Cardboard Computers

Question: who would commit to buying and playing a board game priced upwards (sometimes well upwards) of $60.00, with an 80-page rulebook that demands an investment of many hours of real time to simulate a few seconds, at most minutes, of the event it’s depicting?

Answer: an audience of less than 1,000 world wide, according to J. D. Webster, designer of the World War II air combat game Whistling Death (the title comes from the Japanese nickname for the US Navy Corsair). As some of you know, my weekend hobby is, well, “wargaming,” more euphemistically known as conflict simulation. (There is in fact a Master’s course in conflict simulation now offered at King’s College, London.) What is the appeal of these games? The kneejerk answer might be toys for boys, i.e. much the same low-grade testosterone kick of a Rambo action movie—but it only takes a moment’s consideration to realize that doesn’t jibe with the formidable barriers to entry recounted above. Whistling Death is not a game I play since the particular subject doesn’t interest me enough, but J. D. captures well what appeals to me in many comparable games, ranging from the ponderous musket and pike clashes of the English Civil War to the dreadnought battleship duels of 20th century naval warfare.

Here’s his take on his gaming audience:

They are generally enthusiastic and serious students of air warfare and appreciate the level of detail that the wargame goes into as it helps them visualize why a fight develops the way it does. WD was designed by a former Navy/ANG Jet pilot in such a way as to allow the three dimensional development of a dogfight to be depicted. They are detail nuts - who care that an airplane with 1100 horsepower will be rated differently than one of similar size and weight with 1350 hp. They care that 20mm cannon have more destructive capability than smaller machine guns despite the fact the smaller guns are putting out more shells in a two second burst and therefore they like the fact that WD’s designer takes into account rate of fire, weight of fire, bullet spread and destructive power of individual weapons in his game ratings. . . . They are not interested in the unrealistic split second reactive and usually badly modeled video arcade or computer air game. When they move a piece in a fighting wings game, they will get a feel for the effect the maneuver had on the plane’s total energy state, note the change in relative geometry of the fight their move had and note the impact of their move in the thoughtful reactions of their opponents.

One of the implications of J. D.’s remarks is that our most detailed games, at least in the realm of historical conflict simulation, remain analog printed rather than digital electronic. Why is that, given that the games are essentially cardboard computers? To wit:

The movement system is relatively intricate and, while using a hexgrid map, still allows you to change an aircraft’s pitch in 30 degree increments or to make facing changes on the map in 30 degree increments, but those changes take time to accomplish, measured in distance moved across the map based on the aircraft’s speed. Each plane speeds up and slows down according to how many acceleration points or deceleration points it accumulates in a turn. Decel offsets accel in this matter. Your selected actions will have a direct bearing on this. One accel/decel point represents about a 5mph change in speed.

Note that this kind of simulation takes us very specifically back to the roots of modern computing. I would love to hear from the ludologists among us.