“What is your unforgettable video game moment?”

Posted 30Jun18.

For me, it was one night playing Silent Hunter IV with my son when he was about 7 or 8.

Since he was not coordinated enough to understand the interface but relatively knowledgeable about the fundamentals and basics involved with submarine warfare during the Second World War, we would play with him acting as the Commanding Officer (giving orders) and me as the Executive officer (making his orders happen).

To clarify, I had no expectations of his ability to flawlessly replicate attacks on the simulated convoy – mostly, this was an experiment in seeing how his mind adapted to the stories I had read to him over the years (yes, I am that big of a history nerd).

I had established us in an ideal position – submerged, on the convoy’s base course, and several miles ahead of the lead escort: a Japanese destroyer, type forgotten. Predictably, the game’s standard convoy package was a dozen or so merchant ships of varying type and self-defense capability and four destroyers (DD’s), so this generic setup was nothing phenomenal.

After he identified which targets for the 6 bow tubes (“One at each, Daddy… real shallow, and aim for the center of the boat…”), he squealed with each of the half-dozen distant explosions when they actually hit their targets.

“Go deep, Dad. Get closer.”

I made that happen as well, interested in how much he remembered and where he was going with this.

We eased under the the layer and, cheating, I looked at the external view to see the DD’s dropping depth charges far enough away to not be a problem as we reloaded the bow tubes and approached the remains of the scattering convoy.

“Stern tubes at the destroyers, Dad.”

Oooookayyyy.

Periscope depth… fired four – two at two DD’s… for three hits – one less DD and one damaged.

Interesting.

He designated more targets for the bow tubes and was awarded five hits. Ships ablaze were dead in the water; others were visibly holed but still making headway. Ahead, abeam, astern… there were merchants everywhere, with a DD homing in on our periscope wake as we surveyed the carnage and plotted more.

“Surface, Dad! Deck gun!”

I paused the game. “You realize that we have much less armor and armament than the destroyers, right? And some of the merchants are armed, too.”

“Yep. Surface!”

Unpaused. As expected, we started taking damage as soon as the conning tower broke the surface, losing the attack periscope almost immediately.

The kid was into it. I designated the nearest armed merchant for the deck gun and at my son’s insistence, I started engaging the pursuing DD with the aft 40mm Bofors in what I thought was a futile but valiant effort to go down in a literal blaze of glory…

Only to have the DD explode under the fire of the Bofors.

Wow… ok…

The primary target of the deck gun split amidships and the crew went to work on the next target.

“Turn RIGHT, Dad!”

As we swung around, we presented a broad target for the remaining DD. I cringed with each hit and expected the flooding to become terminal, yet my son demanded I start engaging the DD abeam with both the deck gun and the Bofors.

It went up in flames.

We were badly damaged – the list of components destroyed or in queue for repair was long. However, we were still afloat and still firing on the remaining merchants. The engagement wrapped up with us looking at a horizon empty of targets and our damage control party laboring to restore us back to some semblance of viability.

I ended the mission and looked at him. “You know… that was extremely brave, but also short of lunacy. In real life, you would have jeopardized your crew to the point where you might have lost your command.”

“O’Kane did it, Dad. He kept his boat.”

Damn. “He ended up losing his boat, remember?”

“Well, we didn’t.”

The kid had a point.

With him, I endorse complex games, and we always discuss the reality of those games/simulations. I dislike the mindless and scripted titles that garner all sorts of popularity; rather, I enjoy open-world ones where more than one aspect has to be managed – logistics, tactics, strategy. First-person shooters may have some points in these areas, but ones like Hearts of Iron II, Cross of Iron, and the venerable Axis and Allies make it a point to incorporate the larger aspects of warfare while not emphasizing the gore and whatnot of combat. Even Rollercoaster Tycoon makes planning, logistics, an management interesting… which, to me, provides the opportunity for these to become educational tools as well as a form of entertainment.