<\/p>\n
n a video gaming landscape often dominated by fantasy duels and kinetic gunfights, one different genre is standing out in the Gamescom trade fair in Germany: firefighting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Both Firefighting Simulator Ignite<\/em>\u00a0from German developer Weltenbauer and French studio Exkee’s Rescue Ops: Wildfire<\/em>\u00a0see themselves as having a social impact beyond fun; whether raising fire safety awareness or highlighting the impact of climate change on vulnerable ecosystems.<\/p>\n Firefighting Simulator<\/em>\u00a0has a Sept.\u00a09 release, and promises a grounded firefighting experience in a fictional American city.<\/p>\n The team ran demos at Gamescom showing off the first missions, in which players are coached through hauling civilians from a blazing building, forcing doors, hooking up hoses to trucks and hydrants and extinguishing fierce fires with water or foam.<\/p>\n Players can head up a squad of computer-controlled firefighters or take on missions cooperatively in groups of up to four.<\/p>\n “For a lot of people it’s a childhood fantasy they want to play out, to do the heroic stuff […] drive the big machines, extinguish fires,” said Fabian Winkhardt, head of a 30-strong development team that worked for three years to build the game.<\/p>\n But the other part of the core audience for high-fidelity simulation games is made up of “people who actually do the job they’re playing, they enjoy it so much,” he added.<\/p>\n Such fans scrutinize “every detail”, Winkhardt said, recalling disputes about the correct color for helmets or how to hold a spurting hose.<\/p>\n Both details can vary from one American fire department to another, with no single correct answer.<\/p>\n Art lead Manuel Palme said that the team nevertheless aimed “to make a very action-oriented game”.<\/p>\n “It’s not supposed to be dry” or bog players down in excessive nitpicking before the fun can begin, he said.<\/p>\n What’s more, “we try to portray firefighting in the positive light that it deserves.\u00a0[…] We do hope that we can inspire young people to get into the fire service” or even just learn about surviving fire’s dangers as a civilian.<\/p>\n ‘Preserving nature’<\/strong><\/p>\n Where Firefighting Simulator<\/em>\u00a0depicts urban emergencies, Rescue Ops<\/em>\u00a0is set in the wooded coastal hills around the French Mediterranean city of Marseille, where developers Exkee are based.<\/p>\n The team has worked with France’s Valabre public safety school to produce a fine-grained rendition of firefighting work, where forgetting to hook up a hose can empty a truck’s water reserve, sending players scrambling to fetch more as a blaze spreads through vegetation.<\/p>\n With southern France repeatedly ravaged in recent years by extensive wildfires, chief executive Toni Doublet hopes their Rescue Ops<\/em>\u00a0game “will contribute to raising awareness about the impact of global warming […] preserving nature and how quickly it can be destroyed”.<\/p>\n Also included in the game once it’s ready for release will be elements such as animals fleeing fires or challenges finding water in drought-stricken environments.<\/p>\n The 20-strong development team has also had an eye on fun experiences, such as allowing players to heli-drop firefighters into blaze zones or call in water dumps from Canadair planes.<\/p>\n New technology has brought firefighting games on in leaps and bounds compared with older titles such as Rosco McQueen<\/em>\u00a0on the PlayStation 1 or Fire Department<\/em>\u00a0on PC.<\/p>\n “Five years ago, it wasn’t possible. The hardware wasn’t there, PCs weren’t powerful enough,” Doublet said.<\/p>\n “We didn’t have tools like Unreal Engine 5 that allow you to display so many objects on screen” at once, as in detailed woodlands.<\/p>\n The teams hope the new higher fidelity will please both professionals and gamers looking for entertainment.<\/p>\n “The firefighters are really excited because we worked on their simulator 10 years ago, although that was quite abstract and technical,” Doublet told AFP.<\/p>\n “Now they see a very realistic game coming together that they could use for training, that could be a recruitment tool.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.thejakartapost.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" n a video gaming landscape often dominated by fantasy duels and kinetic gunfights, one different genre is standing out in the Gamescom trade fair in Germany: firefighting. Both Firefighting Simulator Ignite\u00a0from German developer Weltenbauer and French studio Exkee’s Rescue Ops: Wildfire\u00a0see themselves as having a social impact beyond fun; whether raising fire safety awareness or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1976081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[353014,353016,353013,353015,353017,320701],"class_list":["post-1976080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-firefighters","tag-game-developer","tag-gamescom","tag-germany","tag-trade-fair","tag-video-game"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Firefighting-games-spark-at-Gamescom-2025-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1976081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}