Why are WWII subsims popular and modern subsims not?

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

I think that's a great question, but I don't think I have a great answer.

My best guess is (1) that there is something romantic about the WWII time period, in terms of the scope of the war and what is at stake and in the technology involved--pretty much every tool of warfare we have today but just barely evolved out of their infancy. And (2), the reduced lethality of ASuW and ASW weapons compared to modern times makes WWII submarine combat much more tense for a longer time. For example, escaping a depth charge attack can provide a really tense experience that translates very well into a cinematic presentation. In modern ASW, the torpedo gets dropped on your head and that's pretty much the end; the crucial time isn't during the heart-stopping action but in the minutes before when you're trying to evade detection. That's more cerebral and doesn't translate as well into a cinematic experience.

No I don't think this is the reason. Otherwise games such as Red Storm Rising, Sierra Fast Attack and other modern cold war sub sims would never have had success. So making a cold war sim can be as exciting, romantic, graphic intense as any WW II subsim. Clearly there was/is a market for cold war sims, and no don't take DW as a measure of this market because its in some sense a game/sim devoid of any "emotion". People that loved Red Storm Rising or Sierra Fast Attack can hate DW and I wouldn't blame them in the least.
I just think that the industry is risk averse. Ask yourselves why over 90% of all fps are WW2 based ? When Infinity Ward said no, no more WW2 fps for us, we will develop an fps based on a modern setting everyone said they were crazy. We all know that a successful videogames HAS TO BE BASED in ww2. This is a kind of stupid assumption, because up to the late ninties sims spanned all historical periods. Hell its only now that a new WWI flight sim is on the market.

Dangerous Waters, made with same kind of attention to detail, animation, graphics, ambience that Sierra Fast Attack had would have been an enormous success, way beyond the market of hard core simmers.
Who doesn't want to be a Captain Marko Ramius ? Who doesn't want to go intelligence gathering and attacking those pesky soviets in the Kara Sea ?

No, SCS make a half baked effort and thats why this sim failed in the general market. This is the real truth, not that people are stupid and can't handle the complexity. If this were the case Flight Sims would have disapeared ages ago.

Ps: The idea that WW2 subsims are simpler is just wrong. SH 3 played on 100% realism is as difficult to master as DW.