why are there no WW1 games?

[short_name111]

World war 1 wouldn't make a good game because unfortunately, it was basically a period of mindless killing. lets break it down: dig trench, shoot at other people in trench, get bombed, get gassed, get shot at. millions of people died in this war; the kill count usually reached in the thousands for a mere few meters of land. in essence, the sheer amount of death and the way it was brought about during this time, would probably take away from whatever game would be made.

 

[systhicsfg]

but you would get to drive the first tank ><

that broke down every 5 meters.

 

[dthvirus]

This may come off as racist or offensive to some of you but if you attempt to ignore it then you are the reason. AMERICA WAS NOT IN WWI!
I am canadian, and every remembrance day we remember the one who died in world war 1 and world war 2, meanwhile american will only remember the ones in world war 2. WW2 from the american stand point was scene as a heroic battle, thats why there are a lot of WW2 games and not world war 1. Eternal darkness had a world war 1 chapter in it but Eternal darkness was canadian developed. to those who said trench warfare wouldn't be interesting it is compete bull shit. Imagine fighting the from your trench and the our NPC sergeant gives a whistle and you must run over the top to the other side, hiding in craters and behind rubble from your enemies gun fire and every chance you get you attempt to take out the enemy gunners, I would say it would be as good if not the better then a D-Day scenario. Also there was not just trench warfare. There was the russian campaigns. Let us face it the american are the mainstream of the entertainment industry and what they want is what they get. This is why there will not be a world war 1 game or a vietnam game because those are scene by americans as "bad wars" but the truth is no war is a good war. ( also I think the online for this would be amazing)

The US of A did join the First World War, albeit quite late.

I think the real reason for the lack of World War I games is, as previously stated, the lack of entertainment.
You cannot simply hide in a crater or behind rubble and take potshots at gunners. This is trench warfare. Attacks consist of headlong charges into hails of bullets and artillery shells. If you managed to get to the other side without dying, you'd have engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat in their own trench, and win, assuming that your buddies are still healthy enough to help out. The odds are just too weighed against a single soldier. An RTS, where units are more expendable would be much better.
I'll admit a game could come out, but it'd either try to be realistic and become very, very difficult, or become just like every other bullet-sponge shooting game.
The Eastern Front would be interesting, actually, but you'd have to give the player a bolt-action rifle. Kudos to any developer that can make that idea work smoothly.

 

[Artemis923]

I'd rather see a WWI game than another Medal of Honor clone any day.

 

[Barry93]

WWI was essentially all trench warfare, every mission would be getting out of your trench, running 20ft, and dying.

 

[NaumWolf]

You'd run out of lives oh so very quickly.
Weapons were pants, generals were incompetent, no one knew what to do and spend half a came sitting in a trench being eaten by disease isnt really the gritty realism wanted nowadays.

don't forget mustard gas

 

[Gamer137]

If they did, it would have to be a tank game since the only exciting thing about it was were the tanks toward the end that forced everyone out of the trenches.

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

Who cares about World War 1? I want, no, DEMAND a Call of Duty game set in Vietnam (by Infinity Ware for obvious reasons!)

 

[massaffect123]

I don't know if anyone mentioned him, but T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia. You could play as (egad!) an Arab, and fight guerilla style against the Turkish. Also, you could do the opening stages of the Battle of Gallipoli. That involved an amphibious assault, but then descended into bloody trench warfare.
But certain aspects of trench warfare could be pretty fun (in a video game, not real life. Dear god, not in real life). You could play as a German Machine-gunner at the Battle of the Somme (could be a fairly dramatic setup, what with the massive mine explosions that marked the British "charge") or a ranger-type soldier, the men who went out at night into no-man's-land to try and scout the enemies trenches.
Remember the first level of the original Call of Duty's Russian campaign? That is a good example of what the game could be, except you'd actually be shot by your own officers for not following orders (tee hee).

 

[hippykiller]

im not really sure but maybe it is because almost all of the basic infantry men only carried a boring bolt action rifle and all of the machine guns were too heavy to carry. but that is just a guess.

 

[TheFurryChicken]

I think it's due to the technology of that time. Planes would be difficult to pilot, tanks would get stuck on EVERYTHING, and people would get tired of the people on the automatic guns. Plus, you'd have about two different archetypes, the run and in and get shot in the face guy, and the other run in and get shot in the face guy (unless you're Russian, then everyone's the same with a big stick). Plus, America prefers to produce games that can be "America kicks ass" as opposed to "America came in at the end when the Axis was already losing and just happened to speed up the process... while wearing funny hats."

 

[(whitty name here)]

I wonder things too!!(exclamation point)

But in all seriousness, World War 1 is pretty much a bleak desert for gaming ideas. Trench warfare would be incredibly boring and i don't think the most interesting thing in WW1, that being the introduction of controlled biological warfare, could be implemented into a game.

Really, the only thing they could do is a WW1 RTS. Which, could very well be fun, if developed by the right company.

Orrrr a WW1 flight sim. But i hate flight sims.

