Firearms Expert Reacts: LMGs in Video Games (Bonus Episode)

really most shooters are using light machine guns no different than the mini gun in the original doom this is jonathan ferguson the keeper of firearms and artillery at the royal armies museum in the uk which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history and on this episode jonathan discusses the history of the light machine gun how they differ from heavy machine guns and of course how well they work in video games make sure to subscribe for more videos featuring jonathan and if you'd like to help out the royal army's museum and continue to support jonathan's work check out the links in the description of this video right over to jonathan a light machine gun as the name implies is lighter than a heavy machine gun you bastards when machine guns were first created they were just machine guns so automatic weapons that fire for as long as you held down the trigger or the firing button or whatever or ran out of ammunition hey player drop the chips and get me some ammo but they began to diversify as most things do over time well actually very early on hiram maxim who invented the first machine gun which would later become known as a heavy machine gun because it's big heavy and stays where it is until a team of guys move it to the next location [Music] ain't nothing but nothing over here maxim also works on what would become the light machine gun so much smaller more portable and physically lighter forms of the machine gun which if necessary one guy can operate that's probably the best way to think about a light machine gun it's an automatic weapon automatic military weapon that one guy or a team of two at most carries with them into battle into the action moving forward so the other distinction the other way to think about it is so the british vicar's machine gun was our standard machine gun before there was such a thing as a heavy or a light machine gun and then the lewis gun was brought into british service in the first world war the vickers machine guns heavy water cooled belt fed machine guns were taken from the infantry squad into a dedicated machine gun core and used as effectively miniature artillery pieces at like strategic level which left the light machine guns the lewis guns as part of the infantry squad so a light machine gun is part of the infantry squad and it supports the rifles and any other weapons that might be in the squad and you'll typically have one light machine gun per squad squad can be anything from 8 to 12 men depending on the period in the country but you're always going to have some sort of firepower different countries did it different ways but most of them had some form of machine gun in the squad now what makes things complicated is the general purpose machine gun so in the second world war that squad machine gun wasn't technically a light machine gun it was a general purpose machine gun because you could set that thing up like a heavy machine gun or you could carry it like a light machine gun which is how it was more often used so practical purposes it's still a light machine doesn't matter how it's fed it can be magazine fed belt fed doesn't actually matter what caliber it is the villar perosa what most people think of as a submachine gun was actually used by the italians as a light machine gun so like most types of firearms it's a combination of its role what it's designed to do so it's a squad machine gun support weapon but not not higher up like a company level gun like a heavy machine gun and it's also the technical capabilities of it so it must have automatic fire and it nearly always has rifle caliber ammunition as well so it's a very very long-winded answer to what is on one level a very simple question it's a lighter machine gun than a heavy machine gun but also quite a nuanced question in terms of how different countries have you used machine guns over time [Music] from the perspective of somebody who knows about guns and played quite a few games in my time the light machine gun has always been a bit of a weird fit for well it's typically a first person shooter maybe a third person shooter that you're using a light machine gun in they're constrained by by genre really unless you unless you've got a full-on tactical shooter where you're communicating with your team and you're using something approximating tactics and you need suppressive fire to actually have an effect on the enemy whether they're ai that respond to bullets hitting near them or whether it's human players afraid of taking damage unless you have all of that the light machine gun is relegated to being a super assault rifle it's just an assault rifle with more bullets and that's why we see sometimes they're relegated like the call of duty games are a classic example of this they're nerfed effectively so you you might fire a battle rifle it was a term i don't like but a full power cartridge firing automatic rifle you fire that and the bullets from that do more damage than the ones from the equivalent lmg i've seen that before because they have to because otherwise you would just carry the light machine gun around nothing else some go for more that they try to make them work within a tactical sphere if you like but it doesn't quite work so the battlefield games if your support you you can you can put suppressive fire and it has an effect um that really works better than most games really most shooters are using light machine guns no different than the mini gun in the original doom it's just a very high capacity relatively high rate of fire rifle machine gun whatever they're all five bullets at the end of the day if you'd like to support jonathan and the work of the royal armouries check out the links in the description where you can donate become a member pick up jonathan's new book or subscribe to the royal armories themselves thank you so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 259,983

Keywords: expert firearm reacts, light machine gun, lmg, lmg in games, spitfire, cod, call of duty, apex legends

Id: X4-_ExDxo5w

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021