Geryk Analysis: Wargaming
Brooski - Columns - Comments - 10/03/05
Another is the speed with which gamers can find balance issues in simple games. That’s because you can play them so many times solo that almost any possible strategy can be tested dozens of times in a short period of time. With board wargames, it might be years before you get a chance to play something ten times. With computer wargames, it might be a week. I probably played a dozen games of Crown of Glory within two weeks of release (granted, I was reviewing it) but there is no way I could play more than one game of The Napoleonic Wars this calendar year. So if the game has some obvious strategy that makes it a cakewalk for one side or the other, that’s going to become obvious pretty fast.
But the biggest obstacle to making simpler computer wargames is that a lot of people don’t like simple games, period. Almost the first thing you’ll read on any official forum where a new historical strategy game has been released is someone asking for a patch to simulate some minor detail, without which the poster asserts the game is worthless. When Crown of Glory was released, someone immediately complained that leaders, while they could be killed in combat, could not be wounded. Then someone suggested that leaders not only be wounded, but have variable convalescence periods in the hospital. Then the world exploded.
This is what computer games do so well – build a world through the inclusion of detail. Unfortunately, if you’re playing a competitive game, you have to account for all this detail in order to have a chance to win. The problem is that a lot of people don’t see computer games as competitive games in the same way they would if they were boardgames. Instead, they’re projects, almost like extended role-playing games that you lose yourself in for hours at a sitting.
I think there’s a good reason for this, which I’m just going to pull out of an old column I wrote in 1998:
When a player loads a computer wargame, his expectation level is extremely high because he doesn't perceive many barriers to achieving what he sees as a "realistic" depiction of a particular subject. Rather than really seeing a "game," the player sees instead a microcosmic re-creation of the battle being presented. All the things that would be present in a "real" battle are expected to appear in the computer game. After all, why shouldn't they? The mechanics necessary to achieve this should be attainable by simply leaving them for the computer to deal with.
I’m pretty sure this is why people immediately post feature requests on a game’s message boards whenever some pet detail of theirs isn’t included: they just see it as something that can be added in a patch with minimal impact on the game, except that the verisimilitude of the game world goes up incrementally in their minds. In a tightly designed game, this kind of fiddling could upset the balance. In most computer games, though, it hardly makes a difference.
I think that says a lot about the current state of game design.
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