French and German studios reinvent the fight against fires through their video games.
Faced with the big fires that have affected the south of France in recent years, and especially this summer in Aude and Var, the director of the French studio Exkee, Toni Doublet, hopes that «Rescue Ops» will contribute “The awakening of consciences on the impacts of global warming and on the preservation of nature, and in particular the speed at which it can be destroyed”. Far from the military clashes of «Call of Duty»two games of simulations make firefighters embody fires and save lives at the Gamescom video game fair, which is held this week in Germany.
«Firefighting Simulator Ignite» You Studio Allenand Weltbauer et «Rescue Ops: Wildfire» Thus hopes to raise awareness of the risks linked to fires and highlight the impact of climate change on vulnerable ecosystems. “For many people, it’s a bit of a child’s dream: to perform heroic acts, drive large machines, turn off fires”explains Fabian Winkhardt, manager of the development team of «Firefighting Simulator Ignite».
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Scheduled for September 9, «Firefighting Simulator Ignite» proposes to fight against fire in a fictitious American city. During a presentation taking up its first missions, the players must evacuate civilians from a fire building, force doors, connect pipes to fire mouths and extinguish violent lights with water or foam. To help them, they are supported by computer -controlled characters or can team up with three other players.
Research of realism
Far from the urban environments of its competitor, «Rescue Ops: Wildfire» will take place in the wooded hills around Marseille, where the exkee studio is based. “We have made a card that is in the creeks around Marseille, but we also aim for the American market with various environments,” said Toni Doublet in Figaro. The game that should be released in the summer of 2026 on Steam is as realistic as possible and is also addressed to those who exercise the profession of fire soldier. “Our target heart is above all firefighters and civil security members”.
The idea came to the end of a long -term collaboration with the Civil Security Training establishment Valabre. “We developed for them” serious games “(realistic simulation intended for professionals, editor’s note) and now, it is civil security that advises us in the realization of this game intended for the general public”explains Toni Doublet. The team thus collaborated with the public establishment dedicated to civil security training to produce a very detailed simulation of the work of the firefighters, where the simple forgetting of a pipe fitting can empty the reserve of a truck in the middle of a fire.
A technical feat
“The firefighters are super enthusiastic because ten years ago, we worked for them on their simulator but it was quite abstract and very technical”he explains. “Today, they see a very realistic game materializing, which will be able to serve them as a training tool but also attract a young population”.
“But what we offer is above all a game revolved around the action”Recalls Toni Doublet. The twenty developers working on the title sought to make everything entertaining, allowing for example to deposit soldiers of fire as a helicopter or call on Canadair. The figure of the firefighter is not new in the video game: it was for example already possible to embody one in «Rosco McQueen» on PlayStation 1 or direct a brigade in the series of «Fire Department» on PC.
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But using the Unreal Engine 5, a very efficient graphics engine to create games, the two teams were able to reproduce fires with realism rarely reached. “We are the first to offer a game where playing it will be able to tackle forest fires, because until today it was not possible to synchronize thousands of trees at the same time on online players’ machines”recognizes Toni Doublet, for whom “Having millions of trees modeled in 3D” was only made possible by recent evolution of technology.
