Making A Game Out Of War

Making A Game Out Of War

I used to work a start up computer cafe. It was a sort of project between high school friends and well, it failed terribly. What I came out of that with was getting bored with video games that leaves me not addicted to playing much of anything. It's like catching your son smoking and then making him smoke the whole pack at a time. That sort of too much to ever care about it. Day in and day out I would play video games.

Most of these games were war simulators. Counter Strike and Battlefield 1942. Both were just online multiplayer games that gave you guns and told you to shoot the enemy before you see the whites of their pixels. Much the same, the US army went ahead and did their own service/video game called America's Army. It was nothing more than army propaganda and recruitment tools.

So the question we should be asking is how soon is too soon? I'll be the first one to admit that after 9/11, I was all for not giving a shit if it was "too soon" to try to make a joke in order to deal with the pain.


But as Gilbert Gottfried pointed out, we need to move on with it. So the question with this is why I'm not entirely on the fence here with this move to make a video game out of a modern combat theater piece that is only a few years old.

With that all said and done, it looks like War isn't hell anymore, It seems like War is simply a game

There have been books, movies, poetry and even rap songs coming out of the war in Iraq. Now, there's going to be a video game, one based on the November 2004 battle in the Iraqi town of Fallouja that left dead 38 U.S. troops and an estimated 1,200 insurgents

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about that. On one hand doe we need to play a war campaign for a war that we have troops currently stuck in? Isn't this sort of giving the enemy an insight on what our troops are geared with or what their formation is during a battle?

Hell, the Vets of that battle are more than likely still doing a tour or two there. It seems really odd to be able to play a battle they risked their ass in before they get home and play it themselves on their xbox. Also demeans the risk they took when you're just running and gunning when they actually risked their ass and shit their pants because of the battle.

It also takes war flash backs to a new meaning when you not only see/relive a battle in your mind, let alone all your draft dodging buddies decide to play a multiplayer campaign of it on their PS3....



We shouldn't be desensitizing war like this. Part of that hippie in me just thinks that the easier you make killing someone, the worse our society will be. I know I stopped giving a shit about grand theft after GTA: Vice City. I also busted out my 80's music... But even they waited a good 20 years before touching on the 80's. Any time before that would have been way too soon to remember the 80's again.

I'm just as wrong for playing a lot of WWII shooter games but this seems like poor taste, or at the very least it seems like something that is way too soon considering this battle just happened a few years ago. How would we feel if them terrorist decided to create a "Fly plane into building" flight sim and released it in this sort of high profile situation a couple of weeks after 9/11? We'll never be forgetting that, thems for sure.

F-Off F-22!

F Off F-22

A couple of days ago I wrote about the over price piece of shit F-22 While I like things that go BOMB! POW! and BLAMMM-O!, I don't find military spending to be all that grand. In fact, I don't like it considering the state that our nation is in. Fuck foreign terror, we're crumbling from the inside. Well, it looks like there's some glorious news today. If I don't mind stroking myself (it is my birthday after all) I have to say I'm an influential writer with this. Here's the news piece.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates is recommending cuts for high-tech weapons programs he calls wasteful or ill-suited for the low-tech tasks of fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Monday, Gates announced plans to rearrange the huge Pentagon budget, some $534 billion for the coming year, to better address the wars the United States is fighting now and may fight in the future.

This means turning away from some expensive Cold War-era planes and ships — such as the $140 million-per-plane F-22 stealth fighter — that were designed to provide an edge against the Soviet Union and other former enemies.

It looks like we just saved our selves eighty bajillion dollars by not buying a plane that's so hyperadvanced it can't be used in war zones. It's like taking a atomic bomb to a knife fight. It's the Hummer H3 of fighter aircraft - it looks cool and it's technically an SUV capable of going off-road, but really it'll only work in ideal conditions and will seldom ever work the way you want it to.

I know what you're thinking "BUT MY LASER RAPTORS NOOOOO!!!!!" While it would be cool to have raptors with lasers, you're thinking of the wrong thing. It's not as cool as you think. At least not worth the price tag.

While I'm happy about this slash in the defense budget, what they really need to do is slash the whole defense budget by about 90% There is literally enough money there to fix the world, or at least get a good job started on it and we're blowing it all on the bigger.



Oh shit, I didn't even think of the ramifications of this.. Forget everything I just said, Please support the American industry, Obama. Don't do this to union workers at lockheead barstow local #356. Who will bailout the workers and their family?!? Won't anyone think of their children?

Oh, who am I kidding. We are just going to spend the exact same amount of money on robot warriors drones. I read they're also giving more money for missile defense which is way worse. With each half a million dollar missile you're just making a half a million kamikaze jet plane. All you're doing is building a highly advanced jet aircraft, and then you deliberately blow it up. It's pretty ridiculous on what we spend money on.

What about my own union brothers? I'm guessing that Transformers 2 will have to deal with their precious transformer being a now out of work plane. But it's not like they haven't been able to face the challenges as they come their way.

Many of the new Autobot cars supplied by General Motors were brightly colored to look distinctive on screen. The filmmakers made the new cars themselves because GM lacked the resources.

