Von Rom
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Joined: 5/12/2000
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Boar
[B]I think you bring up a very important concept here -- wargaming indeed needs to take advantage of the latest technology to keep up the interest of those who would play wargames. I am an old school boardgamer -- started out with the original Gettysburg with large rectangular counters. Played my Dad and was thrilled, even though he took the evil tactic of utilizing hidden movement to mass his Union army behind a ridge and slaughter me. Fast forward (from .. about 1972) to the present. My son saw some of my stacked up wargames and expressed an interest in "Caesar at Alesia." I remember this as a well designed, but rather challenging, wargame. We set it up and he played the Gauls. When the Gauls hit the foss (the ditch lined with sharpened sticks and other deterents), we had to roll for EACH unit in Roman ZOC to see if it survived. We designed a system -- I called out "top" for the top unit and he rolled. Then "bottom" and he rolled for the bottom unit, and so on. We had a great time and he learned a bit about the efficiency of the Roman war machine due to this game. He is very up on his Roman history. But the fact is it was a major challenge to play -- we had to carefully guard the maps and pieces from the marauding wife and a couple of dangerous cats, not to mention the fact that our big fingers have a hard time grasping a stack of two units surrounded by 6 other stacks of units.
It's a beautiful game, and I have many more even larger and more beautiful. Terrible Swift Sword, Wellington's Victory, and La Bataille de la Moskowa, are amongst the "monster games" that were the height of wargaming back in 1979 or so. But today there is an opportunity to use computer graphics and technology to make wargames just as good and engrossing. I don't think we're there yet, but I think that time will come. In the meantime I'll hang on to my old board games, but it sure is nice to have a computer to do the number crunching that became such a problem in the bigger wargames.
Happy gaming, everyone. [/B][/QUOTE]
I think little boys especially have a natural curiosity about history and war. And I think that interest in history can be magnified many times over when a significant adult shows interest in them and in history. In other words, makes history interesting.
To my mind, a wargame is a simulation of an historical event or of past actions.
Many people who either don't know history or hate it, have usually never been exposed to history or have had very lousy history teachers. In college once, I had a history professor who was so bad I had to drop the course (and this from a guy who lives and breathes history).
Young people especially, if exposed to history at an early age, will grow up to appreciate the significance of past events, and I think will be drawn to those games that reflect upon the past.
I remember once talking to my God son about the Battle of Thermopylae. He was 4 years old and I told him all about the battle. I told him about the great army of Xerxes; about the inspiring leadership of the Spartan King Leonidas; and about the great courage and self-sacrifice of the Spartan warriors, clad in plumed helmets, who fought for days against over-whelming odds. He became so interested that he dug out his little army men and wanted me to set them up to simulate what happened back during that classic battle. And then he sat spell-bound while I re-told the tale using his little plastic men. . .
I am not advocating wargames as a means to instill a war mentality in the young (or the old). Rather, I see wargames as a tool to lead young people into learning more about the periods they are gaming.
As I mentioned previously, the original Age of Empires manual contained a section that went in-depth into the history of 12 ancient civilizations. I enjoyed reading this, and was surprised that a computer game would include so much information about these past civilizations.
I don't see the situation as an "us" vs "them". Rather, people will usually play those games to which they have ben exposed. The computer industry has hyped to us that bigger, faster, flashier is better (so we will always upgrade our computers). But the games that result from all this are often not any better (and are often worse).
Most young people will play games they think other young people are playing (peer pressure is a very powerful thing). But it has been my experience that even people at the age of 12 and 13, if exposed to history and wargaming in the right way, will usually gravitate to them. Remember how we all felt when we played our first game of Risk?
With all the computer games out there, I would much rather children play wargames or strategy games such as Civ2 (where you have the opportunity to play a variety of civilizations and time periods), where they have at least the opportunity to learn something about the history and the importance behind the period they are playing. This type of game can be used as a learning tool.
For example, before I played UV, I never fully appreciated the importance of supply in combat operations. Now I understand what the forces in that theatre had to contend with. This in turn, has led me to read more books on the Pacific War and to re-watch films and documentaries about the war.
I think a real synergy exists between the wargame and history.
And the best thing of all - it is also fun.
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