Okay
it is the last day of the year, I am contemplating the Lucullan dinner awaiting
me, and taking time to write some (understatement) lines about 2018 and
wargames. Plenty of bloggers do that… after all it is quite normal to look back
in such a day (before filling our stomachs and forgetting everything). I will
say it has been a positive year for the hobby in general, and for my corner of
it in particular. We saw plenty of new releases, good and bad, more good than
bad, and I was able to play and paint several of them. Even the computer side
of it has been good, with the new Combat Mission Shock Force 2 released, The
Operational Art of War 4 and other little things. Basically a good year for the
hobby… and the Perry twins’ early XV century cavalry is arriving in a couple of
week…
Yet
despite all the positives there are some negatives (no I am not talking about
personal ones). The hobby community is more and more divisive, crap is still
coming out, and there are some uninspiring trends. I would say that the
negatives are more about people than the hobby in itself, and certainly they
concerns people who get publicity… basically I am quite pissed off by the
‘public face’ (there is one?) of the whole wargaming hobby. More often than not
the hobby appears to be represented by its lesser lights, certainly the more
aggressive.
I
have already written a tirade against Facebook groups few posts ago, but to be
quite honest some of the issues that plague these groups are also plaguing the
big wargaming websites (rather than forums) across the internet. Basically the
issue is one:
What
I do not like deserve to die.
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| I play games on maps... |
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| I play games with miniatures. And to respond to Brian painting and building them is part of the hobby, and result is warranted. |
Well
I am the first to say that plenty of people deserve to die, I am a military
historian by trade and one thing that history teaches is that sometimes deaths
are necessary and inevitable… but usually these concerns evil dictators,
madmen, and pesky colleagues (and maybe politicians whose asses are glued to
their comfy chairs…). I am not really interested in seeing particular strand of
the wargaming spectrum dying, neither to see companies disappear (okay FGA
excluded… but well, how many supporters FGA had ever had?). Yet, if you look around there is plenty of
negativity. In his end of year summary for Wargamer.com, Colonel (USA RTD)
Wilbur Gray made a quite scathing prediction for board wargaming, hex and
counter will die, GMT and Decision will disappear, Compass (that it happens to
produce hex and counter wargames!) will thrive on their carcasses. Of course miniatures and computer wargames
will not be affected by gloom and doom. Of
course it is no secret where Bill Gray’s sympathies’ lay. On the same
token, other commentators (admitting
their previous failures in predicting wargames’ future) again predict the
collapse of hexes and counters and the eternal rise of CDGs! Or something else,
like War-Euros combinations and the like. Other people predict the demise of
miniatures for computer games…
Basically
everyone, his brother, and their aquarium fishes make wild prediction centred
on the thriving future of their favourite kind of games and the demise of the
rest. There is the underlying idea that only on aspect of our varied and
storied hobby is worthy of salvation. Plenty of these predictions have come to
pass, and we are still playing, designing, and publishing a wide array of
different wargames.
Because
all the Cassandras, and the other assorted Sunday’s prophets that had seen the
light in computer wargames and the dark in other kinds… have failed. Funnily
enough the first of these two cents fortune tellers, James Dunningan left the
field to become a third (or fifth?) rate strategic expert. The idea that
computers killed board wargames is a dead, putrefied, skeleton horse. It
stinks. Yet it is still around… like the myth of the German military
invincibility (read one of the latest articles by Ty Bomba to be treated to the
uber-Germans winning the second world war… no, wait… they lost…) it is a myth
that is never ending. Back in time, reflecting on the demise of SPI James
Dunningan blamed computer games for the destruction of paper wargaming. Of
course there were lot of other trends involved (and also Dunningan may have had
a big personal role in the fall of SPI, and tried to cover it up), and
board-wargaming did not die at all, despite Dunningan analysis. Yet the idea
that somewhat the hobby is relying on a flat base of older gamers who survived
its heydays is often casually thrown in discussion. The recipe to stave off
disaster is, we are told, crossover games, and moving away from traditional
wargames toward computer. Often these calls are coupled with accusations of
male dominated hobby, snobbism against fantasy or science fiction. More often
than not there is a tone of impending doom… change or be swept away. Each of
these elements has its champion or champions. Yet the underlying impression a moderate gets
is… ‘I do not like game XYZ so it has to be bad and disappear’. And then there
is the unanswered question… why?
Then
you have the people that claim hexes and counters are dead, and cards, areas,
and meeples will rise… it is the current CDGs crowd, or the current COIN crowd.
Yet, Card Driven Games have been around for a while, and they are not so new.
