Wargames
Page 40
If strategic nuclear wargaming lost much of its relevance, in respect to conventional games the situation was entirely different. As the Global Wargames Series and the success of the contemporary Military Reform Movement in pushing towards “maneuver warfare” both indicate, the 1980s saw a revival of interest in conventional warfare.43 Partly this was based on the above-mentioned expectation, never really documented, that the Kremlin might permit a conventional war taking place in the “Central” theater to proceed merrily for some time while allowing the awesome nuclear arsenal at its disposal to remain idle.44 In part it was a reaction to the American failure in Vietnam. The latter caused countless members of the defense community – service personnel, government officials, and analysts in academia and the think tanks – to long for a return to “real” warfare. At the time and later, this was called “shedding the Vietnam syndrome.”
There were, and are, several reasons why applying computers, with their insatiable demand for algorithms, to conventional wargaming is considerably harder than doing the same to the latter’s nuclear sister. First, in such warfare it is the men’s lives, rather than some abstraction such as “civilization as we know it,” that is in immediate danger, probably making their behavior harder to predict and simulate. The fact that warfare is a collective activity only makes the problem more difficult still. Second, the participants in such warfare are much more diverse. They range from a simple infantryman with his assault rifle and pack through a twenty-ton armored personnel carrier with its rapid-fire cannon all the way to a 120-ton, eight-engine, B-52 bomber launching JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions) at a discrete target 30,000 feet underneath. Third, their number is larger by an order of magnitude, perhaps more. This is illustrated by the fact that, after a month-long campaign in which hundreds of aircraft participated, just two bombers carrying just two bombs managed to bring about Japan’s surrender within days of those bombs being dropped.
Fourth, as I said above, nuclear warfare proceeds in the air and in outer space (what happens on the ground following a nuclear explosion is so devastating that it can hardly be called warfare at all). By contrast, much conventional warfare takes place in the far more complex environments that the sea, and above all the land, present. Not just numbers, capabilities and losses on both sides, but transport arteries, bottlenecks, lines of communication (none of which are present in air warfare), tempo, maneuver, and leverage must be simulated. This, after all, is the paradoxical, infinitely complex, ever-changing, often highly unpredictable world of strategy. Depending on circumstances and the quality of one’s moves, two plus two can make now five, now three.45 Conversely the relative simplicity of air warfare limits the intellectual challenge it presents. Among pilots this sometimes leads to “coning,” which means an approach that focuses on capabilities and targets to the exclusion of everything else.46
Field maneuvers apart, from the 1950s on probably the best available means for simulating conventional warfare were the kind of hexed wargames discussed in Chapter 4. If they did not solve the above problems then at any rate they tried to do so, often at the cost of immense complexity and the need to perform endless calculations. Hundreds of different ones were published: in 1980, the peak year, two million were sold. At that point computers entered the field. Though hexed wargames did not disappear, in terms of popularity they simply could not compete. Some computers continued to be used as they had previously been. Either they were employed to assist human wargamers, as in the case of the Global Wargames and their competitors in the army and air force, or else they ran programs designed to simulate warfare without human intervention. Thanks to immensely increased speed and memory, however, the number of factors capable of being incorporated and manipulated could be vastly expanded to yield a better representation of conventional war.
A game might figure in the number of troops and units, their weapons (mobility, defensive power, lethality, range, accuracy, ammunition supply, need for maintenance), their equipment, their morale, their logistics, the weather, geography, the kind of human settlement in the theater of war, communications (railways, roads, sea or air transport), and so many other factors as to boggle the mind. This expansion appears to have reached a record of sorts in 1997. Overseen by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of CalTech, a number of Department of Defense supercomputers located in Dayton, Ohio, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, were made to join forces. They ran a program designed to simulate the activities of precisely 66,239 tanks, trucks, and other vehicles. Typically, some would say, the published report does not mention the number of humans, but by multiplying the number of vehicles by five or six we arrive at a figure of over 300,000. The results were instantaneously viewed on the conference floor of the San Jose Convention Center which was made to look like the terrain of (where else?) northern Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.47 Presumably technical progress since then has permitted even larger games, simulating some campaign in this remote theater or that, to be held – certainly doing so would be much easier and cheaper than it was at the end of the twentieth century. The time may come, if it has not done so already, when a game the size of the 1997 one, instead of requiring so many supercomputers, can be played by anyone with a PC. Yet conventional warfare has continued to shrink.48 Hence it is hard to think why anybody would want to do so: instead it became necessary to include new factors such as space war, infowar, and the like.49
Very different from these and similar monster exercises paid for and played by the military were videogames, or, as they came to be known after they began to be played not on dedicated machines but on all-purpose ones, computer games.50 A common way of classifying such games is by dividing them into operational- and strategic-level games on the one hand and “shooting” games on the other. The two differ in that the latter require players to aim a weapon and pull a trigger, whereas the former do not. To be sure, neither in the games nor in the real world is the distinction absolute. Commanding his army, Alexander fought in person and was wounded many times. As Titian’s painting of Emperor Charles V as the Christian Soldier shows, down to the middle of the sixteenth century crowned heads often followed his example, with the result that not a few of them were killed, injured, or captured. As late as World War II, for a German regimental commander to personally lead his men in a counterattack with submachine gun and hand grenades was considered “a self-evident duty” that did not merit a decoration.51 Returning to the game world, successful designers must know their target population’s secret longings. Accordingly some of them provide players with the wherewithal both to perform command and staff functions and to “kill” opponents. Still, the distinction is useful and we shall stick to it.
