CMSF in Mainstream Gaming Media

[Ithikial_AU]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/06/invade-syria-a-video-game-tested-that/

Combat Mission Shock Force gets some mainstream gaming media attention as a result of current world events. Worth a read.

[Erwin]

A rather intelligent review as it included this thought as well:

"However, the real problem with a game like CMSF is that it depicts conflict as the West (or Western wargamers) would like to fight it, as a straight-up fight between conventional armies where firepower, technology and training are the queens of battle. That may work for World War II. But Syria features a government army that has troops defecting to the rebels, while the rebels themselves — whom the West is supporting — may be under infiltration by al Qaeda. So some of the bad guys are good, and some of the good guys are bad. Pity the poor American platoon commander who’s most likely to shoot him in the back. Also pity the designer who tries to make a fun and playable game out of this."

[Frankster65]

Interesting...

[Dietrich]

Seems to me the article basically says that CMSF "gets it wrong" because of the way things currently are with regard to Syria and the West's prospective humanitarian intervention therein. Various parts of the article show that the reviewer was viewing the game consistently through spring-of-2012 eyes, despite mention of the game's stated premise. Of course, that's perfectly understandable, since if it were not for the current political/military situation in Syria, CMSF wouldn't have attracted the reviewer's attention.

Some observations:

"C’mon, like NATO is really going to invade Syria? It takes a dictator who bombards his own cities to make life imitate art."

Except that this isn't a case of life imitating art, it's a case of a reviewer thinking that art is imitating life. Because CMSF's premise isn't based (as the reviewer himself goes on to say) on Assad waging war on the citizens of the country he rules in a time when the US is weary from 10 years of two-country war and when just a year earlier NATO struggled somewhat to successfully conduct a strictly air-to-ground intervention in the Libyan civil war.

"CMSF postulates a NATO invasion force ... versus a hodgepodge of Syrian forces ranging from elite Republican Guards and commandos to ill-trained irregulars. The scenario is regime change in response to Syrian support for terrorism"

This makes it sound like one day in early 2008 the West suddenly said "Y'know, we're sick and tired of the Syrians supporting terrorism, so we're gonna invade Syria"; rather similar to how the US invaded Iraq even though the regime of that country had virtually nothing to do with 9/11. Whereas CMSF's stated premise is that terrorists supported by Syria set off dirty bombs in a number of major Western cities.

"For all the talk" (by whom?) "of boots on the ground, the NATO forces are strong on high-tech vehicles but short on the infantry needed to clear RPG-armed defenders from villages and trenches."

Methinks the reviewer didn't play any of the scenarios involving USMC infantry.

"Even as a simulation, CMSF has flaws, especially in not including the swarm of unmanned aircraft that would cover any Western expeditionary force."

That implies that UAVs, armed as well as unarmed, have at least partially supplanted manned combat aircraft in Western militaries. Is this really so, even in 2012? What percentage of the air-to-ground ordinance expended in Operation Odyssey Dawn was delivered by UAVs?

"There are no Iranian or Hezbollah fighters supporting Assad..."

Sure there are. One can have as many guerrillas/irregulars in a scenario as one wants, and they can be as skilled and fanatical as all get out. They're just not labelled "Iranian/Hezbollah fighters in support of Assad".

"...nor are there Turkish forces, though the power most likely to intervene is Syria’s neighbour to the north."

I respectfully defer to LongLeftFlank on this point.

"The real problem with a game like CMSF is that it depicts conflict as the West (or Western wargamers) would like to fight it, as a straight-up fight between conventional armies where firepower, technology and training are the queens of battle."

In some scenarios/campaigns, yeah. But the game's scenario editor is versatile enough to simulate a not-as-narrow-as-many-may-think range of situations.

"That may work for World War II. But Syria features a government army that has troops defecting to the rebels, while the rebels themselves — whom the West is supporting — may be under infiltration by al Qaeda."

That's the way things are in Syria now, in the spring of 2012. And the extent to which such would be true even in the summer of 2008 (the game's particular timeframe) could be simulated through sufficient skill on the part of the scenario designer.

"Some of the bad guys are good, and some of the good guys are bad. Pity the poor American platoon commander who’s most likely to shoot him in the back."

"Blue-plus-Red versus Red-plus-different-shade-of-Red" battles are just as feasible as (*yawn*) conventional "Blue versus Red" battles.

And one can even "program in" some heavy-duty friction (vaguely of the Clausewitzian sort): Say an American platoon commander is supposed to bring his unit to a certain public building in the outskirts of some city in east-central Syria to rendezvous with local rebels; but a car bombing (accidentally by said rebels? intentionally by members of a pro-regime faction? who can say?) kills said American platoon commander along with a vehicle's worth of his men, plus a number of local fighters and civilians.

The NATO campaigns are much more varied and nuanced with regard to "not fighting the Syrian military" (despite scenarios like that one in the German campaign where you have to withstand an MBT-and-AFV rush, that one which gave folks grief aplenty back before CMSF v1.31 when Marders carried Panzerfaust rockets but no launchers) than the early scenarios/campaigns made for the game, yet even the British campaign has a good number of "by Jove, this is rather bloody asymmetrical" scenarios (like that one where a British platoon is under siege in a police station after a car bombing and the mech-inf QRF has to fight its way down narrow zig-zag streets against roving fighters and has to not 'frag' the allied anti-regime forces also on the map).

That said, I'd quite like to read LongLeftFlank's take on the review.

[LongLeftFlank]

Thanks for the endorsement. Been searching for a new job lately, so not much time for CM or the miseries of others these days. That should change soon, insh'allah.

[Erwin]

Good luck LLF. Hope it doesn't slow down your CM activities.