Can War be a Game?

An article in Monday's Providence (Rhode Island) Journal describes the anger felt by members of the Nipmuc and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes regarding the forthcoming Multiman Publishing game, King Philip's War. King Philip's War (also known as Metacom's War) was a series of battles between English colonists and a group of Native American tribes during 1675-1676. "King Philip" was the nickname given to the leader of the Native American tribes.

I know that I'm not alone among wargamers in that (more than once) I've been a little embarrassed describing my hobby to non-gamers. Most non-wargamers are used to games being about making money, searching for treasure, building cities or traveling across the globe. In short, any violence (such as that found in Clue or Risk) is very abstract and/or cartoonish.

For most folks, games are either tests of abstract thinking skills with little or no theme (such as in chess) or a thematic means of escape (such as in Monopoly). Wargames are not abstract -- they clearly have a theme. But it's hard for most people to understand how a theme based upon death and destruction might provide escape for anyone other than a psychopath. I don't think that I'm a psychopath, but I do understand the confusion they have.

So, what is the appeal of wargaming? I've met a few wargamers over the years who don't notice the theme -- and view wargames as very complex versions of chess. But 99% of the wargamers I've met (in person and online) have two things in common: (1) they enjoy history, and (2) they enjoy thinking about how different decisions might have caused events to unfold differently. Thus, most wargamers enjoy wargames (such as GMT's Here I Stand) and other games ( such as Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium) that combine the battles with diplomacy, research and resource management.

Wars and battles have always made for fascinating turning points in history. So it's natural that history buffs often become wargamers (and visa versa). A good historical boardgame (as some wargamers prefer to call them, in large part, I suppose, because it sounds less violent) can take you back -- or even better, put you in the role of Lincoln, Grant or Lee during the American Civil War; Henry VIII, Charles V or Martin Luther during the Reformation; or Ike, Patton or (yes, even) Hitler during World War II. Facing the decisions they faced doesn't force you to share their beliefs. (I find it amusing that my son Andrew loves his Jesuit high school, yet enjoys playing the Protestants in Here I Stand.)

So what do I think of the unhappy Native American tribes? I think much of their confusion sits in the convential use of the word "game." In normal usage, a "game" is trivial. A game depicting King Philip's War might be understood to trivialize an important time in their histories. My guess is, however, that the "game" will introduce several hundred people to that important time, and (far from trivilizing their tribes) it will generate new-found respect. But I understand their confusion -- I sometimes feel it myself.

Not Bad in the Abstract

Patrick beat me at Hive this afternoon. He's getting very good at the game, and I'm surprised how much I like it, given that it's an abstract strategy game.

In game theory, an abstract strategy game is a game with no chance and perfect information. No chance eliminates any games with suffled cards or dice. Perfect information means that nothing is hidden -- both (all) players know where all of the pieces are. Examples of games with no chance but hidden information would be Battleship and Stratego. Chess, checkers and Go would be good examples of abstract strategy games -- having no chance and perfect information.

Why don't I like abstract strategy games? I think that the main reason is that I have a really bad memory, which seems to be a requirement for being a strong player. First, good players need to memorize standard openings and defenses. I probably could do this, but that wouldn't solve the mid-game problem. At some point in the middle of any abstract strategy game, players need to start analyzing potential moves. Anyone who's played chess knows the process: "If I move my knight here, he could move his queen there, in which case I could move my pawn forward. Or if he moves his bishop over there, I could counter with my bishop taking his knight." I suppose that I could "train" my brain to be better, but I'm generally lost after three levels of recursion, and can rarely remember which move I started the analysis with. The Wikipedia entry on Abstract Strategy Games suggests that chess has 10^123 possible board situations. Checkers is much easier, only having on the order of 10^31 possibilities. I am proud of the fact that at least I'm willing to admit that it's my mental shortcomings that sour me on these games, unlike many who want to write off the games themselves as being uninteresting. Since Hive only has 20 pieces (10 on each side), the mid game seems more managable to me. I still lose, but at least I don't have a headache at the end of the game.

A secondary reason is that most abstract strategy games lack a theme. (As a side note, Steve Krebs argues at BoardGameGeek that when gamers use the term "theme," what they really mean is "setting." I think he's right.) I enjoy learning something about a topic I'm interested in when I play a game. If I'm playing something from the Ticket to Ride series, I won't really learn anything about running a train network, but I do learn some geography from the mapboard. On the opposite end, I've learned a lot of history from the GMT card driven games, such as The Napoleonic Wars and Here I Stand. I remember that I wasn't through my very first turn playing Japan in a game of Axis and Allies (in 1985) when I understood the strategic importance of the Solomon Islands (and thus Guadalcanal). Checkers and Go have no pretense of a theme, and it would be a real stretch to argue that chess in any way teaches about military tactics. As it is, Hive has no real theme; that is players learn nothing about insects.

So, who is Hive good for? It's good if you want an abstract strategy game with fairly nice pieces, a short playing time and few enough pieces that someone with a bad memory can enjoy it.

iPhone games

Gillian and I picked up our new iPhones today, so I thought it would be a good time to write about a few of the games that I have on my iPod Touch (and which I'll add to my iPhone this weekend). The definitive list was created by Alexander Zhang at BoardGameGeek. As of today there are 61 games on the list.

One of my most-played is a Risk-like game (shown above) called Lux. I also have several traditional games like chess, checkers, spades and solitaire. Patrick plays a Farkle-like game called 10,000 Lite, and Gillian's favorite is a word game called Word-Fu.

There are a couple of popular board games that I've never tried that have inexpensive apps. I'm thinking of downloading them just to try them out. These include a Blokus clone called Kibosh, Zooloretto and Hive.

Finally, there are a number of dice-rolling apps. Users can select the number of dice (and even the number of sides) and watch the virtual dice roll.