To start with onscreen operational- and strategic-level games, they had their origins in the hexed ones of the 1970s. In fact those who played the latter, being much better educated than the average citizen, also tended to be among the very first to buy computers, install them in their home, and try to see what they could do with them. Some firms that had specialized in hexed games sensed the way the winds of change were blowing. They switched directly from one kind to another, taking existing games and calling in programmers to modify them as necessary. Many of those which failed to do so went under.52 The levels that the games cover range from the national command authority through army, corps, and division commanders down to brigade ones but not much further. This is because, at battalion level and lower, the distinction between leading and fighting tends to become blurred even today. Indeed the moment arrives when commanders, like the above-mentioned German regimental ones who did not get a medal, are expected to lead by fighting and even to cover their men.
In principle games of this kind may be played by two or more persons against each other. In practice most of them seem to involve a human playing against the computer. To play against a human, a computer must first be provided with some kind of artificial intelligence so as to register the opponent’s moves and make the appropriate responses. Either way, like chess, Reisswitz-type games and BOGSATs, but un
like shooters, they are played by turns. As in tournament chess, setting time limits for each move or for all of them together would be easy. However, and also as in tournament chess, doing so would merely add an element of artificiality because there is no good way to relate game time to real time. Indeed from Bobby Fischer down many players have suggested their own time schedules, arguing that they were not inferior, and were in some ways superior, to those that FIDE, the World Chess Federation, has set. These games are known by names such as rapid chess, Blitzkrieg chess, and the like. Some of these forms are sufficiently popular to have acquired organizations of their own, which in turn hold regular world championships parallel to the better-established ones.53
An excellent early example of a human versus computer game was Eastern Front. It was produced in 1981 by Chris Crawford, a wargamer who had studied programming, for the Atari 800 personal computer. This being years before hard disks were introduced, incidentally, that particular computer stored data on a 90 kilobyte floppy disk. It had a maximum RAM of only 8 kilobytes. Thus Eastern Front proved, as chess in its own way has always done and still does, that good wargames – good in the sense that they are both able to capture some important aspects of war and playable – can sometimes be designed and produced with the aid of very modest means indeed.
The game recreated Operation Barbarossa, i.e. the German Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union. It covered the months from June 1941 to April 1942 when the battle of the frontiers for Leningrad, for the Ukraine, and for Moscow had been fought and the Germans were thrown back from the Soviet capital.54 The player commanded white, consisting of corps-sized German units. Soviet forces were marked in red and were played by the computer. Apparently the underlying assumption was that people would much prefer directing Hitler’s murderous but effective legions than Stalin’s no less bloody, but clumsy and lumbering, Red Army: this, after all, was precisely the time when, among members of the defense community, admiration for everything German peaked. Armored and cavalry corps on both sides were marked with crosses, whereas infantry formations appeared as boxes. These formations, instead of moving in six different directions as in hexed games, could be moved only in four. However, the size of the squares was small and their number sufficiently large. Hence this fact did not affect realism or hamper play too much.
The belligerents “fought” their war over a vast area stretching from just north of Leningrad at the top of the screen to Sevastopol at the bottom, and from Warsaw on the left to just east of Stalingrad on the right. Since the theater of war is much too large to be displayed and still maintain sufficient resolution, the players used a joystick to scroll the map as required: the first time, it is said, that such a device was incorporated into any computer game. The terrain displayed was extremely varied, including flat land, forests, mountains, rivers, and swamps. Each of these affected the ability of various formations to move over it in a different way. Adjustments were made according to whether a corps, making an operational movement, entered the “influence” zone of a hostile one and also to reflect different seasons. Thus ice, spreading north to south, gradually made rivers crossable in winter. Conversely, the autumn and spring mud seasons dramatically reduced mobility. Reinforcements and lines of communication were also simulated so that losses suffered in combat were gradually made up (Soviet ones much more than those the Germans took). Given that the German side was heavily outnumbered, the human playing it had to rely on operational finesse in order to surround and cut off as many of the Soviet forces as possible.
