As a new MWAN reader (cover to cover since issue #125), I've read with fascination the theoretical arguments about wargaming and war simulations, in issues 126 through 130. The debate seems to be between whether or not wargaming is more of a simulation or a game, while recognizing the reality that a game designer must compromise in certain areas in order to succeed. In the end it's the reality of trade offs and compromise that prevent a wargame from becoming an "absolute" simulation of war. But that does not mean that a wargame, of whatever complexity, cannot simulate an aspect of war. I would dare say that every game designer sets out with the intent to simulate some aspect of war or a particular battle that he feels is important. Sometimes his motivation is that another designer has not captured an aspect of battle he feels is important.
All wargames are simulations - and they are games - it's just a matter of degree; some are very abstract while others go into more detail in an effort to simulate a particular era or battle. Some wargames are better than others at achieving a degree of realism, but just as Carl von Clausewitz differentiated between "absolute war" and "real war" I believe we need to do the same regarding wargames. In the end, just as Clausewitz found that "real war" is limited and that the political objective determines the amount of effort required, I believe it's better to view "simulation" on a sliding scale, driven by the game designer's objectives, with the understanding that you cannot achieve an "absolute" simulation that truly represents real war or a battle.
"ABSOLUTE SIMULATIONS" AND WARGAMES
Just as Clausewitz said that "absolute war" is unobtainable and a "logical fantasy" so it's impossible for there to be an "absolute simulation." Sam Mustafa drove home that point in "Wargame Design is an Art, Not a Science: A Tale of Woe" (MWAN #130). Mustafa writes of poor Winston Wargamer, "who has spent four years in the dungeon-like archival section of the library," in his effort to develop, "a Simulation, not a game." In Mustafa's story, Winston believes that, "You can't just make-believe when you design a simulation. Things have to be based firmly in fact. That means that -just as in the real world - certain things happen in a certain order, and take certain amounts of time to happen." With the help of his wargaming buddies our poor hero goes on to find out he has to compromise his objectives as he realizes he is constrained by the nature of wargaming and that each compromise leads to new inconsistencies. In the end the chastened game designer slinks from the wargames club. (Hmm...there's a conceptual parallel here between political goals and available means.)
Winston Wargamer started with the desire to develop a simulation - as specifically opposed to a game - and failed. What Winston failed to realize is that an "absolute simulation" is no more possible than Clausewitz's "absolute war."
There are five major reasons why an absolute simulation is not possible and why compromise is required, thus putting one on the slippery path to the dreaded "game." First and most obvious, so I won't dwell on it, wargames are not real war. Real people don't die nor do any of the other hundreds of things that make real war so disagreeable happen.
Second the number of variables that come together in real war when combined with their relationship to one another is tremendous. (I'm tempted to say infinite, but I haven't actually tried counting the permutations.) Just at the strategic level Professor Colin S. Gray has identified seventeen interactive strategic dimensions that provide the strategic context for battle, much less the number of variables that exist at the tactical and operational levels of war - which, by the way, not only interact with each other, but within the context of, and are affected by, those above, below, and on the same plane as that which our miniature battles occur. Oh, and did I mention the technical impact of different weapons systems or applications?
This leads to the third reason an "absolute" simulation is impossible to obtain. Any wargame represents an action that occurs at a particular point in time, without context. This is true whether or not the battle is fictional, developed purely for the tabletop, or if you're refighting Gettysburg in an attempt to demonstrate that Lee could have won. In any case the strategic, social, economic, cultural, military, and political (and more) context of the battle cannot be replicated although an attempt is often made to consider these factors at some level using the method of "victory points." Victory points are often assigned for obtaining specific objectives and/or for accounting for casualties. After all, battles are fought for some purpose, even if it's only to destroy the other guy at a minimum loss to you. But a battle has context beyond what we are capable of dealing with on the wargames table.
