S3E10 – Based on a True Story

Obviously, the first thing you’ll notice about this week’s episode is that it’s a day late. And you have every right to be angry. Furious, even. I know I speak on behalf of all of the Back Seat Designers in sharing your frustration. But, please, put the gun down. I know we can talk about

Continue reading S3E10 – Based on a True Story

Obviously, the first thing you’ll notice about this week’s episode is that it’s a day late. And you have every right to be angry. Furious, even. I know I speak on behalf of all of the Back Seat Designers in sharing your frustration. But, please, put the gun down. I know we can talk about this.

Ah. Now that that volatile situation has been defused, perhaps we can go into discussing the show on our hands. It’s about games based on true stories, and, no, the fact that it’s coming out on Easter is just pure coincidence; you’ll notice both Jesus and chocolate bunnies are entirely absent from this episo– oh, for god’s sake, I said put that gun down!

We were actually finding it quite hard coming up with real-life examples of games that are based on real historical events. Sure, it’s not like there aren’t any at all. But, really, does Custer’s Revenge or JFK: Reloaded shout “well-researched depiction of historical events” to you? Really?! Well, they don’t to us, god damn it!

So, with the few examples we could think of being woefully insufficient to pad out an entire episode, we go into how game designers should (and shouldn’t) go about basing their stories on real life events. Some interesting points come out of this, we feel.

You may decide for yourself if you agree (and you can, of course, download and subscribe at the bottom of this post):

After the show, I wanted to talk a bit about something I didn’t get to bring up in the main show, which was “alternate history” stories — that is, setting the story in a version of historical events that has been intentionally changed from its real-life outcome — and that set off Gareth on a rant so charged with academic indignation that his connection couldn’t take it.

(Downloady the mp3-y)

So, that’s that, really. Making games based on real-life events is something we feel you should all be doing more of, and our evidence is clearly stated. Well, somewhat clearly stated.

Oh, before we forget — last week, our guest appearance on The Nostalgia Roadtrip Podcast was released, along with appearances from other podcast friends. Give it a listen and subscribe to their show. They’re almost as foulmouthed as we are. Thanks again for inviting us, guys!

So that’s that, and we’ll see you next week– er, well, technically THIS week! If you count the coming Sunday as part of this current week. Which you should, ‘cos people who think Sunday is the start of the week are really, really weird.