| Title | War in the East: race to the Finnish |
| Author | Bruce Geryk |
| Posted in | Game diaries |
| When | April 14, 2011 |
Finland's involvement in World War II includes one of the great David vs. Goliath stories of all time..
Read the full articleWith this diary I finally understand the points you're trying to make about wargames. I read Bill's Winter Fire that includes enough history of the Finnish conflict for me to understand the challenge of implementing that in a game.
There is, of course, the tried and true "give up VPs in exchange for ahistorical latitude" route, but I appreciate that would trip all sorts of "ahistorical excursion into fantasyland" alarms for some people.
In fairness, conquering the world as Wurttemburg in EUis hard. I'm generally satisfied if i can either form Germany or unite the Holy Roman Empire.
I'm curious about your thoughts on Hearts of Iron 3. It's clearly a strategy game, but seems (to my untrained eye) to share a lot in common with wargames. I'm currently waiting for the next version of a mod for it called the Historical Plausibility project to be done before I go back to it. It does exactly what the name suggests (in theory, I haven't tried it yet).
Bruce great illustration of the balance between game play including all relevant factors and how well do you have the game model those factors and still have an interesting game.
Jesus, how do you find the time? Do you dictate these things while you're knitting neurons? Great stuff, keep 'em coming!
This is really a great article. I love that Qt3 can mix the absurd with really thought-provoking stuff like this.
Fascinating article.
Thanks guys. The answer to the question about Hearts of Iron 3 is too involved to put in the comments (or type on my phone) but the short version is that its fundamental design is that of a strategy game with historical parameters, rather than a wargame. I'll add this to the list of articles I want to write, along with the thoughts on Panther Games' productions. Thanks for reading this stuff.
Great articles, keep them coming. I wonder how many people bought the game after reading your articles (like me)? Authors of the game should offer you some money :-)
I had my eyes on the game last year, then I forgot about it. Last week when I was purchasing another game on matrix games, I started thinking "what was that game I was interested in last year"? Soon I found WitE on published games list, and went to check reviews - did it turn good or bad? Link to your article was first or second from the top. I started reading it and halfway down the first article I was already opening a new tab in the browser to purchase it :-)
It's now 4 days later, and Reinhardt's panzers have already captured Riga on turn 1 of grand campaign :-) I have also played the tutorial, read manual 3 times and played Road to Minsk scenario twice.
Seriously, Bruce, these pieces are just terrific. Long-form writing mixing wargaming, history, and game design -- where else can you go to get that? Thanks so much.
Damn I'm glad you still make time to write, Dr. Geryk.
1971 days old, but this deserves a bump because I do like the Finns and their performance in 1939 was pretty awesome.