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Introduction
[This
first part is rather self-indulgent and a little pompous; if you’re only
interested in the findings, scroll down to the heading RESULTS AND ANALYSIS. If
you want to see how the sausage is made, scroll down a couple of paragraphs to
THE SURVEY.]
There are some enterprises in which a
careful disorderliness is the true method.
— Herman Melville
One of the
joys of writing a blog is being able to follow whatever subject catches your
interest all the way down the rabbit-hole Sometimes the diversion can be
personally rewarding, and occasionally the result can end up being on interest
to others. I’ve always been curious about where games come from, and it
occurred to me that it might make an interesting inquiry. Last year I wrote an
article about the value proposition for publishers of receiving wargame
awards or nominations for their games. That was a lot of work, but it was also
fun to research and prepare. It felt like a worthwhile pursuit and, on
publication, garnered kind words from some of those whose opinions I respect. I
didn’t have any plans to go straight into another research project, but I was
open to doing something if a subject presented itself.
Partygoer #1: Right now, it's only a notion. But I think I can get money
to make it into a concept. And later turn it into an idea.
Annie Hall (w. Woody Allen)
Around April
a notion began to take form around where games come from. I’ve always been curious
about how and why historical game designers come to a game, the subject, the
design choices they make or settle on and the aspects they emphasise or
prioritise, and the things they choose to leave out. So, I thought I’s approach
some designers and ask them about their early experiences in the field.
After
mulling over it for a couple of months, I thought I had come up with a
framework that might work; I sketched out a three-question survey which I would
post to a list of published wargame designers and write up the results. I
initially thought about using Survey Monkey, but decided I had a better chance
of getting candid answers to my questions with a direct, personal request.
This was in late June, which was almost exactly a year after I started thinking
about my previous research project.
THE
SURVEY
Scope and
methodology
At the start
I set some parameters for building a data-set. With the publisher questionnaire
from the previous project I had four simple questions that could be answered
with one- or two-word answers or short sentences, and the option to add any
further comment if the responder wished. I thought at the time this was a bit
of an ask, as any time spent responding would be time taken from, in all
likelihood, more important or more profitable ventures. I was very grateful for
all those who responded (about 42% of the publishers I contacted, twenty-four
respondents in total).
In some
respects, the previous research article I worked on was an easier task to
approach. I had a defined set of companies to contact – about sixty in all. The
rope I’d chosen for this project was as long as I wanted to make it. I
initially thought I’d contact between 130 and 160 designers and see what sort
of response I received, then maybe go further if I hadn’t reached a critical
mass of responses. I figured two weeks should just about do it. But that was
three months ago, when I was young and naïve.
I came up
with a pair of questions for the survey. Then I tried out different phrasings
and emphases, finally settling on the two below:
Question
1: What was your first wargame (or historical game) design; not necessarily
your first published game – that you worked up to a point where it felt “done”?
Question
2: Why did you pick that topic or historical situation to make a game about?
Rather than
asking for sweeping generalisations, I restricted my query to the respondent’s
first game, whether or not it had been published. I reasoned that people would
be more willing to speak about a single experience than to try to convey the
whole scope of their career, and that their first foray into game design might
be clearer in their memory. I toyed with adding a third question, which would
have potentially made the results generally more useful (and the project a lot
longer) but decided to not risk a drop in replies from the survey becoming too
onerous. Then I wrote a brief form letter to send along with the questions.
It was "done"
when my developer at AH said it was "done"... and that was Frank
Davis, who by the way is still designing games (and who is still a friend).
— Mark McLaughlin
Once I’d
settled on the phrasing, I emailed the query and questions to a designer and
friend of A Fast Game - let’s call him Patient Zero – and asked, asking him to
suggest any changes to the wording. Patient Zero returned a thumbs-up, and my
first completed response. (Scroll down to Acknowledgements at the end of
the post to learn Patient Zero’s true identity.) Now I was ready to send the
query letter out into the world.
I began with
the low-hanging fruit; I first contacted every designer that I had ever engaged
with before, either in relation to the blog or via social media. That provided
me with around thirty candidates. Next, I went over the contacts from my
previous project. A lot of small publishers are also designers. After that, I
started cold-call messaging friends of friends on Facebook and working through
publishers’ in-print lists, contacting hereto unreached designers where I could
through Boardgamegeek.
I stopped
when I got close to 200 attempted contacts. At that stage I was nearing the
100-response mark, higher than I had hoped. After I ceased contacting new
potential respondents, some that I had given up on wrote back asking it was
still possible to participate. A couple of others had heard about the project
from friends and offered to participate. By the time I started writing up the
findings, I had 115 returns from a diverse group of designers, from old hands
to first timers.
