Saskatoon-based video game highlights Canada’s contributions in Second World War

Michael Long grew up in Saskatoon playing Second World War video games that almost always highlighted the Allies’ victories using either British or American soldiers.

Rarely, if ever, is Canada and it’s important contributions mentioned.

Long, a video game developer and founder of indie gaming studio Foolish Mortals, decided to correct those wrongs by putting Canada’s historic military battles at the centre of his strategy game Radio General.

“None of the games that I’ve played cover Canada at all,” he said. “Canada’s barely ever mentioned — most of the time we’re lumped in with the British, if ever mentioned at all.”

Radio General is a military strategy game that puts the player in control of the army’s every move. Players are tasked with using their own voice and microphone to organize and command troops based on real Canadian battles in the war.

Rather than hopping into different battles from a bird’s eye view, Radio General keeps the player in the limited confines of the era: a table, a chair and map with markers.

“You’re not some eye in the sky that’s floating around the battlefield, and your troops don’t instantly receive your orders and obey them,” he said.

That decision helped Long, a self-proclaimed stick man artist, save a lot of money on art production.

“How could I make a big budget game with lots of unit fighting, animations and battles with very little art? Well the answer is to hide everything from the player.”

Millions of people have since received an education on Canadian military history, thanks to Long.

Radio General reached the top spot of digital gaming platform Steam’s new and trending section, which is no small feat considering upwards of 30-million visits per day.

Long got his start in video game programming as a student at the University of Saskatchewan’s computer science program. Before eventually getting his master’s degree, Long discovered he was very good at game jams, a challenge where participants develop a game from start to finish over the course of a weekend.

“I won most of them,” Long said with a chuckle.

After designing a few games with nominal success, Long turned his attention towards Radio General. With help from the Canada Media Fund and Creative Saskatchewan, Long was able to finish the game in less than two and a half years.

Long wanted to make the game as authentic as possible, and with the rise in popularity in voice recognition in recent years, he felt capitalizing on the technology would suit a game centred around a radio perfectly.

He never imagined it would also be incredibly difficult to incorporate.

“Boy, was that a real challenge,” he said. “It turns out it’s really hard. Even large companies like Amazon and Google don’t always get it right. It’s hard for us to do better than that.”

The biggest hurdles in speech recognition was incorporating various accents and languages. Long said North American accents work best so far.

Long enlisted the help of a local historian to ensure all battles in the game were accurate. Long also read five different textbooks to make sure his history knowledge was as polished as possible.

Thanks to Library and Archives Canada — and some additional help from the Saskatoon Museum of Military Artifacts — Radio General was able to keep costs low.

“Before each battle, you actually take a look at photos of what’s going on at the time, watch some videos from the Canadian Army, then after the battle you read a little summary of what actually happened and then see a few more photos of the battle that you’ve probably won,” he said.

The photos and videos cost nothing, since all art used in the game were public domain.

Even though Long has struck it big, he doesn’t plan on moving to B.C., Ontario or Quebec to join their bustling tech industries.

He said he will stay in Saskatchewan for the foreseeable future.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an amended version of this story, correcting the game’s name.