There’s probably a whole conversation or in-joke that I’m missing here, but it seems weird to include Next War: Poland and not include Ty Bomba stuff - both of which would be “what if?” games?
Not that I’m complaining - you were very clear on the definition you were using and even owned up to how you weren’t always consistent with the application, so I’m not challenging your conclusions or anything, just trying to understand a bit more.
Was the sticking to “historical wargame” (bar exceptions) definition a deliberate thing to focus the data-set, or do you generally just think wargames have to be historical in order to be wargames?
Thank you again for doing all this though - really cool stuff! Thought a Quartermaster General game would’ve been on the list as I was interested in what your verdict on it would be, but there either wasn’t a 2017 release or it’s not listed in the wargames category. Nevermind!
As you say in your piece, Brooski, 129 is still way more wargames than I can buy or play in a year. Or two years. Or three. How many wargames a year did Avalon Hill release back in the mid to late 70s? One or two? And that was considered “The Golden Age of Wargaming”. From my perspective, we’re enduring a wargame glut right now with a nearly unconscionable number of wargames – strictly defined or not – being put on the market each year.
The difference, as a friend helped me articulate, is degree of speculation. A game that takes an existing (or historical) situation and makes a plausible extrapolation (Warsaw Pact attacked NATO in 1985) is ok. A game that extrapolates the situation out before the game (Soviet Union defeated NATO, now attacking China in 2020) is not.
Yeah, I’m glad to explain! I wanted to be very clear that this was my personal opinion about what was a wargame and what wasn’t, which is why I made sure the file was available for people like @Juan_Raigada who might want to see what happens if you change the definition. It’s totally fine with me - I don’t have any trademark on the word “wargame” or anything :)
Both. I wanted the dataset to be as clear as possible in reflecting what I consider a wargame. And that is very much a product of what I played as a kid and how I grew up thinking about “wargames” versus “fantasy games” and the like. I wouldn’t consider a very complicated game with hexes and counters about the Chinese fighting the Zorians on Zorian III a wargame. Others would. Totally fine.
The thing I was really most interested in directing attention to was all the junk (individual minis, unreleased games) polluting the BGG database. I think we all knew to some extent that this was the case - but at least for me, I didn’t quite realize the extent.
Quartermaster General is a great game! I played it with @tomchick and was impressed by how well it is designed. But it wasn’t a 2017 release so it wasn’t in the database. (It is in the BGG database under “wargames” in 2014.) But it would fail the “wargame” test in my list on the basis of mechanics.
Curious @Brooski , in your article did you mean “Historical/Modern Wargame”? Or just “Wargame”? And are we glued to that wishy washy “means whatever you want it to mean” term because that is the BGG category?
Great stuff. I have no real help around definitions, yours seems as good as anyone’s and as you rightly point out language sort of fails in the detail when it comes to setting boundaries in the creative world, which makes sense as creativity can be about escaping language or more specifically bringing new ideas which may add to our language.
I dont find the numbers high (surprise!) :) But then again I have half a toe in the world of painting and music where the numbers are so high and so niche and yet there is still a hunger for more. And whats great for me is this is a prime time for a new wave of critics and curators.
Indulge me for a moment?
So I went over to deviant art and narrowed my search to most recent landscape paintings. This is the latest one when I looked and it was released a few hours ago.
Now this also is a first time artist according to her/his notes and you know what? I like it. I got something out of this. All I had to do was look into the daily releases. The anon artist calls it “spring landscape”, why? Where does she/he live? is that Australia? How does that tree fit the landscape? Is it unfinished? It seems not, so are we to take the central landscape as a representation or something more? Incidentally I do like her/his colour work of the green to parched yellow. Is this a painting actually about creativity? It reads like that to me , it may just have been a landscape from a first time artist trying to draw what he/she saw. Is the artist a man or woman? What race and age? Does that matter?
