My Guest Post on PocketTactics on Authenticity in Games

I’ve got a guest post over on PocketTactics looking at what we’ve been working on to improve the authenticity in Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land:

Authenticity matters in media. It matters in games. Titles like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor employ military advisors to improve the authenticity. An authentic game, even one set within a fantasy world, can still build authenticity with the player.

Our turn-based strategy RPG Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is inspired by both the works of pulp horror writerH.P. Lovecraft and a paper role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu. In ‘The Wasted Land’ the player leads their team of investigators to uncover a deadly inhuman conspiracy underlying the trenches of The Great War.

Authenticity was always key to us in the making of Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land. The game might be based on Lovecraft’s works of horror and science-fiction, but that did not stop us from trying to get the World War I setting as authentic as possible within the boundaries of good gameplay.

The medical side of the game plays a prominent role, but we found little source material for in our online research. Imagine how excited we were when The Wellcome Trust awarded us a small grant to research and improve the accuracy of the historical medical information in the game.

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As part of our research, we went to visit the Army Medical Services Museum in Aldershot, outside London. The director, Captain Pete Starling, was incredibly helpful and gave us a tour of the fascinating museum. …Full Article.

So some of what we were doing is updating the visuals in the game. So here was how a small first aid kit looked originally:

Old Small First Aid Kit (SD)

And here is what the real equivalent looked like – which as a basic field dressing – carried by all British soldiers:

Basic Field Dressing

And here is what the re-modelled version looks like:

Re-modelled Basic Field Dressing

And how it looks in-game:

Revised Small First Aid Kit in-game (SD)