The DeanBeat: War games make a comeback with strong indie gaming and digital distribution

Simulation war games died out a long time ago. In the 1980s, I loved playing these games, first on cardboard and paper, and then on computers. But by the 1990s and early 2000s, the accursed blockbuster video games crowded them out of the market. Game developers and publishers in the genre vanished as retail became too expensive and difficult to penetrate.

But even as the blockbuster games get even bigger in the digital age, these realistic war games are making a comeback. Two of them that I’ve just seen show me that it is possible for indie studios to make AAA-quality simulation war games that have outstanding quality. They’re part of the “long tail” of titles that are available through digital distribution of huge numbers of games that would never fit on a retailer’s shelves.