They have not supplanted hexes or counters. Plenty of them uses counters, and
some even hexes. It is worth to note that their boom as passed, and while they
are not going away (and why they should?), they are just become part of the
whole hobby. Cards are used also in Miniature Games (I ain’t been shot mum
anyone?). It is a worthwhile mechanic but not an end unto itself. And we had
plenty of crap and bummers in this department.
Then
there is COIN… the new grail… except that despite a couple of good games, the
whole series is sliding down the crappiness and some designers force COIN on
the throat of everything… yet you have people arguing that COIN will supplant
everything else, and everything else is destined to rot in hell…
It
is disheartening to see so many people relishing in their prophecy of doom for
entire segments of the hobby. Even more disheartening because these prophets
looks quite shallow, and their arguments take up places that could be used for
more useful endeavour, like informed discussions, and reviews. Frankly, who
cares if a computer games expert bashes board games? Does he know what is
talking about? Short answer, only people who dislike board games care, and he
does not know anything.
Thankfully,
like Dunningan prediction and analysis (that hide his own poor decisions in
SPI…) these prophets are basically rubbish. Let’s paint a better picture…
maybe, one based on real knowledge. I will start from computer games. Recently
on the Facebook wargamers group the idiot of the day (If you want I can provide
Facebook names too, after all Marck Zuckenberg does it all the time…) said that
the relation of board wargames to
computer wargames is like that between VHS and DVD. Persuading young people to
play board wargames over computer games is like pretending people to go back to
VHS from DVD. Okay…
There
are deep issues in this view. Basically, it is just an outgrown of Dunningan’s
claims of PC games killing board ones. New technology always supplants existing
one. The underlying idea is that board
games were somewhat inferior to their electronic counterparts and more
expensive. But, when Dunningan was pontificating not only electronic wargames
were in their infancy, they were few, basically crap, overpriced and relied on
hardware that, until sometime later, was extremely expensive. A single pc game could have been not too
expensive, but it needed a computer that was not readily available to everyone.
This even before addressing issue like quality, AI, and playabilty. I saw some
of them, and they were quite subpar. Basically Dunningan was talking hot air,
like he does in his strategy page… old habits never dies.
The
Moderns have at least the benefit of cheaper hardware (but how cheap is a
computer rigged to play the latest games?) and better games. PC wargames have
evolved and some are innovative, interesting, well researched, and
engaging. So at least they have
something to show. Now there is an issue that cannot be denied, I cannot deny
it too. Computer games sales far outstrip traditional wargames one. Fair point,
but one that is also completely irrelevant.
We
are comparing apple to oranges, and even in a bad way. The issue that what I
call the ‘PC doom crowd’ fail to address is what a computer wargame is.
Nitpicking? No. It is the heart of the issue. How many computer games that
really qualify as wargames are sold? What really qualifies as computer
wargames? If you just pull out the average Joe from the street, if you can get
an answer at all it will be Call of Duty or Warcraft/Starcraft, if you are
lucky a Total War game… But we have a
deep issue, computer games that are often called wargames by the press and the
public are not wargame in any sense. There is very little relation between Call
of Duty and ASL as there is very little relation between Rome Total War and Imperium
Romanum II. I have seen this with students. They are quick to think of them
as wargames because that is what they are told. But wargames they are not. Also
they appeal to different people. Yes there will be overlap, as there is overlap
in everything, but this is not changing the reality. Real wargames are a
minority even in the PC market, their sales are not that big, computer games in
general did not steal the player base of wargames.
Once
you remove the oranges and remains with the apples it is also interesting to
see what the apples are. A lot of PC wargames are tactical in nature. There are
very few operational or strategic ones. Also players often criticize
board-wargames for their lack of details. I remember a discussion on RPS Flare
Path column on Phil Sabin’s Simulating War book. One of the posters was
complaining on the limit in the level of detail of any ‘manual’ game compared
to games like War in the East. Fair point, but…
1 1) He did not really read or understand Phil’s
position about details
2) 2) Despite disagreeing with Phil’s emphasis on
abstraction, I am persuaded that details do not equal realism by default. Just
because a game track each infantry squad on the whole Russian front it is not
more realistic than one who only track army corps.
Again
the computer player in question is attracted to detail in a way that is outside
the scope of any playable manual wargame (much better definition that board
wargame, let’s use it!). I play computer wargames and manual ones. I find very
little overlapping. I found them not very related. I also play Total War, and
have played several Call of Duty and Medal of Honour games. Let’s leave CoD and
MoH alone for now. They were never
wargames to start with, and, right now, they are also bad games more concerned
with campy multiplayer, scripted movie sequence, and very little with any
meaningful conflict simulation aspect. Also, they are not wargames, they are first
person shooters. They are the brothers of Doom rather than ASL.
