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Why are so many games in modern or near-future settings these days?

Are guns really that great to gamers now-a-days? I know one thing I'm always looking for in games is solid melee combat. Guns are so... point-and-click, so impersonal. Getting in you opponents face, hitting them in certain areas and watching them react accordingly, choosing to aim for weak points, or to just beat them savagely... seems just as satisfying as a headshot.

I'd personally love to see many more games that consider the world, but I think much of it is based off of WHO makes these games. What's the chance of seeing battles with Zulu warriors based in Africa, if there aren't Africans making the game? How are going to see the Indian sides of conflicts, if the production team has relatives who fought on the "cowboy" sides of these historical conflicts? It's still possible... just less likely.

Three Kingdoms Chinese history is now almost as familiar to me as American history, thanks to Koei. It would be great to see some big companies take such an approach to other times and cultures of the world, mining their histories for intereting conflicts, war stories, romances, anything, and building series off of them. I'll never understand why we don't have a "Revolutionary Warriors" game yet.

Even more variety with parts of history that we're more familiar with, would be a welcome change. Imagine an open world game set in the times of slavery in the south; You could play as a slave who'se trying to gain freedom for not only himself, or his friends, but later on, his entire state. Constructing underground tunnels, being immersed in the speaking and ways of the people of the time, seeing good and evil with people from all creeds of life... seems like it could be a fetile ground, if anyone would take the subject matter seriously.

There are so many setting that could be made into gaming worlds, to not only bring enjoyment, but also bring greater understanding of different people and cultures, or just interactive insight into portions of history that we've never gotten to experience firsthand. It's a shame we haven't gotten that far in our gaming culture yet.
 
kafka rock opera said:
*shoots musket* *spends 5 minutes reloading musket*

edit : *calls in UAV!*

You mean calls in "man cannon," where you launch one of your teammates over enemy lines to the see where they are before SPLAT! :lol

Bob Tampinha said:
I still wonder why the fuck we don't have more old west games.

Because you can't really mine that with a bunch of ideas. It (Wild West) gets stale pretty fast (IMO).

Though something like "Wild Wild West"s robots + Wild West would be an interesting combo. (No, I'm not saying "Wild Wild West" was a good movie, just the idea of robots/setting mish-mashing)

I do think there needs to be some history games in settings OTHER than WW2. WW2 was hugely mined for five-six years until MW1 hit and BOOM, MW1/2/3/4... MoH: MW1/2/3/4...

But I prefer modern/future settings because: a) I'm currently in that time, thereby I'm using guns/swords and going to places that may/may not be there (most "modern" games are set in unnamed middle eastern places) and b) future gives you an ability to go wild on technology/gun techs.
 
It is because of High Definition.

They didn't have it in the past, so all the pictures would look jaggy and horrible.

Same as life before WWII was in black-and-white and the ancient Egyptians walked sideways.
 
soyboy said:
But, but, Assassin's Creed takes place in modern times where you simulate the past...
Holy crap, I had no idea it is basically sci-fi (having never played it, of course). I always thought it was actually set in the Crusades. :lol
 
Because people like AK-47 more than WWII carabines. Or arrows. OR throwing stones.

However, we have also learned that 19-th century dual-wided shothgun or amfetamine-drugged lunatic with knife eats evert modern weapon for breakfast.

So, basically, "modern" is not so modern, it is just matter of perception.
 
Because many developers lack imagination, plus it's a lot easier to set in a world based upon our own, than create a whole detailed worldview. I'd love to see more emphasis on historical settings in games - why the hell isn't there an RPG to my knowledge that takes place in Rome?
 
Doesn't seem like really a recent trend. How many games in the 80s or early 90s were there that were set in something unspecific like 199X?
 
Florence and Venice from ACII are 2 of the most beautiful "game worlds" I've seen in my life, my God, they you can just clinb a tower and watch everything, the people, the city, day and night cicle.
 
People buy into shit they can relate to.

That's why 90% of the non-modern shit out there is either Tolkienesque fantasy everyone saw in Peter Jackson's shitty movie adaptation or a ripoff of Star Wars or Star Trek in one way or another as well.
 
SAB CA said:
Are guns really that great to gamers now-a-days? I know one thing I'm always looking for in games is solid melee combat. Guns are so... point-and-click, so impersonal. Getting in you opponents face, hitting them in certain areas and watching them react accordingly, choosing to aim for weak points, or to just beat them savagely... seems just as satisfying as a headshot.

I'd personally love to see many more games that consider the world, but I think much of it is based off of WHO makes these games. What's the chance of seeing battles with Zulu warriors based in Africa, if there aren't Africans making the game? How are going to see the Indian sides of conflicts, if the production team has relatives who fought on the "cowboy" sides of these historical conflicts? It's still possible... just less likely.

Three Kingdoms Chinese history is now almost as familiar to me as American history, thanks to Koei. It would be great to see some big companies take such an approach to other times and cultures of the world, mining their histories for intereting conflicts, war stories, romances, anything, and building series off of them. I'll never understand why we don't have a "Revolutionary Warriors" game yet.

Even more variety with parts of history that we're more familiar with, would be a welcome change. Imagine an open world game set in the times of slavery in the south; You could play as a slave who'se trying to gain freedom for not only himself, or his friends, but later on, his entire state. Constructing underground tunnels, being immersed in the speaking and ways of the people of the time, seeing good and evil with people from all creeds of life... seems like it could be a fetile ground, if anyone would take the subject matter seriously.

There are so many setting that could be made into gaming worlds, to not only bring enjoyment, but also bring greater understanding of different people and cultures, or just interactive insight into portions of history that we've never gotten to experience firsthand. It's a shame we haven't gotten that far in our gaming culture yet.

Most of what I know about Caribbean Geography, and even ship names, is because I played tons of Pirates! growing up.

I also hope that developers will recognize games as an incredibly powerful tool for learning. Not with cheap edutainment, but simply representing cultures and times accurately at the same time as presenting an engaging experience for players.

The big reason I never was able to get into the God of War series is because of how fantastical it was. I was really hoping for a much more down to earth Greco-Roman adventure, with accurate costuming, and even trying to represent mythological figures as close to the original vision as possible.
 
Let´s not all pretend that many earlier games weren´t set in the "now" or near future.

Mario is a plumber in overalls, Commander Keen played plong, the dude that had to shuffle around crates had to shuffle around grates etc.

I really don´t understand "all recent games are set in modern times" meme, yeah, FPS maybe, but with them it was always WW2/shooting nazis, future or present.
 
badcrumble said:
The World War II thing has been done to death, so now everybody's doing current-day/sci-fi shooters.

Yeah, because those are such a new genre :lol

djtiesto said:
I'd love to see more emphasis on historical settings in games - why the hell isn't there an RPG to my knowledge that takes place in Rome?

This. Unfortunately most people want Bioware's the new shit instead.
 
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