Workmanlike (adj) worthy of a skilled workman, skillful -- Webster's 2nd American Dictionary and taped to Jay Nelson's office door at SPI. For the last nine years. my labors have included the craft of designing wargames In that time, I gained some familiarity with the craft, its practitioners' and their values, their perceptions, and their methods, the "gear and tackle and trim" of the craft. Craft and craftsman can draw strength and value from each other The great achievers of the Middle Ages were the anonymous craftsmen who wrought the great cathedrals -- symbols for all the centuries from the re-awakening of Europe to the dusk ot the modern age. Their work still retains its power, even in a culture of greater fears and lesser faith. It may be that later civilizations will look not to our arts but at our crafts. Perhaps our airplanes and our suspension bridges will be our cathedrals -- our message And, perhaps an argument might be made that a little of that message, that animate force is present in our work. This may sound bombastic at best or insane at worst: yet if there is no substance beyond the cardboard counter. we are all wasting our time and should be building model airplanes or seeking gainful employment. Who are the people who bnog you these games? A wide and diverse group including musicians, actors. photographers artists scholars, lawyers and even a few businessmen At OSG, Kevin Zucker knows as much about Mahler as he does about Napoleon the has just finished a piano-transcription of the unfinished Tenth Symphony). Jay Nelson is an accomplished actor having played the lead in Ashes in Boston and in e e cumming's in New York. Tony Merridy is a photographer previously having been a Green Beret and a jet engine mechanic just to pick three at random. Why do they spend their time and effort in a field that yields little financial reward that promises but hard hours and frustration in the name of a creation that learned society often rejects as childish or incomprehensible? What attracts these people is the craft? And craft is the appropriate word. It carries with it not only connotations of sleight of hand but of something deeper more mysterious, such as the craft of the medieval guilds with their ntuals, linked with their own fanatical pride in their work. If we perform our tricks correctly we can transport you to another place to tho bivouac at the Emperor on the banks cf the Elster. The spires of Bach's St Thomas Church rising in the distance. If we don't pull it off, you don't leave your living room--instead of leading brigades and divisions across the green fields of saxony--you're stuck pushing cardboard across a playing board. Of course, not every game can create this sort of response from every player. Players need imagination too, and imagination is one commodity in short supply in 1979. But we owe it a try. We owe it to ourselves. Game designers have the tools to create some thing dynamic that is alive. that can turn you from a passive recipient into an active participant. Here our aim has been shared by singers, story tellers and painters since the dim, distant. dawnings of the human consciousness, to involve the listener, or reader, or viewer to make him take part in this simulated experience. Potential There is a potential for these games to be more than they have been to date. OSG is aware that we may well have been only scratching the surface of our medium for all these years. I remember Kevin Zucker's repeated references to Hesse's Glass Bead Game in Wargame Design and his Feedback proposals. Having overcome my natural suspicion that this was all cocktail party intellectualizing, it started to dawn on me that perhaps these games can be more than they have been. Perhaps the limitations are in their subject matter. There is little reason why our games must be limited to war even if for the present it remains our pnmary focus. There are the ever-revolving techniques to bring players to the banks of the Elster to prevent him from being reduced to a toter of figures, a bleary-eyed clerk a babu, a scrivener. Again, here OSG is just starting to work to experiment--to attempt. It is much easier to praise in general than specific. The games of OSG will point to the not uncommon flaws and limitations in the various games and say that they are no more than we get from any othor company But if the skill of the craftsman cannot always be to all tastes, at least here we can see an inkling of awareness of a willingness to try new avenues This magazine for example could easily have imitated either Moves, The General, or The Grenadier -- all are examples of how a game company can present a good magazine, but the first issue of WD looked to the future and philosophy of gaming rather than to an operational analysis of this or that game. Whether OSG succeeds or fails depends upon your judgment. My own mind is still not decided. We know what you want from the game design--although there is too often a gap between that and what you get. But what do the game designers receive that impels lawyers to forsake their beefs and musicians their scores to create these 'games?' It certainly isn't money. One of the causes of the widespread disaffection amongst the Research and Development Staff at SPI is that the way the department is managed hinders the very creative process that the games need. Doing the best he is capable of is often disadvantageous to the designer because his superiors are primarily concerned with the scheduling and budgeting. The management perceives the game designers and developers as creating not something of lasting value, but of transient marketability. If a game designer spends time to really research his topic, he risks overrunning his budget and time. If he wishes to attempt innovation, or a thorough treatment, he does so, under the newly instituted system, only to his potential detriment. Pay should not be based solely on productivity at the expense of creativity. Quit The people who designed your favorite SPI games were in all probability forced to quit, because they put in the time and effort they considered necessary to the product. This problem is going to be compounded in the future when more and more games are designed with the designer being paid a flat sum for what he produces, and this will put a premium on turning the product around quickly and doing another. Any additional research any care, any perception above the minimum is simply money taken out of his own pocket. The designer must try and keep the game within is artificial limits for if he tries to do more, he will end up working long hours for little pay. The names of the people who have left or will leave SPI soon in dissatisfaction with this system reads like a Who's Who of Game Design: Tom Walczyk. Dave Werden. Joe Balkoski, Brent Nosworthy, Marty Goldberger, myself, and so on. If SPI games were good in past years. as many of them weren, it was because people like these took part in the fellowship of the craft to strive for greater achievement to find pleasure and self affirmation in their worth. This was done in the face of knowledge that second-best was often considered good enough. and that success would as likely bring scorn as praise. SPI has brought us some of the best games ever designed. They claim that their new system means there will be "no more South Africas." What they refuse to see that there will be no more Air War nor Wellington's Victory. The people who designed those games wanted to do the best they could. For Game Designers are a commmunity of value-sharers, withcommon aims,perhaps, one might argue, the same sacrement. That is why they are leaving SPI. Back to Wargame Design Vol. 1 Nr. 2 Table of Contents Back to Wargame Design List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1979 by Operational Studies Group. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com