Exciting New Ways to Dress up and Kill People

Thanks to recent technological developments (the internet), scientists across the country (overweight teenagers and bearded twenty/thirty-something men in their parents' basements) have been able to create fantastic new tools for personal expression and communication (ways to kill each other online and gloat about it).

Well, friends, in honor of our reading this week I'd like to share one of those tools. It's called Day of Defeat, and it's a user-created modification for a computer game (yeah, wiki that)that tries its goshdarndest to accurately depict battles in World War II. (Well, as accurately as possible while still remaining fun.)

It's completely user-generated - that means enough people thought this would be a good idea that they gathered together online and spent years toiling to produce what in many respects is the virtual counterpart to the re-enactments chronicled by Jenny Thompson. Meticulous attention is paid to detail, from the exact specifications of various weapons, uniforms, and equipment to the motivations behind each specific battle. Why, if you're curious, you can even head over to the forums where you can find over 10,000 active members discussing military history and culture, how to accurately recreate a german sniper, or how real is too real to be fun.

Even better, we have the organizations that develop around the game. Gamers congregate into groups, give themselves authentic names, and play each other as squadrons of American, British, German, or Russian soldiers. Like in Thompson's War Games, Americans frequently act as soldiers of different nationalities, but sometimes the pull of Americana is just too strong and we end up with groups of soldiers fighting in honor of the Alamo. Sweet. Of course, there is a sizable number of German players, so could it possibly be a little unnerving to have groups of Americans and Germans warring daily at the Battle of the Bulge?

Best of all, it's only $9.99 to get started, so what's keeping you? Maybe one of the other dozen-or-so multiplayer World War II simulators? I understand, we're busy people - but who's really too busy to relax a little now and then, storming the beaches at Normandy?