History of War Games 

History of war games

History

War games have not existed in the past the idea of battle planning is relatively recent. The very early form of war gaming can be seen in the game chaturanga the ancestor to chess. This game was played in india in the 7^th century. Previous games developed in china and other regions of the world focused more on the use of game pieces to manipulate territory. Chaturanga was the first game to incorporate the use of vocabulary of war.  The pieces used in chaturanga represented foot soldiers, elephants and also chariots etc. these pieces moved on the board much like the modern chess. The development in the modern chess began in the next 1000years. Koenigspiel the game invented by Christopher weikhmann in 1664(weikhmann’s game). This game involved 30 pieces on a larger board but was still essentially chess on a much larger scale. Dr.c.l. helwig also created another variation in the structures by enlarge it further more.helwig’s variations to the game  went viral throughout Europe, it consisted of 1666 squares and over 200 specialized pieces representing various military aspects and units. This game brought development at a much larger scale to the game we know as chess, Further more developments to war gaming came between the 1780 and 1824 era.  Most of devlopments came  in the form of a publication form the Prussian lieutenant von reisswitz in 1824. He made changes to the game system by his father and published the games he created as intructions for the representation of tactical manoeuvres discuised as a wargame. The translation for wargame in german is kriegspiel. Kriegspiel game became resonably popular amongst german military for training purposes. Kriesgsspiel offered a relative advance over the chess based games by excluding the chessboard squares and relavant constraints on different tyoes of movement. Kriesspiel also made an attempt on  introducing realistic combat tactics and also incorporating decision making and the use of maths for calculation purposes based on military experience.

Professional war games

By the 1850’s kriegsspiel had achiceved wide popularirty among the german military and also incorporated interest in military powers of other countries. The “game” aspect encountered issues in terms of design and evaluation, thus new rules, units and terrain features was incorporated in the game to further enhance its appeal. the popularity of the game in the military meant that the accuracy of the simulation now had become a very key factor which acted the game being more useful for the military rather than the gamers. Thus two types of kriegsspiel were given birth the rigid and the free kriegspiel.

·         Rigid – rigid kriegsspiel (war game) this type focused on the technical aspect of calculation and the use of charts to combat the effects of war.

·         Free – this wargame referred to a referee or imperial judgement for combat.

Wargaming continued to thrive and became much more popular in German, and other militaries. World War 2 was based on games to perfect strategies and for training purposes. Hobby gaming and professional gaming was now much more different then the early attempts. By 1913 the game little wars was released by H.G.Wells. This game was played with the use of miniature figues and was classed as a combat game. Wells mad eit very clear that his game was not based on kriegsspiel and protested that his game was merely a game and nothing else. Though he failed to promote the game as a game and thus the game became more to the rigid side of the kriegsspiel. And thus Wells and Helwig ended up separating the war gaming into two different genres the professional and civilian hobby games.

Board wargames

Board games can be based on fun alone. Games such as monolopy and Othello encourage this trait of civilian hobby games. Therefore not all board games have to derive form a professional war game routine. There is very little mention of the current professional wargaming, even games much like battle only focus partly on the aspect of war and are still focused towards providing the individual with the best possible enjoyment factor. Hobby wargames thus became typically associated with being board games between the 1950’s to the 1980’s. Avalon hill was the first and most popular war gaming company, the first time players of these games could use the equipment provided such as charts and rule sheets whilst giving the player a chance to get more involved in the game.

·         The board – typically would consist of a map of a certain location on which the game would be based this can be a specific location of a battlefield, the map is divided into units to allow better movements.

·         The units – represented by area on the map usually labelled as occupied by a certain faction of military origin.

·         Extras - necessary equipment provided by the manufacturer i.e. dice, cards etc.

Miniature wargames

These can be identified another form of board games with minimalistic game design but with a broader visual simulation. Typically miniature soldiers and other characters of the game would be placed on the board and these figured are moved using a ruler etc. miniature games can be a lot more expensive than typical board based games.

Role playing wargames

Another genre with a different point of view of a war game even though this aspect is held very controversial. It all bagan with the game “dungeons and dragons” published in 1974, was simply played with miniatures paper and a pencil. Though this game shares similarities with other games based on the medieval-period gaming this game differs from other games in these aspects:

1.       Dungeons and dragons abandoned historical accurancy for fantasy; mythological creatures and magic are now added to the mixtures to further attract players. The literature for this role playing game was provided by J.R.R.Tolkien and many other great authors, also using these rules of combat and settings of the games were established.

2.       Dungeons and dragons is a game which encouraged control over the character rather than having a general’s view point thus giving the player full control over the character its action in a sense. The character acquired powers and skills as the players progressed through the game unless the player was to die.

3.       Role playng games abandoned the one on one approach for a singular authority which would be represented by one player a “dungeon master”. The dungeon master’s job is to purchase or create scenarios for the remaining player to play throw gradually progressing as the game continues.

Computer war games

With not much development in board war gaming the genre now turned to technology and the era for computer war games was born. These game are solely dependent on the development in technology thus development in better equipment allowed the developer to develop and prosper from this new medium. The earliest computer games were indeed war games. Game ssuch as space war, a game which simulated spaceship battles was invented in the 1961. Though pong, regarded to be the widely popular computer game. This game simulated the sport tennis rather than the idea of a war game. Though last portion of early computer games features war themes. The first wave of arcade and home computer games were:

·         Space invaders

·         Missile command

·         Tail gunner

·         Space wars

An exception for a war game can be the tanktics game which had the aspect of war gaming in mind form the start. The limitation of early technology prevented much competition considering the processing speeds of those early days.