Reply To: Sitrep Podcast: Historical Gaming (and Register for Upcoming Gaming Event)!

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Good afternoon, everyone.

First off, let me get caught on on some replies …

@limburger – “I do wonder what real soldiers think of the kind of wargames we play.
Any other issues like tactics that don’t work as well in-game as they do in real life (or vice versa) ?”

Well, most of the Sitrep team are in fact veterans.  So any of our podcasts are going to reflect a little of that right off the bat.  Look at the games we play, and the games we don’t play, and you’ll get a pretty solid idea.

Speaking only for myself, I try not to make too big of an issue out of “veteran status” because the last thing I want to do is present a forum that seems like a “veterans only” club or “non-veteran opinions don’t matter.”  Absolutely clear, I want to avoid that like the plague.

Unfortunately, a lot of what we see in wargames these days come from movies.  I don’t think the wargame designers are “ignorant” of how wrong the movies are, but they design their games that way on purpose to meet the expectations of the bulk of their anticipated audience.

These are business ventures, after all.  Are you going to make one veteran happy, or 1,000 movie goers happy … especially since that one veteran may well not play wargames because they design their own, or aren’t comfortable with wargames (especially modern) or what have you.

So again, just speaking for myself, when I question design decisions in a wargame, what I’m really questioning is what tactics or behaviors are rewarded / punished.  What’s a “good move” or a bad move, and how does that line up with good or bad moves on the real battlefield (modern or historical)?  This is where the discussions of scale, battlefield conditions, balance of arms of force, etc come in.  But really those are symptoms.  Not the disease.

The disease is “this works in movies, 99% of our players think that’s how it is, they’re literally looking for a cinematic moment – let’s make our game to meet that expectation.”

You may have already seen it, but just in case, the “Scorpions of the Desert” video series took a lot at what we see in movies, then games, and compared that against actual tactics and battlefield conditions of the period.

Scorpions of the Desert Part One – Infantry Tactics

Scorpions of the Desert Part One – Infantry Movement

Scorpions of the Desert Part One – Combat Tactics

Scorpions of the Desert Part One – Support Weapons