So, all I wanted to say was that while I agree with you that nostalgia for hexes and chits isn’t going to keep wargames going into the next generation, there are plenty of new gamers who like actual hexes and chits. Because, c’mon - hexes and chits are a great way to represent historical battles.
I don’t see the computer as an “ultimate simulation box” because I don’t see the game’s purpose being a hyper-realistic simulation of real-life factors in the most quantitative way possible. Games exist as imaginative diversions in which – for many people – the explicit representation of historical factors actually enhances the experience when compared to burying them in “under the hood” detail and calculations. Sure, some people like hyperrelational sandboxes like CMANO because of how they create the illusion of a fully encapsulated reality, but others enjoy games in which mastery of explicitly depicted game elements (combat results tables with limited and clear possible outcomes, movement and combat values that are generally integers and which can be assessed in one’s head) can be achieved without having to leave unknown machinations to some invisible game engine.
“Model terrain” for what purpose? To assess the vulnerability of a NATO brigade group in the Baltics so I can make policy decisions? Maybe, or maybe not. In any case, that’s not what I’m trying to do. Very often, they are a reasonable and useful way of regularizing and integrating rules about spotting, movement, and combat in a way that allows people to satisfy their interest in history while also engaing their autism-spectrum level of interaction with physical objects or their digital representation. There is a group of people for whom seeing multicolored counters with numbers on them lined up on a hex grid map is a rapturous moment, and they were not all born between 1946 and 1972. I have seen plenty of younger gamers appreciate the classic tabletop representation of historical games, because that combination of historical interest and object-order obsession is not just the result of some post-war gaseous cloud of DNA-altering chemicals that sat low over the US and the UK in the latter half of the 20th century causing the birth defect “eventual wargamer.” It’s a personality type. Not as prevalent as some others, but it exists, and just like better “family” boardgames made it clear that there is something about picking up little pieces of wood and moving them around on a board that resonates with a lot of people, better wargames have shown that you can hook younger gamers on this archaic representational form called “chits and hexes” just by making the games better.
I think the biggest problem with computer wargames right now is that there are few good designers working, so what you get seems like “hex nostalgia” because that’s what it mimics: people who are software developers put some data together, make a map, assign values to counters, and that’s a “game.” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Shenandoah Studio’s initial success was with a game designed by John Butterfield, one of the two or three best wargame designers to ever live. And look how much that cost to make! Since then, Butterfield has made one of the best solitaire wargames ever (Enemy Action: Ardennes) and is working on two separate solitaire wargame systems that are significantly better than most things that have gone before them. Cost to make? One one-thousandth of what it took to make Battle of the Bulge. Why invest in digital, then?
I started out in boardgames, got excited by the possibilities of computer wargames, and then swung back pretty hard to boardgames for various reasons, including that given how much I work, I would rather spend free time with friends over a board than with myself in front of a computer screen. Others would rather do the opposite, which is fine. But I suspect that the major obstacle to success in either realm is the presence of good design. Computer wargames just don’t have it right now. Board wargames do. I don’t know when that is going to change.
