Trigger Happy
seems to be a pernicious subterranean motive here: such games offer you a position of infinite power in order to whisper the argument that, as an individual in the world, you have none at all.
Two tribes
Armchair generals are well catered for by the God game’s sibling genre, the real-time strategy game. Its natural milieu is that of war. Again in a godlike position (single-handedly overseeing all military operations), the player is briefed by advisers (actors in video clips), and must then carry out certain missions by issuing commands to numerous small troop units on the battlefield. The player clicks on a certain unit and, for instance, tells it to move somewhere, to attack another unit, to defend itself or to scatter. The stupendously successful Command and Conquer series of games offers with every sequel more lovingly recreated “theaters of war” and conflict situations drawn from twentieth-century history, yet at the same time litters the battlefield with increasingly fantastic depositories of hi-tech weaponry for your troops to pick up and bash the Axis with.
Real-time strategy games are, at base, congruent with the traditional class of wargame played on a large
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