I approached the information provided more through a close-reading analysis rather than anything truly scientific, and as such, the results may drift in to the impressionistic a little. I’ve striven to apply a strict reading discipline to the data, but in some cases common-sense judgements had to be made on edge cases. The facts presented have been treated quantifiably, but much of the additional information is qualitative in nature. In this I’ve tried to remain objective and present only common-sense interpretations of the material available. I have also tried keep from giving in to unfounded conjecture.
The material
provided by the respondents themselves will be presented subsequently in a
series of appended posts. It’s compelling reading, and a window (well sometimes
a peep-hoe, other times a garage roller-door) into design practice. I had
intended to release it in a single post, but there was simply too much material
for that. I will roll it out over five posts, but even these will be quite
long. You have been warned.
RESPONSE
All in all,
out of the 210 designers I attempted to contact, I received 115 replies, a
54.8% response rate – 57.7% if you also include the four respondents who
replied but for varying reasons, politely declined to participate. I had hoped
for around a 40% replay-rate but thought I could cobble something together with
seventy or so replies if need be. Thankfully, I didn’t have to test this.
The
responses themselves varied in length, scope and clarity. Some respondents
stuck doggedly to the brief, while others sketched out elaborate scenarios of
creativity. Some even ranged off the reservation of the query and into the
uncharted territories beyond. All of the responses were interesting and
enlightening to read, many were an education, and some were a particular joy.
But all this you will be able to find out for yourself if you so choose, by
referring to the appendix to this piece (which will be published separately in five
parts below this post).
RESULTS
AND ANALYSIS
Respondents had carte blanche to add as much or little detail in their replies as they wished. Some diligently kept to the brief, while others took the opportunity to reflect, reminisce, or set the record straight. Though the query asked for details of a single design effort, many respondents felt compelled to reference more than one game. Of the 115 respondents, nearly thirty provided details about the origin of more than one game, sometimes three or four. I chose to consider each game referenced as separate data point to create an even larger pool to draw from, 173 cited games in all.
While I've applied a level of rigor to the analysis, I've tried to keep a light touch, not . After reading through the responses, I the designers to speak for themselves. I've liberally peppered the essay with quotes from the data-set, but these barely scratch the surface of what is offered in the Appendix. Before you go any further, you may even be better off skipping straight to the five-part collection offered below this post, then maybe come back and run through the exposition here. I swear I won't be at all offended.
For the most
part, the responses to question 1 stated the What and often the When; the
answers to question 2 offered the Why. All three are interesting, so, since you're still here, we’ll go
through them in order.
Period / Theatre,
and Mode
Going into
this, I had certain expectations about what the survey results would show,
especially around a couple of query-points. One of these was the historical (or
ahistorical) conflict from which a designer would draw their first game. Before
I started the analysis, I’d sketched out about a half-dozen historical
groupings to drop various games into, but as I dove into the data, I found
myself breaking the broad periods into finer divisions and more specific
theatres, until I finally drew the line at nineteen.
It should come as no surprise that the most common theatre of conflict for our respondents’ first game design was World War Two. If anything, I expected the share WWII games to be higher, between forty and fifty percent. In fact, it only inspired 30.6% of the games mentioned. This was, however, the only theatre to attract higher than 20%. The next most prolific theatres were Napoleonic (10%), American Civil War (7.5%), and, ironically, Ancients and Cold War/Near Future with 6.4% each.
At the low
end of the scale, five first games were set in the First World War (four
designers began their journeys with designing Fantasy games (two
inspired by the Lord of the Rings) and another four chose Science Fiction
themes for their first attempts. Three each chose the English and Spanish
Civil Wars. The Vietnam and Korean actions inspired two designs and one
respectively. Interestingly, only two cited first designs were based on
counterfactual themes (I had anticipated this being a little higher), and seven
designs were built on non-military historical themes.
I don’t have
firm numbers on this, but I’d wager these proportions broadly track to the
historical themes of wargames released in a given year in the last half-decade
or so. World War II, the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil war still
dominate, but subjects that fifteen years ago might have been considered less
popular or less interesting, like the Early Modern period or the wars of the
Nineteenth Century are now getting more of a showing. For example, 2026-27 will
see the release of at least three Thirty Years War games from larger
publishers.
My father (who passed away in 1983)
parachuted into France on 14 August 1944 as the FABTF spearheaded the "2nd
D-Day" invasion (Operation Dragoon). In 1984, while serving as an infantry
officer in Berlin, I travelled to Provence and walked his drop zone and the
battlefields he fought on. I have researched his campaign for the past four
decades, and it was the obvious choice for my first game.
