8.

"We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by."

Someone also has to explain to the people on the curb who did what and why they should be remembered. I saw recent Vimy Ridge anniversary coverage in the Vancouver Sun, with a headline that ran something like "When the colony became a nation."

It is in the relaying of the story to others, picking out salient details, highlighting certain acts, ignoring others, that soldiers become heroes. Where is this kind of journalism in MMOGland today?

Heroism has the aspect of being talked about. Until there is some sort of in-game press, we will just have soldiers. Unfortunately, the prerequisites for a healthy press corps in a game like WoW are almost non-existent: (almost) nothing ever changes.

Tangent: if I were a journalist in WoW, I would want to expose who made the decisions that made my troll rogue almost helpless against druids circa lvl 70.

[Cayle]

9.

"Heroism has the aspect of being talked about. Until there is some sort of in-game press, we will just have soldiers."

What is worth gossiping about in WoW? That so and so completed raid X? Rant sites aside, you can't have anything resembling a press until actions in a world CAN be notweorthy. For that to happen, you need players to feel something in the pit of their stomach when they do certain things. This is the standard argument for PD. Its interesting that of all major MMOs, EVE comes the closest to the classic PD and is the most dynamic MMO. A correlation anyone?

[Charles Cameron]

10.

We have invaded a country whose inhabitants, once released from the dictatorship of a westernized, secular tyrant, flocked in large numbers to celebrate Ashura in Karbala – a Shi'ite festival of mourning and flagellation more closely parallel to passion plays and penances than to anything else in recent western experience. We have been attacked, too, by self-sacrificing Sunni jihadists, who think and speak of death as a portal into real life, not an exit from it -- and still we of the western mindset strategize on the assumption that life, death and the fear of death are facts in no need of explanation, simple universal givens.

Dr. Davis, for instance, says, "consumer military simulations are never going to be totally realistic because ultimately people don't really die or get injured, and thus the fear element is never going to be there." Verilazic here on Terra Nova agrees. "As for the fear of death, that obviously can never truly be present in a game, because even with permadeath, it's still a game." There are various phrases there which ping my awareness as a sometime anthropologist: "ultimately" "don’t really die" "obviously" "still a game" and the twice repeated "never."

Do we really know?

*

There are at least two major worldviews associated with warfare, and curiously enough the difference between one and the other is the difference between work and play. You'd think we, as game designers, wargamers, and strategists, would find that significant.

James Aho, whose _Religious Mythology and the Art of War_ is the classic exposition of this opposition, describes one set of warrior ideologies as "immanentist-cosmological" and gives their characteristic attitude as one in which "warfare is play … it is an end in itself." In the other, "transcendent-historical" set, by contrast, "warfare is work … it is a means to an end other than itself."

With warfare, then, being considered a form of play by a major segment of the world's mythologies, it may be worth reflecting for a moment on what those who inculcate this idea have to tell us.

Here is Plotinus, perhaps the greatest of the Neo-Platonists, in his _Enneads_ III.ii.15:

>>> Men directing their weapons against each other -- under doom of death yet neatly lined up to fight as in the pyrrhic sword-dances of their sport -- this is enough to tell us that all human intentions are but play, that death is nothing terrible, that to die in a war or in a fight is but to taste a little beforehand what old age has in store, to go away earlier and come back the sooner. ... Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing. All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life, and never perceiving that, in his weeping and in his graver doings alike, he is but at play… <<<

Does death in battle (as described here) really seem so distant from death in a game – or is the hint here to be received, that death in battle is no more to be feared than game death? And if we still believe ("really" "obviously") that death in battle *is* in fact more to be feared than death in a game – what does that tell us about ourselves, as we face enemies for whom fear, as a distraction from an act of devotion, is what is left behind as the struggle ("jihad") commences?

*

Counter-intuitive, to be sure. Unless and until you cross the threshold.

[Thomas]

11.

If you're making a computer game for religious fanatics or spartans, then yes - fear is not so important :)

But there's a reason why the 300 spartans became legendary. They were an exception to the common human nature of being afraid of death.

[Erillion]

12.

>>>>But there's a reason why the 300 spartans became legendary.>>>

The reason is PR ... and because history is written by the victors.

The people of Athen back then considered it one of the worst and unnecessary losses in the war against Xerxes.

Interesting that history fails to mention that every one of the 300 famous spartanic Hoplites had his 5 unnamed Helotes by his side. And the 700 Thebans that stood their ground side by side til the end are not mentioned at all, too.

Everyone is afraid of the death when he tries to hold his intestines in - dont let propaganda blind you to THAT fact of life.

Have fun

Erillion

[Erillion]

13.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Heroism has the aspect of being talked about. Until there is some sort of in-game press, we will just have soldiers."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

EVE does have its in game press ... the ISD group of CCP runs in game events, but also gives first hand accounts of ongoing player battles and sieges and reports about it in the log in screen (and the official CCP EVE homepage). It often mentions individual pilots.

Another well known media is the EVE Tribune http://www.eve-tribune.com/

And individual fame is possible in EVE:

Remember the EVE 0.0 experiment ?
http://00experiment.blogspot.com/

Or the Guiding Hand Social Club, which made it into global media for their heists in EVE:
http://eve-history.net/wiki/index.php/Guiding_Hand_Social_Club

Have fun

Erillion

[Thomas]

14.

>>>>Everyone is afraid of the death when he tries to hold his intestines in - dont let propaganda blind you to THAT fact of life.

Surely, that was what I meant, too. I'd say even a jihadist today won't throw his life away by "running and gunning" like we see it in shooter games. And the IDEA of the 300 spartans became legendary (maybe because of PR) but also because the idea fascinated people - The idea of not being afraid of death.

[Charles Cameron]

15.

During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived - everyone except the Zen master.

Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger.

"You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!"

But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved. "And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"

[Charle Cameron]

16.

Zen story found here

17.

Malcolm David said nothing interested. Stupid article i think.

In which game i could draw a plan and then execute it when needed? It is a main way how real wars are made.