I am a grognard, I admit I can be a pain in the *ss when pushing my historical plausibility "agenda", no doubt about it.
apy:
I have had more than one debate with European friends about why football (not American football, world football, "soccer" as Americans prefer to call it) is "broken" as a
game because of the low scoring. I argue about how, as Americans used to our high scoring games, watching a couple dozen men (or women!) running around a grassy field for an hour and a half and maybe scoring a small handful of goals is boring. I argue about how, in low scoring games, cheating and poor game officiating is magnified out of proportion. My trump card is to point to games, World Cups even, being decided by shootouts. (Like the NBA championships being decided by a slam dunk contest.)
On my European friends' side, I am met with a passionate defense of their beloved sport. Broken? What, are you crazy? Football is the ultimate game! Look around, its worlwide popularity is proof of that. Don't you see the drama, the excitement, the finesse, the poetry in all of it? Oh, I have struck a nerve.
Back off, back off!
Here in America, professional soccer, although slowly growing in popularity (largely due to our growing immigrant population), continues to struggle vis-a-vis our big-four professional sports (baseball, American football, basketball, hockey). One response has been indoor soccer, where the playing "field" (arena) is much smaller, and scoring is much higher. It works for some Americans. Not me, though. I'd "fix" football, soccer, in other ways. (Some would say that hockey's appeal to Americans really grew when they began condoning in-game fighting, actual fisticuffs, as a matter of routine. Whatever.
)
(Have I offended enough sports fans yet?
)
Are we Americans, or are the Europeans (and others around the world), "right" in our respective views of football?
What's the right or wrong of it? Let us Americans play our high-scoring games, and let the Europeans (and the rest) enjoy their "grognard" football. To each his own! Aren't diversity and choice great?!
There are plenty of companies, plenty of war gaming companies, who produce fun, balanced beer-and-pretzel war and historical games.
There are other companies who lean more toward historical game play, even at the cost of greater complexity, greater micromanagement, and tighter historical constraints. AGEod is one such company.
In AGEod, we have one of those rare war gaming companies that tries to get it all "right". They leave nothing essential out. At game's core, they aim to be "historical". But also lots of "chrome", lovely leader portraits, and beautiful artwork. Good music, too. They try to have it all ways. I applaud them for that.
It would be a great disappointment to me personally if AGEod were to dilute its product, were to bend too far in appealing to the, admittedly, larger audience of pure
gamers looking most of all to have a "good time" (in the sense that, for example, the Heath Ledger movie "A Knight's Tale" was, for some, a great movie despite all its anachronisms and its rock music soundtrack
).
But if they did so, IMO they will have sold out, have become just another run-of-the-mill gaming company, a "noble failure".
If so, oh well, such is life. Thank heavens for the free marketplace and having alternatives! And thanks, too, for pre-game menu options and modding capabilities!