Fourth, war is nonlinear whereas wargames are linear. Clausewitz was the first to seriously recognize that chance and friction are the nature of war, and that these two factors also prevent "absolute war." The idea of nonlinearity in war was given a boost by the field of science when James Gleick's Chaos was published in 1988, and became a bestseller. More recently, Barry D. Watts's Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, specifically examined these issues because of a recent belief in military circles that technology can eliminate friction from war. Without going into the details, the theory, and the reality of war in Iraq, demonstrates there are unknown variables at play and that their interactive relationships to each other cannot be quantified. Yet in order for us to wargarne we quantify specified variables all the time, with a roll of the dice representing friction and chance. Different wargames identify different variables, and a different number of variables, in their calculations. For example, Fire and Fury, uses six variables on the maneuver table and seventeen on the close combat table, with a die roll (chance) to determine the results. Chess, on the other hand, does not allow for any variables nor does it allow for chance, which means it doesn't account for real war's concepts of friction, chance, and moral (human) factors. If I want to move a pawn to a legal square, I can move it, darn it! I'll never find the pawn dragging his heals or refusing to move when I want him to.
The last reason a wargame cannot be an absolute simulation is because of the constraints of wargaming itself. For example, whereas in the real world war is fought using a oneto-one scale of men, equipment, time, and terrain a wargame is constrained in one or more of those areas. In skirmish wargames, where one figure equals one man, the battle is constrained by the distance allowed by the gaming area and the time each action represents. (Note that I don't include "fun" or "enjoyable" as a factor in the nature of wargames. Although it may be a requirement for the commercial side of wargames, it is not a requirement for the military's. Besides, I've seen plenty of people who think it's fun to play DBM instead of Warhammer Ancient Battles - we all have differing ideas on what is meant by enjoyable.)
OTHER FACTORS THAT AFFECT OUR SIMULATIONS
THE QUESTION You ASK DEFINES THE ANSWERS You FIND.
In historical research you find that the answer you get often depends on the question you ask. Every time you highlight a quote in a book or article you're selectively choosing what's significant to you at that time. Later, you could go back to the same source and see the data in a different light, depending on the question. Historian David Hackett Fischer pointed out that "Every true historical statement is an answer to a question which a historian has asked. Not to The Question. Not to questions about everything. But to questions about something." This is an important concept because answering a specific question leads you to pursue specific information in a way that answers the question. It's also important because it means that by answering that question you're arriving at some type of a correct answer.
This holds true for game developer because the environment he creates depends on the aspect of war on which he wants to focus. The question a designer asks (the aspect he wants to focus on) can influence the selected facts because he will limit his research to answering a particular question. If a designer wants to create a rules set that emphasizes command and control (C2) at the tactical level of war he will have a different view of his sources and the data he collects than the designer who focuses on C2 at the operationallevel. And both of them may limit the technical differences between the Panzer V and the Sherman to an abstraction. At the same time if a designer wants to focus on the relative merits of the Panzer V vs. the Sherman, he will develop a different kind of game entirely; one that may not even include C2 as a factor.
This is why an understanding of the game designer's purpose or objective is so important. As a wargamer I have certain preferences which, like the designer's, are a reflection of my own experiences, prejudices, and desires. For many reasons I tend to prefer wargames that are fought at the brigade level or higher, and that are relatively easy to play, hence my preference for games such as Fire and Fury (ACW), Blitzkrieg Commander (WWII), Grand Armee (Napoleonic), and Regiment of Foote (ECW). That doesn't mean that I don't own and play tactical-level games, such as Shako (Napoleonic), The Sword and the Flame (Colonial), Flames of War (WWII), or Warhammer Ancient Battles only that each game has a different intent, a different feel, and a different level of "realism" than the other. In fact, one of the first things I do when reviewing a new set of rules is to read the game designer's notes, if available, and the introduction, and then I skim the C2, movement, and fire rules in order to get a feel for the level of war portrayed and the designer's focus and purpose. Certainly the purpose behind Scotty Boden's Empire V and the megagame described in "Impressionistic Wargaming: The Rules Behind a Mega-Game" (MWAN #128) are different - justifiably so. And understanding the differing purposes lets you know why a game was designed the way it was, and let's the user know whether or not it fits his needs or desires.
THE DESIGNER INFLUENCES THE RESULTS
Once a game designer gathers his facts it's not enough to document their existence. He must translate them into game terms, which means he must analyze the data. It's not the existence of a fact that's important, but its use. One can document a fact, but unless the fact is put to use in some way, "so what?" That "so what" factor is developed via his interpretation of the available data.
