Craig Beers Download/Media Editor	Now Playing: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, SimGolf, Warcraft III (beta), Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Now On: Vacation

I'm With Stupid

I've been playing golf while on vacation this week, and one course reminded me of the time when we first got SimGolf in the office. I was building this amazing course when Andrew walked by and said that it was too difficult. Apparently, the golfers couldn't handle too many water hazards. Thinking back, I can say that the amateur holes I was creating in SimGolf were nothing compared with the course I just finished playing in real life--it was absolutely full of water. It got me wondering why sim games are often so simplistic. Sim games are supposed to be easily accessible--but I don't think we should discount the intelligence of people so quickly. If people really want a simulation, why not give it to them?

Tropico introduced a shadier side to city building, much like what you'd find in real life.

			Do you think most strategy games should be more complex? Yes No I don't know

First, there are the city-building games like SimCity. SimCity was one of my favorite games 10 years ago. But construction in that game gives you only one option: If you want to build X building, it will cost you Y amount of money and will take up Z amount of space every time. You never can change that formula. I think you should be able to become a corrupt businessman. If I'm trying to save money in these games, why can't I use shoddy construction materials or cheaper hazardous chemicals? Perhaps it could increase the risk of a building collapsing or land becoming unusable, but I'd cross that bridge when I got there. I liked the fact that Tropico had a secret fund, which you could put money into for a fictional retirement. Like I would care if one of my sim villagers died in an accidental building collapse because the walls were made of plaster instead of bricks. Actually, I would like to see liability incorporated into city-building games. The added risk assessment would be an interesting twist to the genre and would add a whole new level of strategy. Using cheap materials may save you money in the short run, but if someone gets injured, you could lose a lot of money by being sued.

Most wargames don't make you look at the big picture.

Next, we can look at wargames. There really isn't a connection between military actions and politics in the game world. They concentrate only on core tactical decisions of troop placement. I haven't played some of the truly hard-core wargames, but rarely have I seen a game that expects you to think about supply lines or worry about the welfare of civilians. Towns will mysteriously be devoid of any human presence. You can say that people would leave when faced with war, but you know that's not true. People are crazy enough to stay in their homes when a hurricane hits. And I've also never seen a wargame in which you have to set up military hospitals for the evacuation of wounded troops or have to worry about where to place captured POWs. In real life, times of war have huge political consequences. I don't see why games don't try to incorporate that. There was a game that I remember had worldwide politics in it. I played it on a friend's computer back around 1989; it was called Command HQ. I believe it was a turn-based strategy game that pit NATO against the Warsaw Pact, but I'm not positive. I remember setting up combat lines in divided Germany. You could actually use nuclear weapons against the enemy. The downside was that countries would protest. If you used too many nukes, countries would join the opposing side. I thought that was interesting.

Of course, adding a lot of real-world issues to games would probably take away some of the fun or some of the focus. Somehow I doubt The Sims: Vacation expansion pack will include a lot of the problems people face while on vacation. Lost luggage, poor weather, bratty children...well, maybe bratty children. At least the game will have thieves. I can't wait to see if my sim family has a better vacation than I did. Not if I can help it.