I don’t usually (ever) write to simply link to an article. But Wong’s article, [The Ultimate War Simulation][games] is simultaneously a challenge to video game developers, a media critique, a political critique, filled with out-of-the-box systems thinking, and funny as hell.
> I want a super-cool __custom weapons lab__ where I can design mech armor for my infantry with wicked __acid-tipped missiles__ and __guns that shoot spiders__. Then I want to watch as a hundred men are cooked alive in the desert because of a defect in the internal air conditioning units that shorted due to condensation in the fusion coils and insufficient insulation in the wiring units bypassing the laser reactor core, due to the contractor’s decision to use over-the-counter components instead of the military-grade ones mandated in Subsection 12:94A, Paragraph B of the Military Weapons Platform Procurement Act of 3013, a document that is 14,724 pages long and contains some 81,301 loopholes that allow congressmen to bypass component testing and funnel lucrative military contracts to cut-rate suppliers from their home districts at the peak of every election cycle.
> I want __factions__. Not a simple alien vs. humans vs. bugs three-way war orgy. I want to share the map with powerful forces who are not friend or foe or anything else, a __News Media__, __Private Corporations__, asshole allies and friendly enemies, everyone jockeying for their own interests and me unable to bend over at any moment without turning my codpiece around first. I want a __France__.
> I want fat, left-wing documentarians carefully editing the only the most incriminating footage, countered only by low-IQ country music singers crooning my praises while in American Flag-colored cowboy hats.
[Read it][games].
[games]:http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wargames.html