Total
War and other RTS or even 4X turn based games are, often, hailed has wargames
or historical games, but they are not wargames at all. They have war and
conflict, but grouping them together with manual wargames would be wrong. As it
would be grouping together their player bases. It is worth noting that some RTS
have evolved in the so called ‘E-sports’ and are nothing more than click fest.
Even
serious title like Steel Beasts Pro
or Combat Mission are games that is
difficult to pin together. They are apple and oranges by themselves, and it
would be very difficult to find equivalent in the manual wargames library,
especially for title like Steel Beasts (they are simulators, again a different
beasts, notwithstanding the idiots on BGG and other places that confuse
simulation with simulator). Combat
Mission (especially the first series) feel like a miniature wargame, but
for now we are focusing on another genre.
The
bottom line is that computer and manual wargames scratch different itches. On
top of that perusing game forums I have seen very few people who are even aware
of the existence of manual wargames at all… my experience in KCL Conflict
Simulation class, and in Wolves ‘Virtual Warriors’ module is that while there
are more students familiar with computer games and manual wargames, there very
little in the way of ‘I stopped playing manual wargames because the PC ones
were better’ often the computer crowd is stuck on total War, Paradox grand
strategy (and often they do not care too much about the level of historical
details), and CODs… on the other hand some students dismissing manual wargames
as obsolete by default in September came to different conclusion after having
played and designed games at the end of the module.
What
I see is a large, healthy base of publishers doing manual wargames, and other
doing computer wargames. Their catalogue are strong and varied. Their titles
cater for different interests, mechanics, and players’ inclinations. Each
medium, and each title has its own strength and weaknesses. It is worth to
mention that while there is an overlap in players, (and I just played Slitherine’s
intriguing Panzer Doctrine…) the
players seem to be two largely discrete communities.
Bottom
line: the boom in real computer wargames happened after Dunningan wrote his
nonsense. It even happened after the fall of Avalon Hill, and the dark age of
manual wargaming. Probably they are two unconnected phenomena. Yet this myth is still with us, and duly
resurrected when the idiot of the day wants to explain why manual wargames are
a doomed hobby. Nonsense. We can just play our games in peace.
Now
let’s move on… the second big myth. The new holy grail game technique that will
rule them all… give me a ring please… Even better is it is a crossover to
euros. The crossover that will suddenly
bring thousands of eager new players in the hobby by virtue of its simplicity
and appeal (and low price!). I think everyone hopes for it… I think everyone
with a working brain knows it is just rubbish. There are several wrong
assumptions at work here. First of all is that you can entice people to become
wargamers just hanging an easy game in front of them. After you have hooked
them they will simply move to more complex games, finally they will all play
ASL! I do not think this is making any
real sense.
First
of all, there is an assumption that one size fits all, be it players’ interests
and game mechanics. There is also a mental limitation at work, that one
mechanic can cover everything. This is a phenomena that you can see both in
board and miniatures wargames. There was a recent article on Wargames Soldiers
and Strategy waxing about the idea that a single mechanics can simulate
everything at every scale, from Sumer to Ramadi… I scratched my head… and
mentally binned the author in the realm of idiots. I am sorry to use such a
term but it was just a demonstration of the lack of understanding of warfare
and its modelling. Okay… it could provide food for the game vs simulation
debate. But here is serving another purpose. An historical wargamer, one who
understand history, will scratch his head if an Assyrian chariot is simulated
in the same way of a French 1812 Cuirassier. Even more if an unit of chariots
and one of cuirassiers are modelled in the same way (I mean their functions,
not they physical models!). Yet the one game to rule them all crowd propose
exactly this. What we can call… the Sauron’s technique… will replace everything
else. Sadly for the prophets, luckily for everyone else (including the prophets
of the different Sauron’s technique…) it will not happen. Despite the claims
that the new games will replace the old it will not happen. They will just sit
together on the same shelf.
IF
we look at the past of the hobby it is something that happened all the times.
Everytime a new mechanic was introduced the players were divided in camps, some
outspoken supporters, some claiming it was just a fad (why? Was it used
improperly?), and the silent majority buying what they like, and leaving on the
shops’ shelves or website the games they did not like. Some designers become
fixated on certain mechanics (Mike Rinella and its area/impulse, who is simply
saying the approach is better than anything else, without explanation), some
rejected it, most simply adding it to their libraries. Nothing new, no impeding collapse, despite
every time someone yelling at the ultimate mechanic. Still… people continues to
search for a grail that looks more like the Ring… nothing holy, just a chimera
that, once reached is only a curse… remember the end of the Fellowship… there
is no rule to rule them all.
