Ready or Not, a SWAT-inspired game on Steam, uses real-life locations to influence game design.
Editor’s Note: This article is meant to report on and inform readers about a real-life scenario that will potentially be used as inspiration for a video game. Gamer Digest is aware of the sensitivity of the event and aims to reflect that in our reporting.
As games get more advanced and graphics become ever-more realistic, it’s only natural that game design would also assume the complexities of real life. Ready or Not is a game in Early Access on Steam that aims to replicate the same stress-inducing assignments that police and SWAT are assigned to in the United States.
In Ready or Not, players must tactically navigate realistic scenarios involving barricaded suspects, hostage situations, and full-out sieges. In the most recent dev post, VOID Interactive, the game’s developers, explained a recent trip one of the game’s artists took.
According to the post, the team’s artist, Ropolio, physically visited the location of the Waco Siege and took reference photos. For those who don’t know, the Waco Seige, also known as the Waco Massacre, was a law enforcement siege that occurred between February 28 and April 19, 1993, that took the lives of four ATF agents and over 80 members of the religious sect known as the Branch Davidians.
The highly controversial 51-day siege occurred at the Mount Carmel Center in Texas as agents tried to serve a search warrant which erupted into a gunfight and later into an uncontrollable fire that would claim the lives of over 70 people, including 25 children. Debates still occur over the origins of the fire, though an investigation in 2000 claims the U.S. government “did not cause the fire.”
Should Game Developers Depict Real-Life Tragedies?
Many of the missions in Ready or Not are loosely based on real-life SWAT scenarios, so it’s not completely surprising that the game’s developers would consider creating a mission loosely modeled after the Waco Seige. However — that being said, their dedication to historical accuracy is somewhat surprising as all that truly remains at the site are rubble and a few stark reminders of the Seventh-day Adventists that once lived there.
It’s up for debate on whether modeling such a mission on such a horrible tragedy is in bad taste, but that line of thinking could also be applied to the innumerable titles that depict war or battle, generally.
From titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield to the upcoming Company of Heroes 3, game developers and publishers have not veered away from horrible events in humanity that sometimes took the lives of thousands of innocent people. That’s not to mention the thousands of games inspired by tragedy or horrific worldwide events.
After all, consumers love consuming tragedy, at least in the United States. When something terrible happens in the USA, there’s almost guaranteed to be a movie, series, or book modeled after or directly inspired by the event. Why should this be any different for a video game? Perhaps some could argue that taking an active role as a member of law enforcement is where the line should be drawn, but it bares little difference between a movie whose story is told through the lens of a protagonist that’s also a law enforcement officer.
Though the development blog never explicitly says that this artist’s trip was meant to get a better understanding of the location for an actual mission, we’re not sure why else they would include this in their blog otherwise. They do state at the beginning of the blog, “…we will look at some real-life events that have impacted and shaped the design of both the game and the locations.”
We will, however, give VOID the credit they deserve for speaking on the issue tactfully and respectfully. Whether that justifies designing a level based on an event that took the life of kids and pregnant women is another nuanced question we can’t answer.
What do you think about the potential of a Waco Seige level in a video game? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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