The “almost right” of Homefront. Criticism.

We all know the big news. Kim Dzong Il died while travelling by train from a severe heart attack. His son, Kim Dzong-un will take over the ruler baton. But what ticks me off is not the discussion about the future of North Korea, I have heard plenty of interesting opinions about that. Plenty of theories were about whether Kim Dzong Il did not die in fact earlier, and there was a dummy holding his place. But what does frustrate me, is the talk about Homefront.

Homefront, a game which I did not play but read through and through, has a plot where after Kim Dzong Il’s death his son took power, and effectively within a few years united most of Asia into a strong empire. He then invades the U.S. (where did that come from?). But what there is a big fuss about is that within the game Kim Dzong Il died in 2012. As we all know, for a fact, we now have 2011. But to some the close proximity of the year stated in the game is enough to post up in huge letters “Game predicts dictator’s death”.

One article put up said that the game “Almost Predicted” the date. But as one user pointed out, you cannot “Almost Predict”. This particular series of articles has been haunting the internet the moment the dictator died. Whether done for the publicity, in order to get more readers, or considering it genuine news, I honestly cannot tell. Will News sites suffer a huge spike of more regular readers?

The simplest conclusion which comes to my mind is “Not at all.”. Any half-reasonable person will know, that Homefront was off by a year. Not a Month, a year. If the game boldly provided a month and a day, and the prediction would be off by a month, I would be impressed and give a small chuckle. Of course, we could say that the prediction was off by just two weeks, but we have lost sight of the bigger picture. Homefront stated it would happen in 2012. It did not happen in 2012, end of story. The only thing the articles regarding Homefront as an Oracle changed for me, is expanding the list of news sites I will never, ever visit again.

Well, on the optimistic side, at least the U.S. will not get invaded in the next 14 years… At least not in the same way as portrayed or “Almost Predicted” in Homefront.

Alex “WriterX” Bielski

Homefront

About The Author

Aleksander "WriterX" Bielski
Other posts by WriterX

Student of Psychology, he was identified as a Nut-Job even before he started the course. Having done some small work as a Modder for a number of titles, and worked as a Game Designer part-time, Alex now writes in third person. As Co-Owner and Editor of AlterGamer.com he aims high, while being armed only with a sling. In the future, he hopes to become a fully qualified Newspaper Editor, and purchase Google.

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