A second hand review of a second hand experience. I heard an interesting report on "All things considered" (or distorted depending on your views). It was a review of a new exhibit in the Imperial War Museum In London. They call it "The Blitz Experience" and it is intended to give the viewer/participant a simulated experience of what it was like to be bombed by the Nazis In 1940. The report brought up points, we as experimental gamers, need to look at. From the report it sounds like a person gets herded down a stairway Into a cold, damp, poorly lit room which is the bomb shelter. once In the room, the participants listen to a sampling of recorded conversation one might hear before the bombs dropped. Then as the sirens die away, the sound of falling bombs filters down from above. The conversation of the simulated Londoners becomes more morbid as one woman works herself up into a panic. To stall the spread of this panic others begin to sing "Roll out the barrel" (a rather cliched image of propaganda movies) made real by the hysterics of the now terrified woman. Suddenly the room shakes as a bomb explodes right overhead. The lights go black and the tension is only eased when the all clear signal is given. The participants now climb out of the shelter into a bomb devastated world. The street is filled with broken glass and rubble. By a now burning pub rests an overturned baby carriage with a wheel still turning. And so it ends. Now obviously this is not the real thing since as the director of the museum said "We could not provide them with the sight (and smell) of a real body." Even so it is pretty complete. As an historian, I would love to visit it, but what can it teach us about games? By my view "The Blitz Experience" is not a game. It is a form of theater, yes, but it lacks the element of Interaction which for me say "Game." Maybe if it includes live action (ie changeable) exchanges it will be a game. Right now it is a slice of live and In so being tells us a more complete story of what it was to be there than games usually do. Maybe the main point of the exhibit is found in the name. "The Blitz Experience" tells you clearly that you are going to get an experience that corresponds to the Blitz. It breaks down encountered if you were there. It is a lot more than combat factors and unit mobility. In fact a central element of this experience is the stress of having no control over what happens next. I believe that exhibits of this kind sensitize us to parts of life-that we "simulators" sitting far away from the battle field blissfully Ignore. If you have been to another such living history exhibit or If you walked a battle field recently and felt that weird feeling you get when you walk where people died, write in and tell us about it. This is the raw data that we need to make games with different perspectives. Back to Experimental Games Group # 3 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1989 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com