That's pretty sad that in a product placement film like Transformers, GM was in such poor shape that the studios had to make them.



Oh the wonders of modern combat. During the cold war there was plans for a plane called The Flying Crowbar

It was a US cold war technology nuclear powered missile that dropped off a bunch of nukes and then just circled around an enemy country contaminating the air. Dick move!

With all that said, I'm still going to be a complete nerd with fighter pilots and planes when the Green Lantern animated movie comes out.

Check out the trailer here

In my defense, Hal doesn't use government spending to fly, just a fancy green ring.

What Can You Buy, Fly Boy?

What Can You Buy, Fly Boy?

I'm a big Hal Jordan fan. I love me some Green Lantern. In saying that I should be some pilot nut, right? I guess. I drove by Edwards Air Base not to long ago on a night drive. It's been a while since I had one of those. Either way, It was a vast desert and I don't mean something with a lot of ice cream and some chocolate cream on top, that's a dessert.

A couple of weeks back an F-22 crashes near Edwards Base

WASHINGTON (CNN) — An Air Force F-22A fighter jet crashed Wednesday near Edwards Air Force Base in California, Air Force officials said.

The single-seater crashed about 10:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. ET) for unknown reasons, the officials said.

The status of the pilot was unknown.

The fighter was on a test mission when it crashed about 35 miles northeast of Edwards AFB, where it was stationed, the Air Force said in a news release.

At $150 million apiece, the F-22A is the most expensive Air Force jet.

So they crashed a $150 million plane turning it into a $150 bon fire. That's a lot of money to burn up. Makes you wonder how much money from these planes ended up as salaries or bonuses for the executives of the makers



And what do you get for that $150 price tag? Well, you gt a lemon. That's what. This is the new plane, first one of its kind to crash like this. But perhaps it was doomed to fail from the get go considering they can't even fly in a war zone.

This F22 is the one that can't work in a war zone because of the interference from other units. Basically cell phones and microwaves as well as TV broadcast fuck its stealth and avionics packages up. Those radars on those warships? Yeah, those fuck it up as well. Basically, there's so much electronic shit going on in a modern theatre of war, on every usable frequency of the EM spectrum, that the F-22's sensitive gear can't really operate properly

In the attempt to go all stealth like they single out the jammers, but all that those are really doing are blocking nearby signals from cellphones or whatever by flooding particular frequencies. so, all you really need to do to foil a F-22 is create a ton of EM noise, which is pretty much a given in any warzone.


How much money is it going to cost to make
this a government dream come true.

So why even keep producing these things? Because they're bad ass, of course. Anything Michael Bay likes must always get military funding. The F-22 made its major Hollywood debut in the 2007 film Transformers as the form taken by the Decepticon character Starscream in addition to numerous USAF fighters that engaged during the initial and climactic battles. The movie crew was allowed to film actual Raptors in flight, unlike previous computer-generated appearances, because of the military's support of director Michael Bay. The Raptors were filmed at Edwards Air Force Base.

So it comes full circle. Thank you Michael Bay for keeping this stupid thing floating around. I wonder how long till the Republicans blame this on Obama's F-22 funding cut? Maybe the pilot is only a few crashes and one POW stint away from a run for presidency. That huge price tag has to include a lot of cash that goes to military equipment that gets accidentally destroyed, breaks or simply doesn't work to the standards of the air force.



I love military spending. Fuck schools and hospitals, research and social development. Fuck all sorts of projects that would actually help people and the country as a whole, gimme my goddamn planes with awesome bombs and guns and shit on them, fuck yeah! Pew pew pew! Let's go start a war or two with some brown people so we can see this shit in action, don't worry only the poor farm kids will die. Yeah, I know. Defense contractors support local industry and the unions. I've seen the second season of the wire. I get that, I just don't get the whole point of spending so much on shit that'll go BOOM!

The pilot in this crash died because of this. So I'm guessing it's shaping up to be a really bad year to be in a plane. Though I do plan on getting one soon. This bird has to fly or he's going to go insane. But clearly not insane to spend $150 million on a plane. In reality the last several actually cost $500 million each. For the sake of argument let's just go with the $150 price tag. It brings up a good point on what we could actually buy for $150 million.



What exactly could we get for that price tag?

We could have paid all those AIG bonuses!

Get myself a Dishwasher. Yes. They could fix my dishwaster. They should really just fix my god damn dishwasher.

Fuck it, I know no one likes washing dishes, we could fix millions of dishwashers with this.

A nice supply of noodles for when the collapse comes.

College education for everyone in the country for a year



Healthcare for everyone in an entire low population state like Wyoming or ND.

20 or 30 properly budgeted schools

Paying down the fucking deficit.

One really awesome birthday gift for me because it's coming up. Hint hint!

One really bad ass plane... no wait, this isn't what was on my shopping list. FOCUS FOCUS!!



A ton of PS3's and Xbox 360's to the starving children of Africa

We could make 150 slum dogs millionaires.

150 million slum dogs dollaires. Which would actually make some difference.

Make some more kickin' rad comic book movies.

Well at least that money wasn't spent on arts education or public transit. Fuck those infrastructure additions