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From: vallor <vallor@cultnix.org>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Defcon: Most horrifying game ever?
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2025 11:12:43 -0000 (UTC)
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On Thu, 02 Jan 2025 14:35:40 -0600, Zaghadka wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 19:11:52 +0000, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB
> wrote:
> 
>>Well something popped up on my feed about this recently and I thought
>>yeh it's horrific. So the basic game, almost twenty years old now, is
>>all out nuclear war but what takes it above that, at least for me, is
>>the way it's presented. It is a strategy game but everything is quite
>>abstract and minimalist from its Wargames (the film) graphics, to its
>>haunting sounds and basic units of fighters, bombers, aircraft carriers,
>>destroyers, battleships, radar units, SAM sites, airfields and of course
>>ICBM silos which can also serve to shot down incoming nukes. No
>>research, no resource gathering just you all get the same units to
>>deploy as you wish.
>>
>>You start at Defcon five and as the timer ticks down that level is
>>raised meaning you get to place more units and eventually start actual
>>conventional combat. Once it reaches Defcon one all hell breaks lose and
>>it's a question of who is going to launch nukes first with an
>>accompanying siren noise. See a city hit and all that's shown is a white
>>flash and in big letters the death toll in millions. This happens over
>>and over again until the world is filled with the glow of nuclear
>>strikes and the timer reaches zero. The winner is then announced based
>>on casualties for and against.
>>
>>The part I found really horrific is that it's only after you've played
>>several games that it dawns on you that you're detached from what you're
>>doing (you cannot die) and are taking enjoyment in counting the death
>>toll you're causing while not overly caring of the death toll in your
>>continent. The finally part is when the results are shown as raw
>>figures.
>>
>>As the game says everybody dies. You don't win, instead you just don't
>>do as badly as everyone else.
> 
> At the risk of being conceited, and long-winded, this is the preamble to
> a game I wrote in the early 90s called "Friendly Fire." It was a game of
> bluffing, double-bluffing, strategy, and dumb luck.
> 
>>Welcome to 2624 A.D.
[interesting game prologue snipped]

> For some reason, your story about Defcon reminded me of it.

Both also remind me of _Plague Inc.: Evolved_, which my Steam
library says I played in March of 2015.

I "won" the game, which was to wipe out humanity with a plague.
Very bleak when you actually do it, and I tell myself "it's only
a game. It's only a game..."

The feeling of doom as the human population counts down to
zero is profound.

It looks like they released a DLC called "The Cure" in 2021,
where you save the world.  I might have to give that a try.

-- 
-Scott System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
   OS: Linux 6.12.8 Release: Mint 21.3 Mem: 258G
   "The buck doesn't even slow down here!"