A major factor in selecting and interpreting data is the designer's own perspective. No researcher can approach a given problem or question in a vacuum; he brings with him personal assumptions, prejudices, and experiences which create a filter through which he views the world. Historian E. H. Carr pointed out that, "When we attempt to answer the question, What is History?, our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question what view we take of the society in which we live."
What this means is that the facts we select, and the interpretation of those facts, is colored by our own experience, desires, and even our philosophical beliefs. We can strive to be as objective as possible, but in the end if we believe Robert E. Lee was a great general, our interpretation will reflect that; on the other hand if we realize the U. S. Grant outmatched Lee operationally and strategically, that will be reflected in any wargames comparative leadership factor. Another good example of a game designer's interpretation of what's important is reflected in the mini-debate between Andrew J. Franke ("Why Must I be an Idiot: A Question to Game Designers" (MWAN #128)) and Mustafa's reply ("Who Sez Yer General's Stoopid?" (MWAN#129)).
CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE FROM BATTLE To BATTLE AND WAR To WAR
Unless you're developing a game based on a particular battle, your understanding of any particular factor will vary. The same set of circumstances, which led to a particular result, will not be duplicated from battle to battle or from war to war. For example, one regiment may do well in one battle and not in another. This is what makes the study of military history, and its applicability, both controversial and interesting.
In The Lessons of History military historian Michael Howard wrote that, "the unique quality of an experience that resulted from circumstances that would never, that could never, be precisely replicated," and that history, "whatever its value in educating the judgement, teaches no `lessons'," Despite Howard's specific objections to the idea of history being used to teach lessons, he does recognize that, "a knowledge of the past is a prerequisite to an understanding of the present; an understanding equally necessary to the elites who conduct the business of the state and the electorate to whom they are responsible." In "The Use and Abuse of Military History" Howard points out that this does not make the use of military history useless, just that it is grounds for caution: "Given all these academic caveats, war is nonetheless a distinct and repetitive form of human behavior."
IN CONCLUSION: WARGAMES AS SIMULATIONS
Despite his reservations Howard said that understanding can be acquired if you study military history in depth, width, and in context. This advice certainly holds true when developing a wargame. Because the same set of historical circumstances, as analyzed by game designers, only occurred at a particular point in time, the more familiar we are with a variety of battles and wars, and even competing interpretations of the same, the better our understanding will be. Brent Nosworthy, who has spent years delving into the details of tactics, acknowledges this in The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience in the Civil War when he writes that, "It is impossible to formulate hard and fast rules about how soldiers perform under various combat conditions, and unfortunately, there are no genuine universals which predict unerringly how everyone will react to a particular situation. Nevertheless, one can still identify general trends."
It is this concept that allows wargames to be simulations at varying levels of reality or, to paraphrase Clausewitz, "real" vs. "absolute" simulation. Just as a historian conducts research in response to a specific question, a game designer creates a wargame to focus on some aspect of war that he feels is important - this is his purpose or (political) objective for the game. It is this purpose or objective that drives the amount of "simulation" required for any one game. As Tim Kubik noted, the original professional development of wargames in Prussia was not to simulate battles, "but to simulate the staff-work that was associated with planning the `modern' battles of the nineteenth and early twentieth century." ("Once More into the Breach ... An Historical Analysis of Wargaming as a Simulation" (MWAN #129)) As I mentioned earlier, "fun" is not necessarily a factor of wargames, although it's critical if you're trying to sell it.
We need to accept the fact that wargames will never be "absolute" in their ability to simulate real war, but they can simulate aspects of war as identified by the game designer's objectives. If I want to simulate the C2 aspects of the American Civil War I can develop a game with that focus, but I will have to trade off other aspects that detract from my goal. At the same time, my sliding scale of simulation will move depending on whether or not I'm looking at the Union or Confederate side, whether or not I'm looking at a particular battle, or whether or not I'm looking at a particular general. If my goal is for someone to arrive at some understanding as to the difficulties of command in the Civil War I can communicate that understanding via a wargame, but for all the reasons noted above, I'll never achieve an "absolute" understanding.
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