Burke's Joystick

Seeing how I had planned on playing countless hours of Creative Assembly's Total War: Rome 2 by now, I knew that any blog posting I managed to squeeze in would probably begin with  Emperor Augustus' anguished cry at the loss of his legions in the Teutoburg Forest (actual quote: " Quintili Vare! Legiones redde!" Transaltion: "Quintilius Varus! Give me back my legions!") .  Of course, I am not playing Rome 2 because it arrived in CA's habitually buggy and incomplete state (yet further reinforcing my belief that game design has now become so complex that gamers will need to "lay down" their games for a period of time so that they can fully mature, just like wine).  So I needed to find another reason to use the quote (skip it?  Never!).  With that in mind, blogging about Arcen Games' masterful AI War: Fleet Command seemed to fit the bill nicely since it did, in fact, get me to exclaim something similar! Briefly, AI War is a wonde...

[Note:  I am sorry that I haven't had much to post here the last week or so.  Don't worry, this blog is not done yet!   Rather, I just needed a break to handle some matters.  Eyestrain headaches were starting to kick in from the writing I was doing here and elsewhere, plus I found myself spending more time that I thought possible finding and installing a new video card toy for my old PC - what a difference it has made in my CoD:MW3 performance already!   Lastly, it is the closing days of summer, so I didn't want them to go to waste as I have all fall, winter, and spring to blog! Moving on.... One of the reasons I love modern gaming is that I find it to be a hypothesized science fiction future made real in the here and now.  We don't look at it this way because like most science fiction that has become science fact, we sort of just accept it as another humdrum facet of the modern world.  I mean, imagine taking such incredible title...

My interest in how gaming and politics often mix isn't a new one.  For example, take this editorial I wrote in 2008 (then, like now, we were on the cusp of a big election) explaining how a solid strategy game like Medieval II: Total War could actually be an edifying experience when it comes to explaining the political art of nation-state politics.  While M2TW might no longer be the top dog in the strategy genre ( Crusader Kings 2 would be my new champion), the lessons that M2TW taught me are as valid now as they were in 2008...or 1008 A.D. for that matter.   Someday I really need to revisit this topic using CK2....