I play a fair bit of Unreal, Battlefield and similar games and must confess to prefering the sniper rifle as a weapon and the tactics of a sniper as a way of playing the games. I do sometimes get called a “camper”, but for me, a carefully prepared and skillfully executed single shot kill from a distance is worth countless kills obtained by frantic bunny hopping and keyboard mashing.
One person I have taken an interest in is Vasily Zaytsev, a real life WWII Soviet sniper who recorded 242 verified kills and who played, along with those he trained, a very important role in the battle for Stalingrad.
Unusually for such “heroes” he survived the war and died at the age of 76 in Kiev in 1991.
A fictionized version of his time in Stalingrad was released as a film “Enemy at the Gates” a few years ago, but perhaps of more interest is a book that Vasily Zaytsev wrote himself, titled “Notes of a Sniper:For us There is no Land Beyond the Volga”, that gives a direct insight into his life. An english translation was publish around the time of the film but is already out of print.
Just for clarity I have no interest in owning or operating real weapons, nor would I ever sign up to any kind of job where I might be expected to use one - but from a gaming point of view the perspective of those who have “played the game” for real is interesting.
For more information search for Vasily Zaitsev or Vasily Zaytsev (spellings seem to differ).
