Skip to content

Command & Control

Real-time strategy, or RTS, is a major genre that represents perhaps the best experience of war in video games. So much so that it now inspires the arms industry or the military staffs.

Managing a war economy, protecting your workers, developing technologies, building your army… The main principles of modern strategy (called “Clausewitzian”) are present in RTS. The Napoleon of the future may be found on Starcraft 2, and it is not insignificant to note that Google-Deepmind has confronted “AlphaStar”, its AI, to the best RTS players in the world.

Above: many armies (here French) are studying concepts like the Microsoft Hololens.

 

Dispelling the fog of war

For example, scouting consists of sending a unit close to the enemy base or army to find out what options the opponent has chosen, and is basically the same as reconnaissance, or intelligence. Because what you need is to know the enemy’s intentions in order to avoid the strategic surprise that will be fatal to you.

 The iconic Age of Empire II

We could also mention the idea of the decisive battle, one of the great (and decried) concepts of strategy. Practice leads me to say that the higher the level, the more we go from skirmishes to confrontations where the opponents will try to attract each other on the right ground, at the right time, so that the fate of the war will be settled in a single battle.

Just like serious games in the corporate world, wargames are making a strong comeback in the military, whether to simulate guerrilla warfare or high-intensity warfare.

However, video games allow us to go much further in the simulation.  We mentioned the fog of war: it is almost impossible to represent on a physical board, whereas games like Warcraft or Age of Empires have been perfectly depicting it for 25 years.

 

 

Command and Conquer Control

The concept of C2 is normally quite obscure to the general public, but it can be summarized simply as the work of a staff in a theater of operations, namely the ability to make the right decisions and, above all, to be able to communicate them correctly to the various echelons.

With the digitization of equipment, the military is looking for the best representation of the battlefield, with the maximum amount of data in real time. This is what is known as infovalorization: the optimal exploitation of information resources, enabled by new technologies to improve operational efficiency.

MBut the risk today, with so many sensors, is of course data saturation, or INFOBESITY! Because on the “map” of the battlefield, we quickly go from that :

 

To that :

Captures from the excellent Wargame series by French developer Eugen Systems

Video games have always tried to get around this problem, from the tactical to the strategic level, continuously innovating in representations, ergonomics, HUDs, which now inspires engineers and commanders who are looking for 3D solutions, for example. In other words, the video game has involuntarily anticipated the current situation.

Today, we hardly touch the question of the generational impact of videogame practices, because even the FPS with its minimap, or the generalized use of the gamepad and VR, have today consequences on the development of military technologies.

 “Command” Serie’s
Napoléon Total War
Hearts of Iron IV

BESOIN DE PLUS D'INFOS ?

Vous voulez continuer la discussion ? Évoquer avec nous la possibilité d'intégrer de nouvelles options de Gameplay ? Valider l'authenticité de votre scenario ? Contactez-nous !

Inscription à la newsletter

Suivez-nous