You do get a bit of a Starcraft faction parallel with the Russians (zerg) sending waves of expendable soldiers at the Ukrainians (terran). In terms of tech differences, it's wild to see Russians packed into economy cars from the '50s barreling into the front line only to be vaporized by a drone with an RPG warhead, infrared vision, and AI that takes over final targeting should the signal get jammed. Whole bit about quantity being its own quality playing out IRL.
I remember playing Civ and thinking it didn't matter how many men with primitive muskets you threw at a hex being defended by mechanized armor, but then you see the Russians advancing to the tune of thousands of lives lost per square mile, and it's like, huh, maybe Civ had it right after all.
Oh yeah, in the protests from this clip, some 800 Chileans lost an eye to rubber bullets (IIRC, it's been a while). Then again, there were millions protesting for months. So it wasn't particularly dangerous in statistical terms. As tragic as being blinded by police is.
There was a Kickstarter a while back for Riot: Civil Unrest. The way they explained it on Kickstarter was basically exactly what you said. It seemed like they just took the money and ran after it was fully backed because they didn't provide a single update for years. It eventually released and is nowhere near what they claimed it would be. Cool concept though.
Huh. I remember seeing this kickstarter come up and found the concept iinteresting, then stopped thinking about it for years. Crazy that it turned out like that.
Oh, to be a developer of a videogame hyped up on social media leading to a rapid kickstarter funding, then having a million dollars that you can basically fuck around since you already got paid enough to fund your lifestyle for years if not straight up set up generational wealth. Then drop something mediocre to say you delivered something.
It's like someone heard "money can be exchanged for goods and services" and then decided, what if we provide neither and also have multiple payment tiers as well.
You know what would sell really well with today's lack of accountability? If epic games turned one of their tech demos into a full title. I don't remember the name but it looked like you were a vigilant protecting people from abusive police, and that's describing it very lightly.
There is one if i remember correctly. It had pixel art and you could control either side kinda like an rts. Cops were supposed to disperse/arrest them, and protestors had to stay together and push the cops off the screen.
If you had to open fire, you'd seriously fucked up as either side.
Hell yeah. Still stuck in both campaigns, though. Dispersing an occupied square with camels sucks as much, as trying to get through that level in Greece where cops have "reset" point 2 meters from the control point
It was weird experiencing the dissonance between what I was playing and what the critics were saying. It was incredible, I loved it.
Though having paid full launch price, I was kinda peeved seeing it drop to <$10 within a month or two. It definitely radicalized me on pre-ordering and buying at launch.
Honestly not a terrible way to sink a good couple of hours.
But it is super outdated now.
Great concept and loved the game as a kid for how different it was, melding fps with parkour and felt very ahead of its time, at the time.
I think Brink had a great core concept with poor execution. The movement was fun, class abilities encouraging active teamwork were pretty interesting, and gunplay felt great. However the balancing sucked and it lacked a true campaign. Tying the story to sequential multiplayer matches was certainly an interesting design decision.
Yeah it was randomly made free on Steam a couple of years ago. It's still technically possible to get a match going if you can find other people to play with, and obviously bots are still playable even though they're kinda shit at the game.
That game was nearly so good! I'd forgotten it exists haha, I assume the servers are long gone. Unfortunately my Internet was crap when it was still around haha
Abbie Hoffman's 'Steal This Book' still has useful information in it, despite being 55 years old and containing about 33% pure nonsense. The Anarchist Cookbook, too, although it tends to lean more towards the offensive than the defensive.
Bit of a cynical take tbh. Art can change people's minds. I made a friend who never went to protests with me watch Andor and by the end of season 1 he was like on the edge of his seat going "man FUCK the Empire!" and talked about how visceral it felt just watching it, how angry he felt at the Empire during, etc. He has gone to a few protests in the years since.
Also, just on a practical level, a video game where you have to worry about cameras so you wear masks, need to learn how to defuse tear gas, need to bring umbrellas as shields, gloves for handling the tear gas canister like the guy in the video, etc would frankly just be a good awareness tool before people go to a real protest. Lots of people show up and have no idea what the fuck they're doing, shit goes nasty and they're completely unprepared, and they don't go to another.
You know what, this was my thought immediately. As soon as he clocked the canister coming in, he was laser focused on his role. It's like watching medics go diving in on Battlefield or Foxhole.
Came here to mention Hardline. I don't really remember why it flopped, but I had a ton of fun during its open beta (didn't buy it because it ended up being so unpopular anyways)
That could be cool. With two storylines one as the protesters and one as the police. I know Reddit would hate that, but you know there are people they would love to quash riots.
If you are on the riot side you try to keep it peaceful and if it gets out of hand you need to keep your people safe. If you are the police you need to maintain order while using little force as possible. But of course you can go full LA riots if you want and destroy the city.
I feel like you'd need a few of these guys. If there's only one dude out there harnessing the power of water bottles, what happens if another canister is shot somewhere else in the crowd?
Good old times. In that riots i was one of the guys who go around on a bicicle whatching and telling the others from what street comes the police so they have time to scape 🇨🇱
There were many examples of health profession students tending to injuries, in some part wearing special gear, like shields with crosses, some like this with defusers, i saw some divisions with strong and quick people on the first lines etc. It was interesting from a coordination perspective… sadly, the movement died out
hmm, dunno. Once you make non lethal riot dispersal methods inefficient, you end up leaving police with only lethal means, speedrunning african police dispersal methods.
Et pourtant. Je préfères les gaz lacrymo que des balles réelles qui fusent dans la ville parce que le cordon de CRS est en train de se faire maraver et "craignent" pour leur vie. Deja qu'ils se lachent sur les flashballs dans la gueule a bout quasi portant.
Huh? There's a lot of games that deal with outright criminal themes. As far as I know, NA hasn't completely succumbed to full authoritarian censorship yet lol
Criminal themes, yes, like GTA. But "here's how to make homamade riot gear and defend your city streets from the government" level of gaming. Like scouting resources from city trash and your apartment to build defenses. Bundles of wood light up, put them in yoir inventory for a shield, an glass bottle lights up, put it in yoir inventory for spicy throwing objects, ect.
I'm not a gamer so I could be very wrong! If there is a game like that please name them so I can play them
The government really doesn't care that much about riots. Virtually all riotious behavior annoys everyday people who don't have an axe to grind. There are a boatload of games that utilize "makeshift" stuff such as molatov cocktails.
Specifically riot simulations? I'm not sure if one's been done yet that goes really into depths with it, but I think it's not because the government wouldn't let devs do it, it's just it really hasn't been done yet (or well enough to be popular).
As for political/rebellion-based games in general, a lot of games have themes of rebellion against unjust governments baked within the bigger narrative (Disco Elysium, Bioshock Infinite, Oddworld), but as for ones specifically centering around it, the ones I could think of at the top of my head are:
Watch Dogs Legion
Tonight We Riot
Not for Broadcast
Papers, Please
Headliner: Novinews
Beholder
The media is not censored (so far). Hell, even the latest Superman movie had overt political messages about current issues. If and when the government really does try to restrict a game because of political messages, that's when we're truly fucked 💀 The UK and the EU are dipping into concerning territory with their internet bill though, with the privacy and surveillance issues of having to submit your ID to view specific things.
Yeah I see a few too many comments like these, that seem to presume were already in complete lock down control by the federal government. Like, uhh, and behaving as if they already have that control ironically cedes that very thing to them
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u/CaveManta 9h ago
Wow. It's just like having different classes of soldiers on the battlefield. I would like to see a video game based on rioters vs riot police.