— Dan Fournie
Among
designers with stated military or security backgrounds the results are a little
more skewed to the Twentieth Century. Of the eighteen designers falling in this
category, 39% chose World War II subjects for their first designs, with
another four (22%) adopting Twentieth- or Twenty-First-Century subjects. The
reminder were spread fairly evenly from the Ancient to Napoleonic eras. I’m not
sure how much can really be read into this, given the size of the data subset,
but I believed it warranted mentioning. I certainly wouldn’t infer that
designers with a martial background are disproportionately more likely to
pursue Second World War themes in their games; the sample size – roughly a
tenth of the broader data base - is far too small to draw firm conclusions
from. It may however bear some further inquiry.
Next, I examined the data in terms of what the Charles S. Roberts Awards categories refer to as Modes; the level of engagement the each game presents. I defined a game that dealt with a particular engagement or battle as Tactical in mode, those that covered a campaign within a broader conflict as Operational, and a treatment of an entire was, such as the War of Spanish Succession, as Strategic. This category also captures Grand Tactical designs. I incorporated a fourth category called Abstract. The term “abstract” here is doing a lot of work, capturing anything that didn’t slip comfortably into one of the other slots.
Most of the
designs presented could be clearly identified as belonging to one or another
modal category. Nevertheless, some –
maybe a half dozen in total - resisted easy categorisation. In these cases I
had to apply my own judgement. After lengthy internal debate, I elected to list
Dan Bullock’s No Motherland Without (Compass Games, 2021) in the
Abstract category, which I’m still unsure was the correct choice; it follows a linear
chronological path, but the way the game plays is a such a departure from a typical
historical game (this is definitely not a criticism). On the other hand, it was
obvious to me from the start that Ted Torgerson’s Sharks and Jets (web
published, 2006) belonged in the Tactical slot, given its pedigree and urgency of
play.
The only companies in
2016 to pitch were wargame publishers, and all wanted a Next War style game
about an escalation of hostilities with DPRK. When I pitched to a very
well-known wargame publisher, he reviewed my prototype and pointed at a portion
of the game board that detailed defectors and elites within the country,
remarking “Defectors? Who cares about that?”
— Dan Bullock
Going into
this, equipped with only a superficial knowledge of what games make it to
production and how quickly, I would have given Tactical as the preferred mode
or new designers by a wide margin, maybe 50-65%. While I was right about Tactical
level’s primacy, it wasn’t close to the margin I’d expected. First games set at
the tactical level accounted for only 38% of the title pool, while
Operational games came a close second with 34%. Strategic games made up 18%
of the count, with the remaining 9% falling into the “Abstract” category. I
don’t think there is much to take away from this.
Inspiration
The primary
reason for pursuing this project was finding out the “why”; what prompts
somebody to choose a particular battle or campaign, put in the hours doing the
research, checking the orders of battle, reading the first-hand accounts and
well as the secondary sources, then embark on the relatively thankless task of
designing a set of rules that, to the best of their ability, presents the
situation on a 22- by 34-inch map, some counters and an instruction booklet. We
can assume that at the beginning there is an impetus, a desire to create. But
that motivation needs a focus, a fixed point at which to channel that creative
drive.
Most of the time I can
watch a movie or documentary, read a book or simply see an inspiring image or
miniature and get an idea for a wargame. Creativity comes to me in waves and it
mostly flows with how I spend my free time. In the case of Campaign: Fall Blau,
I believe I was inspired by a documentary about the Eastern front in WW2.
—
Martin Melbardis
Inspiration
can come from different places. In regard to historical games, these can be
broken down into a few broad categories. Actually, these can be broken down
into any number of fragmented categories, but for the sake of brevity and my
own sanity, I’ve reduced this to a handful of broad categories. What follows is
an explanation and consideration of the five board categories of inspiration I identified
through a close reading of the data. Four of these categories I’ve combined in
analysis into two paired topics due to their overlap or parallel significance.
Only
explicit citations of a specific point of reference for a game’s inspiration
have been recorded in the above results. This is why the total adds up to less
than the total of data points (games) referenced in the data pool (154 in all).
In a coupled of cases, more than one source was mentioned for a single game,
while some of the shorter responses acknowledged no particular and discrete
origin for their initial design idea.
Serendipitous
interest – this is not
an ideal term, as not every instance is a “happy accident”, but it was better than
any other I could come up with during writing. It stands in for the instances
where a specific volume of history, novel, film, documentary, or even another
game had been identified as the point-of-origin for the game’s inspiration,
whether fortuitously or with a measured awakening to its possibilities.
Books, always books.
— Charles Vassey
Forty-one
respondents referenced a single origin source. About half of these referenced a
particular book. This comes as no surprise to me, as nearly every wargamer I’ve
met has also been an avid reader.
I read a book, Pleiku by J.D.