Flight sim would'nt work either. Planes were used for reconnaisance to mark enemy positions for artillery fire. Dogfights didn't really take off in WW1 until the Red Baron and the Fokker Dr. 1 ( which was the first plane to shoot bullets through the propellor).

 

[brodie21]

This may come off as racist or offensive to some of you but if you attempt to ignore it then you are the reason. AMERICA WAS NOT IN WWI!
I am canadian, and every remembrance day we remember the one who died in world war 1 and world war 2, meanwhile american will only remember the ones in world war 2. WW2 from the american stand point was scene as a heroic battle, thats why there are a lot of WW2 games and not world war 1. Eternal darkness had a world war 1 chapter in it but Eternal darkness was canadian developed. to those who said trench warfare wouldn't be interesting it is compete bull shit. Imagine fighting the from your trench and the our NPC sergeant gives a whistle and you must run over the top to the other side, hiding in craters and behind rubble from your enemies gun fire and every chance you get you attempt to take out the enemy gunners, I would say it would be as good if not the better then a D-Day scenario. Also there was not just trench warfare. There was the russian campaigns. Let us face it the american are the mainstream of the entertainment industry and what they want is what they get. This is why there will not be a world war 1 game or a vietnam game because those are scene by americans as "bad wars" but the truth is no war is a good war. ( also I think the online for this would be amazing)

listen, asshole, the US was in WWI, we didnt want to be but you little pussies couldnt defeat germany by yourselves and we had to do it for you, and did it again in WWII, so dont make uninformed claims about this, just because the US isnt very popular now doesnt mean you can go around smearing its reputation and claiming it wasnt in conflicts that AMERICANS DIED IN BY THE THOUSANDS. What would you know about fighting? Canada barely has a military and the US could steamroll you and you know it. The US remembers both, its called Veterans day. WWII was more recent, and Vietnam is even more, WWII was the last war that the US won a clean, decisive victiory, im not shaming the troops who fought, im just saying that the politicians wouldnt let the military guys win.

 

[DeadAccountMoveAlong]

It's like nobody here has brushed up on their history since middle school. War is as exciting as the developers make it. No war has been as fun and exciting as the games have portrayed it to be, and are you really going to tell me there is currently more action in Iraq than in the first World War? They weren't just sitting in trenches, picking their noses as they died of pestilence.
We had a clear enemy, they just were not as despicable as the infamous Nazis you hear about in your video games and Tom Cruise films.

 

[SoonerMatt]

Because in a WWI game we wouldn't be able to storm the beaches of Normandy, and of course that's what we want to do in a war game, which is why it's become a requirement. Right?

 

[(whitty name here)]

we all know there are many (many) games set in world war 2, and yet there aren't any set in world war 1, and i wonder why this is!

Because there were no heroes in WWI, everybody died horrifically?

The red baron!!!

The canadian "Red Baron" was Billy Bishop

 

[Gildedtongue]

Most "fun" Great War games would probably keep you in the skies flying balsa-and-cloth planes and other early aircraft, a-la Blue Max (for anyone else that remembers that game). Ground warfare wasn't exactly intense. Your main enemy would be bacteria and disease, and trying to escape mustard gas, and if you peek over the trench you're in, you're pretty much doomed to get nailed by machine-gun fire.

That being said, now that I think about it, maybe a Graphic Adventure game set in the trenches might be interesting.

 

[randomsix]

A better question is why arent there any Korean war games? Or for that matter there should be a game set during the "troubles" of ireland and england, it could be like a splinter cell meets COD4.

This. The "troubles" of Ireland would be rather awesome. Although I'm not too sure about the Splinter Cell thing.

World War One would be hard to make a game with balance. You have your mine-fields, your trenches, your occasional Gatling guns, mustard gas and chlorine flying every which way, weapons that do diddly-squat, and all the gun play would be pray-and-spray.

yeahhh... The doughboys were pretty much just cannon fodder. And bolt action rifles keep you from being a one man german (or englishman) killing machine like in MoH. I also don't see an FPS really making a good bayonet duel engine, because the halo-like melee bash wouldn't be realistic, and the Gears chainsaw thingy wouldn't do the struggle justice. The developers would have enough trouble figuring out how to keep the player from being killed by random mortarfire during charges anyway. Of course, a very good environment interaction engine could fix this.

 

[randomsix]

This may come off as racist or offensive to some of you but if you attempt to ignore it then you are the reason. AMERICA WAS NOT IN WWI!
I am canadian, and every remembrance day we remember the one who died in world war 1 and world war 2, meanwhile american will only remember the ones in world war 2.

My town has a 30 foot statue in the middle of it dedicated to the casualties of WWI. Its about 5 times as big as the 9/11 memorial across the street from it.

Aside from that, I think the aforementioned survival horror would really work. And if not, how about a semi-scifi (with a WWII tie in) thing where you have to find and kill Hitler before the war ends?

 

[duchaked]

WW1 Trench Warfare: The Ultimate Cover Shooter

xD me and my friend were talking (joking) about this one day
good stuff, we could even do bombing runs with planes
achievement for actually hitting something haha