New technologies allow simulation games to thrive, bringing climate change concerns to the gaming industry
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By Tom Barfield / AFP, COLOGNE, Germany
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In a video gaming landscape often dominated by fantasy duels and kinetic gunfights, one different genre is standing out in the Gamescom trade fair in Germany: firefighting.
Both Firefighting Simulator Ignite from German developer Weltenbauer and French studio Exkee’s Rescue Ops: Wildfire see themselves as having a social impact beyond fun — whether raising fire safety awareness or highlighting the impact of climate change on vulnerable ecosystems.
Firefighting Simulator has a Sept. 9 release, and promises a grounded firefighting experience in a fictional US city.
Visitors play computer games at the Gamescom gaming convention in Cologne, Germany, on Thursday.
Photo: EPA
The team ran demos at Gamescom showing off the first missions, in which players are coached through hauling civilians from a blazing building, forcing doors, hooking up hoses to trucks and hydrants and extinguishing fierce fires with water or foam.
Players can head up a squad of computer-controlled firefighters or take on missions cooperatively in groups of up to four.
“For a lot of people it’s a childhood fantasy they want to play out, to do the heroic stuff… drive the big machines, extinguish fires,” said Fabian Winkhardt, head of a 30-strong development team that worked for three years to build the game.
The other part of the core audience for high-fidelity simulation games is made up of “people who actually do the job they’re playing, they enjoy it so much,” he added.
Such fans scrutinize “every detail,” Winkhardt said, recalling disputes about the correct color for helmets or how to hold a spurting hose.
Both details can vary from one fire department to another, with no single correct answer.
Art lead Manuel Palme said that the team nevertheless aimed “to make a very action-oriented game.”
“It’s not supposed to be dry,” or bog players down in excessive nitpicking before the fun can begin, he said.
What is more, “we try to portray firefighting in the positive light that it deserves… we do hope that we can inspire young people to get into the fire service” or even just learn about surviving fire’s dangers as a civilian.
Where Firefighting Simulator depicts urban emergencies, Rescue Ops is set in the wooded coastal hills around the French Mediterranean city of Marseille, where developers Exkee are based.
The team has worked with France’s Valabre public safety school to produce a fine-grained rendition of firefighting work, where forgetting to hook up a hose can empty a truck’s water reserve, sending players scrambling to fetch more as a blaze spreads through vegetation.
With southern France repeatedly ravaged in recent years by extensive wildfires, chief executive Toni Doublet hopes their Rescue Ops game “will contribute to raising awareness about the impact of global warming… preserving nature and how quickly it can be destroyed.”
Also included in the game once it is ready for release would be elements such as animals fleeing fires or challenges finding water in drought-stricken environments.
The 20-strong development team has also had an eye on fun experiences, such as allowing players to heli-drop firefighters into blaze zones or call in water dumps from Canadair planes.
New technology has brought firefighting games on in leaps and bounds compared with older titles such as Rosco McQueen on the PlayStation 1 or Fire Department on PC.
“Five years ago, it wasn’t possible. The hardware wasn’t there, PCs weren’t powerful enough,” Doublet said.
“We didn’t have tools like Unreal Engine 5 that allow you to display so many objects on screen” at once, as in detailed woodlands, Doublet added.
The teams hope the new higher fidelity would please both professionals and gamers looking for entertainment.
“The firefighters are really excited because we worked on their simulator 10 years ago — although that was quite abstract and technical,” Doublet said. “Now they see a very realistic game coming together that they could use for training, that could be a recruitment tool.”
