Computer + Video Games - Commodore Is Awesome

STATE Of WAH although it has yet to be
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British software houses have a poor reputation when it
comes to producing war games, according to Dr
Stephen Badsey, C VG's own expert. Americans and
Australians do it better. So stiffen your upper lip before
reading Dr Badsey's challenging views on the state of
computerised kriegspiel —that's war play. He also
reviews the latest war games available.
War isn't a game,
p you know!" I
suppose l that everyone who
says that a really believes he
thought yof
it himself.
Certainly, i the brilliant
German n officer who invented
the kriegspiel g (war-play or wargame)
wtraining
system over a
hundred a and Wily years ago
had to put up with such
comments.
r
He often wished that
g
he had called the kriegspiel
something
a
else.
But it mis
quite true that war is
not a game. e Neither is war a
book, or s a film or a television
programme. ? All these are ways
of understanding war, and short
of taking part in the same war
(courtesy of a time machine)
they are the only ways we have.
The justification for calling a
computer program a wargame,
rather than a fantasy or
adventure game, is that it tries
to simulate the problems and
perspectives of war in one
place and time. What is
worrying is that, at the moment,
British commercial games
houses have a poor reputation
for doing this. Certainly, most
serious wargamers that I know
who use computers usually buy
imports (often American) in
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preference to British material. I
hope this article might inspire
someone to try to change this.
The big advantage of a
wargame over other methods of
understanding war is that it
makes possible the "what Ill",
exploring the chances of what
might happen. The challenge of
a wargame, to its designer, is to
take an existing event and
separate the constants from the
variables, showing what might
have been different. Few
people really believe that
everything in history had to
happen exactly as it did, but
the current of history is a
powerful force, and to divert it
can take considerable effort
What would the history of
Europe have been without
Napoleon? Excellent wargames
have been fought exploring
such ideas as the Germans
attacking Moscow, not
Stalingrad, in 1942, or the
Warsaw Pact invading western
Europe in 1985. As long as it is
consistent the data for such
bathes can even be entirely
fictional. The Starship Enterprise
may confront three Klingon
warships in battle with great
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realism so long as it does not
change its power plant and
armory hall-way through the
game.
What this means is that a
good wargame must be "many
branched", offering the player
the chance to explore his own
ideas about a historical event.
For a computer wargame this
means haying more than one
scenario, and allowing as many
changes in composition of force
and circumstances as possible,
An ideal wargames program
would be one which allowed
the player to design his own
game, in the same way that a
graphics package enables a
non•specialist to draw.
Something like this idea is
already aballable to a limited
extent in such games as
Bottlefrort (reviewed in this
issue) but a complete package
would cover, say, land
operations from divisional to
army group level in any theatre
of World War Two. This would
surely be a best-seller among
wargames. Any offers?
The completely fictitious
wargame is in tact quite well
known to board-garners,
touched by computer games
firms. About ten years ago SPI
produced a boardgame called
Dixie. This was based on the
idea of the South winning the
American Civil War, and
featured a re-match between
the Union and Confederacy
with light tanks and aircraft in
the early 1930s. All the
background information came
from real studies of tank warfare
at the time.
Computer wargamers are
familiar with 'World War Three"
games based on a similar
mixture of extrapolation and
opinions — hopes? — as to
what is likely to happen. lithe
World War Three that never
happened can be put onto
computer why not other wars
that never happened as well?
In every battle there ore
different viewpoints, from the
commander-in-chief to the men
at the sharp end, and some of
these viewpoints are a lot easier
to translate into computer terms
than others. It is most easy it the
simulation depends upon
machines, the performances of
which can readily be reduced
to numbers.
Probably for this reason, the
most successful form of
computer wargame at the
moment is the aerial combat
flight simulator. Flying an
aircraft requires constant
attention — you just can't stop
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