Each turn consisted of two stages, an entry mode and combat mode. First the joystick was used to select units and enter movement. Up to eight orders could be entered for any unit, the ultimate objective being to move each unit forward as far as possible in any given turn. Once orders had been entered the player pressed the Start button to enter the combat mode. The outcome was determined by the computer on the basis of calculations similar to those Reisswitz and his successors used to carry out with the aid of dice and tables. Flashes indicated the units that had been attacked, which might either be destroyed or forced to retreat. Each turn represented one week in-game time, the game ending after forty-one turns on March 29, 1942. Historically this was the moment when the Wehrmacht, having survived the winter, resumed its offensive. Since this was a game aimed at hobbyists rather than at professionals doing serious planning, a great deal of effort was spent ensuring that the game would be both easy to play and balanced. This was done by playing the game time and again while modifying the rules in such a way as to give both players a fairly even chance to win. Nevertheless play remained simple – a major reason why the game was a success.
The hardware − meaning computers − on which the games were played was developing at breakneck speed. Especially important were three factors. First, general purpose machines took the place of specialized ones, allowing as many different games as one could afford to be played on each computer and leading to a dramatic drop in prices. Second, microchips, introduced in 1979, made computers much smaller, lighter, and above all much faster and with greater memories. Whereas Crawford had to make do with 8 bytes of RAM, a few years later 128 and 256 bytes of RAM were common and 512 bytes were in the pipeline. Third, initially screens tended to be heavy and bulky. Some games even came in the form of consoles that had to be hooked up to the domestic TV set. Later the screens became smaller and more easily transportable. Resolution, which is governed by the number of pixels as well as several other factors, was also increased, leading to much sharper, more realistic, images.
Better computers also allowed artificial intelligence to be set at various degrees of difficulty and to adopt different personalities, such as playing offensively, defensively, and the like. As one technical improvement followed another, games were brought out, played for a while, and discarded. New games demanded larger computer memories and larger memories made possible new games. So it went in a merry-go-round that emptied players’ pockets, as indeed it was designed to do. Initially games could be produced on a shoestring by individuals with computer skills and a lot of imagination. Later on, doing so became the business of teams of experts taken from various fields who might easily spend months to produce a single one. In addition to planning and programming, the work included devising artistic effects – often a difficult task that demands high expertise, but one that is vital if players are to appreciate the game – as well as musical ones. The process ends with a period of validating and testing. The cost of doing all this can easily run into millions of dollars. Some games ended up on the Net from where they may be downloaded and played for free, a testimony either to their own quality or to people’s antiquarian interest in the subject.
In an interview he gave many years later, Crawford said that the commercial success of Eastern Front had exceeded all expectations.55 Unsurprisingly it was followed by many others. Subsequent games covered almost every possible historical war from antiquity on, not to mention any number of futuristic wars and imaginary wars. As the most important single event in the whole of US history, the Civil War in particular has given rise to a large number of games. One list, last updated in December 2010, provides the names of twenty-three different ones alphabetically arranged and ranging from Aegod’s American Civil War to Robert E. Lee: Civil War General.56 Land warfare, naval warfare, campaigns, battles, secret missions, and the operations of General Robert E. Lee (who else?) have all been studied, broken into countless computer lines, and reissued in game form. Here I shall focus on one of the most recent and most elaborate games, the award-winning Forge of Freedom. Players play against the computer and may choose to be in charge of either the Confederacy or the Union. However, foreign intervention is always a possibility and the game requires negotiations with European powers that must be drawn into the conflict or made to stay out.57
Like Eastern Front, Forge of Freedom is turn-based. However, the speed of action can be adjusted, producing either a leisurely game or a much more rapid and in some ways
more stressful one. The first step is to mobilize resources while setting aside some of them for the purpose of research and development. At a later point in the game, that research and development translates into better weapons. Next one forms brigades – it is at the brigade level that the game is played – by equipping them with one of over fifty types of period firearms and artillery. Brigades may be further customized by adding various kinds of personnel and equipment, including sharpshooters, Zouaves, reconnaissance balloons, horse artillery, raiders, scouts, engineers, and signals personnel. It is even possible to choose one’s units’ standards “from a collection of over 700 authentic flags.” Similar methods are used in building up a navy.
The military action proper takes place on a map covering the territory from Minnesota to Texas and from Maine to Florida. Here the opposing forces advance, retreat, clash, outflank, join, separate, protect lines of communication, or set out to cut them: in short, perform a great many of the things that real-life armies do. Naval action in the form of blockade running, hunting blockade runners, blockading ports, launching amphibious assaults, and bombarding forts is also available. A list of a thousand generals is provided so that players can choose which one they want to put in command of this or that operation. Battles can be resolved either quickly, by having the computer make the necessary calculations and instantly display the results to the accompaniment of a suitable-looking symbol, or else by zooming in on the appropriate place on the map. Doing so yields a detailed representation of hex-covered terrain over which the engagement is “fought” move by tactical move. Fatigue, morale, supply, facing, formation, time of day, reinforcements, command and control, weather, and even battlefield smoke are all included and play a role in deciding the outcome. In these and countless other ways, the progress made since Eastern Front is dramatic.