I'm probably wrong by stating that, but I have a serious reason. The reason is book of science fiction novel and short stories published back in 1954. I found it and bought it. It smells of old times, a truly old and forgotten era and this aroma brings me a memories I never could have. Memories of world were scientist became the preachers of the new ways of life, new products to consume, new tools to develop and bombs to drop on your enemies.
But most of all, scientist were writing! The stuff they were writing was so different from the established genres and the ways of building up the story that they actually gave birth to a science fiction. That is even despite the fact that similar motifs of progress, technology and incredible achievements were used before industrialization. Suddenly the old fairy tales got a chance of rebirth and what's more important they became believable! If a fairy tale is coming from someone who actually knows how world operates, the fairy tale becomes a prediction, and prediction has a chance to become reality.
But now more than 50 years after the peak of science-fiction this credibility is lost. The world described by previous generation of writers is already here and we are fed up happy with it. We may not fly around galaxy in reality, but there's enough TV show's to give us a clue how it's going to look. Real scientist are doing their day-to-day research and let professional writers to elaborate on "setting", characters and plots. If there is not enough explosions or pretty half-naked scientist we easily may change the channel to find something more like it.
Sci-fi is a mainstream entertainment. It is dead.
Why? Originally science fiction was answering to the questions and needs of those who was trying to adjust to rapidly changing world and find their own path in the new world. It was half soul searching half explanation of how-to-use-the-world around you for generation whose parents still lived in pre-space age. Author's used it as test bed for ideas, visions and what would happen scenarios. (Of course the usual way of sci-fiing the metaphor wasn't lost.) As the popularity of genre grew, along with profits the need to print something similar to competitor's product attracted writers who used science as a background instead of meaning. This pro-pulsed the trend, which caught up and overtook the initial humble stories by those writing scientist. And now, anyone can write about hyper space jump over galaxy but few know how to fix the kettle.
I was not planning to expand my little blog into the area of historical publication and analysis but during research for one of my projects a came across this book: Yamamoto Isoroku by Mark Stille, published Osprey publishing in Leadership-Strategy-Conflict series. The reason behind this purchase was lack of English printed source on this famous admiral. The result of reading through this book is a really mixed feelings about book and the way in puts an information an facts.
Perhaps it was my expectations were a bit too high, for I wanted to see and in-depth analysis of Yamamoto's past, turning points, important influences, positions on key events in World War 2, analysis of strategy and tactics used by him, and perhaps even reflection on his actions and overall Japanese strategy in WW2. That was not to be.
So naturally, reader would succumb to the weight of authority and expertise. Well why shouldn't you? Author stands his position in the beginning of the book that: "as with any famous military commander there is always reality and myth. For Yamamoto they stand in stark contrast." After that author goes in lengths about how overestimated, under planned and with how many gross mistakes Yamamoto went through his career until his death by heroic American interceptors. He pinpoints and emphasizes Yamamoto's weakens, sins and mistakes puts a label on them and then describes how Americans were superior to Yamamoto.
One of the few label author puts are: gambler, womanizer, indecisive and political admiral. Only by the end of the book, he gives a voice to people who served under Yamamoto's command to mention that he was a very humble person, disliked the "aura of heroism" around him and was loved and obeyed without question by his men. His major achievement: the attack on Pearl Harbor is portrayed as work of one man in charge of planning Commander Genda Minoru and his attempts to persuade reluctant Naval General Staff as behavior of capricious and moody gambler not a calculated risk of an admiral. Mark Stille rejoices in scrutinizing mistakes, but gives no clue of whatsoever under what conditions, intelligence, resources and strategy Yamamoto was operating. By the end of the book he gives a portray of Admiral Nimitz, who (as you might expect) is decisive, aggressive and dedicated to the victory of his nation. To make matters even more propagandistic, he is compared to Yamomoto, suffering from illness, stress, fatigue but still enjoying good food and luxurious quarters and his flagship Yamato.
The strong and positive sides of Yamamoto's character are generally mentioned in the descriptive manner: like his mastery of kendo, skill in appointing the right people for the job, or mentioned in diminished manner: like Yamamoto's service in aviation and impact of his activities on creation of Japanese naval aviation are mentioned as non-sufficient, despite the fact that he lobbied creation of G4M bombers and creation of carrier fleet in opposition to battleship-emphasized navy. The fact that he actually succeeded to influence that policy is not even mentioned.
To make matters worse author shows complete lack of understandings of Japanese culture, it "yes" and "no", its obvious differences from American culture and approach. To be frank, there is not even an attempt to do so. To illustrate that, author emphasize that Japan's supply lines suffered heavily from American submarines, while Allies enjoyed relatively undisturbed shipping and suppl lines. Author does not notice the fundamental difference in psychology and means of waging the war: Japanese saw conflict as battle of two equals, two samurais if like, while American approach emphasizes production numbers and undisturbed supply line.
"Liberty ship" - the famous transport was an epitome of this thinking: build more than they can sink. While Japanese preferred (and frankly were capable) of building less ships, but with better capabilities.Yamato - is a one of kind (plus its sistership) example of this thinking.
In conclusion, should anybody consider buying this book? If that is your first book on Admiral Yamamoto, then avoid it. Wikipedia with its article on him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto does similar job and largely unbios towards him. If you already have a strong opinion or looking for it then you may try it. Even if you will find it lacking analysis (as i did) book still provides an overview of Yamamoto's life and biographies that followed on him.
