Arms treaties and RTS games

I can’t help thinking that the real reason we have all these arms limitation treaties governing what weapons could or could not be used during war is because politicians don’t want their war to end fast.

We have the equivalent of that in RTS games, such as the C&C series, where players would set mutual rules such as no superweapons or no attacking for 20 minutes for the same reason. We don’t want to spend time setting up a game to have it end in 5 minutes. Neither do politicians want to spend time mobilizing and preparing for a war, just to have it all end in the 20 minutes it takes for their intercontinental nuclear weapons to find their targets. It’s simply no fun, and it doesn’t give enough time for the military industries which politicians are often tied to, or have a background in to profit from it.

The next time you hear about the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the various forms of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), thinking about familiar terms such as “no rush 20″ and “no superweapons”.