I quote Robert Oppenheimer who quoted the Bhagavad Vita because yesterday was 52 years after we, the great ol’ US of A, dropped nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to effectively end WWII. I guess if anything is going to make you feel like you have become death, and a destroyer of worlds, it would be creating the first nuclear bomb, but the one thing that has always confused me about this is that after it was used against the Japanese, Oppenheimer expressed regret over it being used as a weapon.

I don’t think it is difficult to figure out that when the US Gov’t is funding your project to make a bomb, that they intend to use it. If he could have seen a simulation of the bomb being used, would he have had such surprise at its true power and devastation? The army uses video games as part of its training regiment, Homeland Security have developed realistic models of cities down to an inch with realistic models of people just to see how they react during disasters and combat, yet the most vivid pop cultural reference I can think of is War Games, the only non-Buehler tolerable Matthew Broderick movie I can think of (and don’t you say The Producers, so help you God). Games like WoW, Final Fantasy and other fantasy games don’t get me off. I want realism dammit. What I am left with are two questions:

1. Outside of Call of Duty, what games are out there which are popular *key term* that are realistic simulations of things going or gone on in the world? Is the derth of good simulation games a result of social pressures ala the backlash against Manhunt, Postal 2, GTA and others?

2. Is there something creepy and wrong about enjoying and wanting to play very realistic videogames or ones based on real-life events? What is off limits?

My answers to Question 1 is, outside of sports games and the 20 dollar Sim-fill in the blank-games, there really isn’t much to choose from. Even most historical games are not terribly accurate. I don’t know of a single Civil War game where you deal with soldiers getting gangrene…just saying. Maybe it is lack of technical resources, feasibility or lack of interest, but the depth and breadth of choices out there are limiting, from my vantage point at least.

Secondly, I think there is something creepy and wrong about enjoying overly realistic simulation games. Yes, I did build a city in Sim City 4 and unleashed the wrath of God on it, and yes, I did nuke the French in Civilization III because they were, well, being total dicks, but I do think that simulating things can be a bit of technology masturbation. We all, at least most of us - well maybe just me¬ – can develop a bit of a “God complex” when it comes to video games. I may sound like a Luddite, but I think when you get to the point that each living person in a city can be replicated in a virtual world then subjected to nuclear weapons and hurricanes and such, you are walking on a thin moral ice.