Because Future does not reveal its secrets easily or
warn us of dangers ahead.
Beyond the Gates of Antares is an extremely ambitions and promising project by Rick Priestly, the father of Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 universes. The renown and legendary game designer left Games Workshop in 2010 to pursue new goals as a freelancer. So far he created and participated in number of successful projects, like Bolt Action (WW2 squad-to-company size wargame) and Fanticide (a homicidal warband tabletop top game). The latter was successfully promoted and launched using Kickstarter, and apparently gave an inspiration and confidence to repeat the experience with BGoA.
For the selfish purposes i will post a video of Rick Priestly, John Stallard and Rik Alexander (Warlord Games) interview were they describe the "sausage" or the bright palns for new gaming universe to the Beasts of War website. In short and to save you one hour of listening i will summarize the goals of project as quite ambitious.
First of all they are trying to merge Massive Multiplayer Online game with table-top wargame, and give players a real-time online mirror of their table top efforts. So while you are playing the game with your mates and feed result to the website, the script (or admin) will change the big picture of entire universe.
Sounds revolutionary, at least. What is comforting is that big picture will be controlled by the company narrators.
Secondly, the game mechanics (so far) is similar to tested in Bolt Action system of activation and units status, though system is still in development to adjust for the far far future, sometime couple of million years ahead.
Thirdly, the combat will be affected by pool of command action and every unit will react to enemy actions according to situation and impact, which promises to deliver a very intense game where both players are constantly engaged in the game.
That is IF the project will find required amount of supporters on Kickstarter. At the moment of writing this post, BGoA have collected 31% of £93.492 pledged money and it had 36 day to go. And if would be behind this project i would be worried. Unfortunately i'm not the only one who sees realities of BGoA.
Blogger Mr. Zweischneid's (dont ask me how to pronounce this name) in his brilliant analysis describes the most obvious reason for worries. Check it yourself, http://pinsofwar.com/rick-priestleys-kickstarter-fail, and you might agree that at the moment, Beyond the Gates of Antares is an incomplete product. To summarize Mr. Zweischneid's post,
BGoA will be funded only if will get at last £5000 in donations each day
if the vision of game universe will suddenly became clear and focused so that people will know what exactly they are supporting
if game mechanics will be finished to at least 90%
Looking at the current situation of definitely an interesting project I wounder what might happen in likely case if project will not get requested amount of support.
Rick Priestly stated: "that this the game I've always wanted to create". We may believe in his commitment to the project, which mean that he will continue working on the game regardless of financial situation. That is promising.
Warlord Games support: John Stallard (the boss) clearly understands that IF this project will take off, and people will start playing BGoA as they play MMOG these day, then his company will become a second Games Workshop.
Arrival of undisclosed investor: frankly I'm speculating, but project of such novelty and potential could attract a third party investor, which means it will get required amount of money and production schedule will be met.
Ever since human being realized that they are mortal the idea of Apocalypse have emerged. However only Christian tradition have taken this idea to its extremes and made it popular and well know to every brain they could reach. Religions of India and Far East do not use excessive fear of Doomsday, Judgment Day and Savior as a last hope. They postulate concept of everlasting and ever-changing world in general. I'd like to stop my reference to religions and philosophical practices at this point, to avoid going astray.
Like it or not, Apocalypse is used and re-used countless times in movies, books and other cultural references. It is part of any European cultural understanding of world, and majority of other cultures at least understand what do we mean by Apocalypse.
In game design however it has became an ultimate answer to boredom and i think the ultimate excuse in setting development. Whenever you need to portray dark, hopeless future/past or situation and therefore justify the need of exterminating the opponent "A" in various forms is present. To bring some popular examples which allows player to act out of mundane life restrictions:
1) the War, which wipes out humanity and finally allows us to kill everything that moves,
2) invasion of horrible aliens - no sentiment here, get out of my lawn you alien/nazi punk!,
3) zombie horde - I will remain alive-white-human-armed-with-shotgun no matter the cost!
4) we made it - human activity finally screwed everything on the planet. Yuppi! Its shotgun time!
5) personal "A" - they killed my dog/family/canary/planet/tentacle choose appropriate, guess what's gonna happen.
6) Not on my shift! - apparently the "A" is about to happen and player must stop it using lots of bullets and pressing the red button in the end.
I may have missed some interpretations of Apocalypse in games but the point of "A" remains the same: give a player an excuse to act without thinking too deep why he is doing it, a strong emotional anchor that he not only pressing the right button, but he is making something IMPORTANT. Some players may bluntly ignore the storyline, especially in FPS games or table-top war-games where primary activity is concentrated around annihilating opponent, but the reasoning why has been done before the game begin: my actionmatters.
Accordingly, the bigger the threat of "A" the more important player should feel himself, when in fact he has not even left the sofa. The better the reasoning behind it the more people relate to matters of game and characters on the screen, the more real the Apocalypse becomes and more meaningful players actions become.
After all how many chances we get to save the world in our mundane lives? That is the biggest catch of a really good and well-selling games (with exception of solitaire, perhaps :-) ).
Oddly enough, computer games industry have outperformed movie industry in volume of sales by 2005 (i think), a good proof that some real talents are going there to make this illusions believable and keep players occupied and happy.
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