I am being half silly but this is the kind of thing that interests me and I would like to see more of in wargames. I like seeing my art “form” (again language as this makes no real sense in the 21st century) evolve and it seems to me small private artists like Lou Coatney working away to a tiny audience is just the kind of thing I want. I also love big budget wargames of course, but I appreciate the small works too.
I dont really have a point here, it just pleased me to muse over what you were doing by counting wargames Bruce, thanks!
I just say “wargame” because (a) another, more specific term is too long, and (b) that’s what the BGG category says. I’m actually not too hung up on definitions: I tend to find playing games much more interesting than trying to taxonomize them. For an interesting stream of logic, I do recommend the video by calandale I linked in the article. Very entertaining. And very calandale - some interesting insights presented through unpredictable digressions.
@Rod_Humble So you’re looking for more info about authorial intent from your wargame designers? I direct you to the authorial fallacy of New Criticism and to Roland Barthes which established decades ago that this is irrelevant ;)
I tried to arrive at some authorial understanding with a designer in a podcast about his work, and it didn’t go too well!
We could also discuss the Philosophical fallacy of Semiotics and Post-Structuralism. But now I must go erase these pollutants from my brain, again. Thanks, Brooski!
I am VERY familiar with Barthes. I have had him rammed down my throat for years (I am looking at you Chris Hecker!). You wont be surprised to learn I find his arguments unpersuasive :)
Eh, anything overdone is crappy, and post-structuralism/deconstruction was overdone by over-eager lit crit grad students for years. But the core of those ideas has some merit. Personaly, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the creator of a text intended, it’s only what people get out of it that matters. I see creative work, or art, as the intersection of creator, artifact/text, and audience, and thus a dynamic not a static thing.
But Derrida and Lacan can suck it; Foucoult is passable in small doses. Of the French, my fave is Baudrillard.
No you wouldn’t. They’d deconstruct the rules text until you were playing a boring Euro. And if you complained, they’d accuse you of hating the “other”.
So I finally finished @Brooski’s podcast with The Zacny on Great War games (the last 20 minutes…it was long!).
So my first game…ever…:
It was name-checked in the podcast (let me give Brooski a flashback: 1 3-3-3, 1 3-2-2, 3 5-7-4’s. 1 0-1-2. Entrenchment level 3.) played it again 2 years ago. God what an unrewarding slug fest. But…I wonder if that’s the reality and PoG, etc., are just giving you window dressing and illusions of fluidity?
You can go East in GoA. After 2 years of slogging, it may pay off. And it might not.
Ah, that off-hand remark on the Garriot’s game thread didn’t escape your steely eyes.
They have been working on it for quite some time. The first time I am aware Joel talked about this publicly was here, a couple years back.
At the moment, we’re working on both War in the East 2 and Steel Tigers, and I’m equally excited by both. War in the East 2 is a continuation of the progress we’ve made with the WitEand WitW system, using the map we created of all of Europe that was used in WitW. Exactly how far we will take this system is unknown. We’d like to be able to ultimately reach a point where we can have games with Soviet, Axis and Allied units all fighting in Europe. Getting a game that allows this starting in 1943 would be easier than starting in 1941, and much easier than starting in 1940 or 1939. At the moment we’re relying on Gary for the AI programming while Pavel is doing 90% of the rest of the programming. I really like the changes we’ve made so far, and think this game will go a long way to providing an even more accurate simulation of the Eastern Front. As for Steel Tigers, we’re working closely with Matrix’s internal development team. It’s really a joint effort as the goal is to be every bit as state of the art with ST as SP was when it was released.
which basically means that they’re using GG’s signature tactical combat from SP as a backend for something which is state of the art. In English, that means using Slitherine’s Archon engine (the same used by Battle Academy 2, Pike and Shot and Field of Glory 2). Development has been going for quite a while, see this job posting from a year ago. That means PBEM++, nice graphics and more modern UI.
What I can publicly say is that GG is fully engaged with Steel Tigers and enjoying it very much. In terms of systems and mechanics, I guess that we will be seeing a evolution/refactoring of the old Steel Panthers tactical engine. Or if you want, the same old panther dressing up as a tiger :)
