Jonathan Last passed this along to me yesterday, and I was just getting around to writing it up when I see that Ace has beaten me to the punch. And, according to his readers, the item is a bit past its expiration date, but, I expect most of our readers will not have come across it yet. So without further adieu: “The Ultimate War Simulation Game.” Here are some of the rules:
Rule #5 I want that Public Support Meter to rise and fall according to Troops Lost, Length of Conflict, Innocents Killed and Whether or Not There is Anything Else On TV That Week. I want to lose 200 public-support points because, in a war where 8,000 units have been lost, one of my Mutalisks happened to be caught on video accidentally eating one clergyman. Then, later, my destruction of an entire enemy city will go unnoticed because the Nude Zero-Gravity Futureball championship went into overtime. Rule #7 I want my Mission Objectives to change every 30 seconds, without anyone letting me know. I want little talking heads to pop up on my screen–commanders, politicians, allies, military intelligence–each giving me different sets of victory parameters, all of them conflicting and many of them written in bulls*&% ass-covering doublespeak. Rule #14 I want fat, left-wing documentarians carefully editing the only the most incriminating footage, countered only by low-IQ country music singers crooning my praises while in American flag-colored cowboy hats. Rule #17 In my Public Support Meter display, let me find out that the news media has run, in the same magazine, one story blasting us for going to war for minerals and another story blasting us for not acting on the continuing mineral shortage back home. There should also be simultaneous stories about the outrageous expense of the war effort, and another about how the troops are under-funded and under-equipped. Set it so that I somehow lose public-support points with each story.
Go read the whole thing, it’s fantastic, even if it is a bit old.
