It was very gracious of Bill Haggart to send me a draft of his original article on "wargames categories" for MWAN 125, and invite a rebuttal. I did so, sending it to him in that same spirit of fair play, and we struck up a two or three-week email exchange and debate. I was a bit surprised to find that Bill had then ambushed me with two more rebuttals-to-the-rebuttal-andemails, appearing in the same issue. So, in thatsame spirit (it is Pearl Harbor Day, as I write this), I'm ambushing him with this, and I promise it will be my last words on the subject. I should begin by saying that I don't have any problem with Bill or anybody else inventing game categories and labels and applying them to everybody's games. I just don't think anything would come of it, other than giving people one more thing to argue about, which is allegedly the opposite of what Bill wants. The Game Category Chieftains could mandate whatever they like, but if game designers and players ever agreed on it, much less adhered to it... we'll, I'd buy Bill's dinner at that restaurant he keeps talking about. I used to be a semi-professional musician. Music is certainly something that has categories imposed by self-proclaimed authorities, plus producers and promoters. Commercial radio is, after all, organized by "format." But as many, many musicians who perform their own original music could tell you, the hardest question in the world to answer is: "What kind of music do you play?" Well... I play my own original music. "What does it sound like?" Ummm... (and then you usually have to offer a couple of names of artists who other people have told you sound something like you.) Most original creations don't fit formats. In fact, in music, writing, and the arts, formats exist precisely for the purpose of organizing un-original creations. Caveat: the ancient Greeks, the world's first art critics, did actually believe that art could be objectively measured and categorized. But they also believed that art's job was to represent a very specific ideal of perfection which was never supposed to change. They obviously didn't read a lot of wargame rulebooks. (Every record label has to have a sultry teen diva, a patriotic country hunk, a dangerous rapper, and so on.) Categories are useful for arranging mass-produced things that fit the formats. They're usually irrelevant to the people who create something truly new. Bill claims that categorization will advance the hobby by encouraging more "mature" discussions and then more original and innovative game designs. If it's originality he's after, then the last thing he should want is a set of limiting criteria. I'm still waiting for Bill to design - or even describe - one of these next-generation games that demonstrates more "maturity" than the current crop of offerings in the wargame marketplace. I've heard him analyze what he doesn't like; now I want to see his proposed alternatives. Bill likes the analogy of the menu in the restaurant. He argues that the categories of items make a menu faster and easier to use and thus enhance the experience of dining at a restaurant. Of course I can't deny that they might make it easier to find the items you want, but that's about all a menu can do to enhance your dining experience. The categories on the menu don't make you want a salad instead of a soup: you came into the restaurant with your food preferences already formed and your appetite and cravings already present. And the menu certainly doesn't make your meal taste any better. You'll enjoy your meal based entirely on your tastes and preferences, which are quite idiosyncratic. Thus also with wargames. Sure, Bill's categories, if they ever came to be, might represent a marginal efficiency improvement in game shopping. But they would have no effect whatever on game play, design, or enjoyment, any more than a chef at a restaurant would decide how to cook based on the categories on a menu. (And the very finest restaurants don't have menus at all; they might have a short list of items that the chef has decided to create for that night. That doesn't keep me from coming back or enjoying the experience of dining there.) I get a lot of emails from people interested in my game Grande Armee. They've gone to the website, where I've described the game's basic concepts. But they want more information. They want experiential information like, "How, exactly, does a unit move?" or "How is combat resolved?" or "How much detail do you get into, regarding command structure?" These questions can't be answered by any set of game categories; I can't say, "This is a Representational Non-Traditional Historical Wargame," and expect them to have any more comprehension or be any closer to wanting to buy the game. Even if there was a matrix of three billion categories for each game, there's just no substitute for experience. To understand the game, they'll have to play it. And then the final and most important judgment will be: "Did your experience feel right to you?" If Yes, you'll buy the game and be happy with it. If No, you won't. Before I abandon the food metaphor, I think I'll close with a tasty Zen parable: A professor decides to visit a famous Zen Master. The professor trudges up the mountain to the remote hut where the Zen Master lives (they always live on remote mountaintops), and the Master receives him warmly and invites him in for tea. As they sit and watch the kettle boiling, the Zen Master suddenly asks, "So tell me, Professor, what is tea?" The professor immediately fires off an empirical explanation of the components of tea: hot water, dried tea leaves, a strainer, and so on. He emphasizes the chemical properties of tea, and the way it's made and served. The Zen Master shakes his head sadly. The professor obviously is very far from enlightenment. His explanation might be categorically correct, but it does absolutely nothing to capture the essence of tea, and wouldn't do much good to explain tea to somebody who's never had it before. How do you understand the taste, the smell, the sensations of tea? And aren't these things the most important aspects of the meaning of tea? In order to understand tea you must experience it, and your experience will be different from another person's. "The answer to the question `What is tea?'" the Zen Master says, "is: Drink the Tea." Back to MWAN # 127 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com