But
it is not just the random poster on Facebook or BGG that clamours for it. Years
ago, boardgame (be careful, Boardgame not Wargame…) designer Lewis Pulsipher,
the creator of Britannia claimed that wargames were destined to irrelevance
because our games do not have plastic components, area maps, and are too
complex. Okay, if someone creates an idiocy guided cruise missiles Pulsipher
would be a perfect guinea pig to test the guidance system. Yet beside the fact
it was just an empty, baseless, claim by a second class designer and smelled
more of self-advertisement than anything else, it highlighted the issue at
hand. More often than not people use the internet, or even game magazine not to
discuss issues, but to do negative promoting, criticizing other products and
approaches to promote theirs. Wargames are not bad. Wargamers are bad. There is
this habit to knock off things to sanctify others. Wargamers are not the only
culprits, historians and strategic analysts are even worse offenders. Lewis
Sorley is a master of it, launching vitriolic attacks on General Westmoreland
just to make a saint of Creighton Abrams. And what about the dean of all strategic
forgers? Basil H. Liddell Hart?
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| You need counters... put such information on a plastic meeples... or produce a similar map with areas... sorry mr. Pulsipher, you do not know what you were talking about... |
Even
stellar figures in the hobby fall prey of it… I remember reading a piece written
by my favourite Miniature Wargamer designer, Richard Clarke, the Lord of Lard…
dismissing manual map based wargames, and telling the readers they were dead… He
had bad experience playing the Europa series back in time and written off,
thousands of titles… and a vital strand of the hobby. I was reading about
divisions moving at a glacial pace over the Russian steppes. At the time I was
playing the new edition of Red Star and White
Eagle from Compass. And it was not division moving a glacial pace, it was
the Konarmya racing forward, and then the Polish counterattack… it was exciting…
it was engrossing… it was a fight for a country, rather than a fight for a
village. It made me think twice about
the usual engagement with Rich’s Chain of Command or IASBM. Yet I like both approaches.
I do not knock off one or the other.
What
I found irrelevant of this approach is that the Sauron’s technique is not a
solution, is part of the problem. As me and Phil said to countless cohorts of
students, there is no right or wrong way to design a game. There is no perfect
answer to every problem. This is exemplified with the different approach me and
Phil takes to design. Loom at my own games or the games I have worked with
(easy go to BGG and look up to game designer Arrigo Velicogna), and do the same
with Philip Sabin. You will see plenty of differences in approach. Even better
for today discussion you will see that even our games tend to be different
between them. Some designers are just iterative, some are instead letting the
situation to dictate the technique to be used. Plastic meeples? Fine as long
you do not want plenty of information on your game pieces. Miniatures are
better than counters, at times they are, at times they are not. Variety is the
key. The final game does not exist. The ‘evolution’ that some closed minds see
is only a nightmare for us.
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| Plenty of new games on different subjects, with different mechanics, including mine. |
Well…
it was along post… and one quite negative on wargamers, but, I am persuaded,
positive on the hobby. I am sitting on my uncomfy chair right now. I can see
part of my collections of wargames. PC, Miniatures, Board. They are varied,
they are exciting, they are an important window over military history. Some are
easier, some are more detailed, some are broad brush approach. The bad ones…
well I tend to avoid buying them, trade them, sell them, or put them somewhere else… I also have my
list of eagerly awaited pre-orders. Under the trees I had Iron and Oak, Tinian, and
War for the Union (2nd Edition).
A broad and varied lot! I also got TFL annual magazine with new rules and
scenarios. And a couple of games on steam too. Right now there is nothing on
the table, I borrowed it to my mother for her Lego city… But I am looking
confident on the future. There are plenty of interesting project approaching
completion. Adam Starkweather is finishing his operational game on Vietnam, a Rumor of War with Compass, and two new
games of his company scale series. GMT has a new Next War game coming, and
Bruno Sinigaglio big game on the Ardennes (and Compass has Danny Parker
reworking his Bulge Masterpiece. MMP has a TCS game on Bir el Gubi, the Ariete
armoured division giving a bad day to the 22nd Armoured Brigade, a
rubbing generations of British historians, blinded by their arrogant, baseless,
and racist contempt for Italians, and slavish admiration of a nazi like Rommel,
have always attributed to Germans… (that for that idiot Capitan Blood, that on
the Lead Adventure Forum claimed that the Italian experience in North Africa was
only shoddy and sorry… an insult to my country, my Army, and myself as a former
Italian Army Cadet Officer… another star display of historical ignorance)
The
past year was good, the new year looks even better.
Go Forward
Wargaming
And Best
Wishes for a great 2019 to my readers!
