A post-apocalyptic, persistant Arma

Today, it occurred to me how much better games have become over time. Game graphics are getting closer to photo-realism. Who could suspect even 2 years ago that the photo on the right would be an in-game screen capture?
The whole gaming experience has grown enormously. It has deepened with improving graphics but also better controls. Ever flown a helicopter and kept an eye out for enemy infantry wearing TrackIR? Or experienced the potential of the Occulus Rift? You'll know how things have changed the last couple of years!


When I was in high school we played Play-By-Mail games (but yes, also Bomberman and Commander Keen) and later we experimented with Role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons and Twilight: 2000.
Now, you may have heard of D&D, but I'm pretty sure Twilight 2000 is not know to you. Let me explain.

Twilight: 2000 is an old-school, pen-and-paper role-playing game. The set-up is to survive as a group of trained US soldiers in a world that got destroyed by a full-scale World War III. The players have to survive in the year 2000, 4 years after the initial war and subsequent small-scale nuclear war. It's a military role-playing game that concentrates on realistic military equipment and survival in a world that has fallen into anarchy.
People are playing role-playing games to experience scenario's in a world of their own imagination. So all the imagination of the player and game master, is channelled in a sandbox game where they can play and follow rules they themselves (or the RPG's publisher) create.
Twilight: 2000 allows people to play in a post WW3 sandbox, with cold-war equipment and a world that requires them survive under harsh circumstances.

Now I like simulators, I like a large amount of realism in my games and my favourite game at the moment is Arma 3. Arma is a military simulation game that pushes the boundaries of the regular 'shooter' game.
Not just the graphics, but the game experience. It's complex, I grant you that, but that level of complexity required also makes it more real!

And precisely that level of realism is what attracts me to both Arma and Twilight: 2000.
So I think the time is near for a fusion between the two.
What I envision is running missions in a persistent world (a bit like the Arma single player campaign), where the results have an effect on the game world. Where gasoline and ammo are recorded, so if you get your hands on an APC and stock it up, that mine you encountered destroyed not only the precious APC, but also the ammo and fuel. When bringing supplies to a town this town grows and is grateful, but when you keep the supplies for yourself to sell they are hostile and don't like you any more. And a persistent world means that there are only limited numbers of ammo, fuel and APC's.

In summery, I'd like to see a game where the persistent world and economics of EVE Online will be combined with the Arma military debt. And all that in a post-WW3 setting?
- Yes please!



Two reasons I came to write this post:
Reality Gaming - My MilSim comrades-in-arms, playing Army 3
TWILIGHT: 2000 – 28 years after the apocalypse - an interesting (re)view of this old RPG