Coleman, that fired my imagination and made me want to learn more about what
happened in the epic struggle between the US 1st Air Cavalry and the 33rd,
66th, and 320th Regiments of the North Vietnamese Army (PAVN).
— Gene Billingsley
What was
surprising, though perhaps it shouldn’t be, was that nearly as many cited another
game as their source of inspiration for their first foray into game design. This
is nearly always the case for people contributing to existing game series
(which is something we’ll come back when we get to Motivations), but sometimes
it’s simply a case of addressing an itch that a game out in the wild doesn’t
scratch.
Thanks to the guidance
of Jim Day—who went from admired designer to mentor, and from mentor to
friend—everything I had once done for myself in other games could now be done
for my favorite tactical system, but this time for everyone. But my friend,
designing for yourself is not the same as designing a commercial game.
With Jim’s guidance, I
managed to transform all those ideas and situations in my head into a set of
playable, balanced scenarios and new rules for this expansion, which eventually
became Panzer: Game Expansion Set, Nr 4 – France 1940.
— Fernando Sola Ramos
Around that time, I
reconnected with a cousin I had not seen in many years. He was a Vietnam
veteran who had never played a wargame, so I persuaded him to try one. Because
of his experience as an infantryman, he was interested in tactical combat
rather than operational-level games. He also wanted something he could enjoy
over a beer without having to spend hours studying complicated rules.
We tried Advanced Squad
Leader and Combat Commander. ASL was far too complex for what he wanted, while
Combat Commander did not appeal to him because of its card-driven system.
Eventually, I pulled counters from one game and a map from another, and we
began improvising—almost like two kids playing with toy soldiers.
We met every Friday,
and after a few weeks I realized I needed to start writing down the rules
because I could no longer remember how we had handled things in previous games.
Although I had never designed a game before, I had decades of experience playing
them and understood how game systems worked.
— Mike Denison
Geographical
proximity / Familial
connection - Geographical proximity refers to game topics where the
designer was familiar with the location of the event; they grew up or lived
nearby or had made it their business to comprehend. Familial connection is what
it sounds like. Familial and geographical connection are often intertwined.
Nearly every case of a familial connection to a historical situation among the
responses correlated with some geographical intimacy.
Both
Geographical and Familial connection can sometimes lead a game designer to a
subject they perhaps wouldn’t otherwise considered, or it just seems
appropriate as a topic and as acknowledgement. Many families have a relative,
distant or recent, who themselves experienced the hard face of war.
I was playing a lot of the SPI Great Battles of the American Civil War series at that time, and I learned that I had a cousin on the Union side who had been killed in action at the Battle of Atlanta. I didn't know of any existing wargames on that battle.
— Gina Willis
[L]ike almost everyone
else in Spain I have relatives on both sides of the struggle – in July 2026 we
will be commemorating the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the war. My
grandfather Pedro fought with the Nationalist, the grandfather of my wife fought
for the Republic, and a great uncle of her fought for the Republic, fled to
France and later joined the French resistance.
—Javier Ramero
I was born and raised
in Luxembourg, not far from the Battle of the Bulge battlefields, so the
history of the Second World War was always very present in my surroundings. We
spent all our summer holidays just a few hundred metres from a railway bridge
that had played a role in the Rundstedt Offensive, as my parents always called
it. Even as a child, I was aware that the landscape around me was connected to
events that had affected my family and the entire country.
My parents and their
siblings had lived through the Nazi occupation. They had been evacuated in the
aftermath of the German invasion of 10 May 1940 and later returned home to a
country under occupation. Their memories, stories and opinions naturally became
part of our family conversations. The war was not something distant or abstract
to us. It was recent family history.
— Yves Rettel
Twenty-seven
respondents – 23.5% of the total – mentioned some degree of geographical
affinity. In nearly every case where familial link was cited (six of seven
citations, which represented just above 6% of respondents), it was in
conjunction with a geographical connection (Ms Willis – quoted above, was the
outlier). I’m not sure what can be gleaned or extrapolated from this. Again,
this may be too small a sample to try to draw any conclusions from – further examination would require further questions of the respondents. It is,
nonetheless, something worth noting.
Informal
study / Formal study
– these are two paths to the same location (though one can be substantially more
expensive). If there is a single trait that every historical game designer
shares, it must be a love of and deep respect for history. Historical research
is the bedrock of wargames; to be a good historical game designer you have to
also have a good understanding of history. An academic background is almost
always a help, but many games have been created by designers for whom the
historical research was a passion rather than a discipline.
I remain to this day
fascinated by the period of the Successor Kingdoms, on which I now own close to
100 books.
— Morgane Gouyon-Rety
Only fifteen
respondents (about 13%) of respondents’ designs had grown out of formal study. Among
those who mentioned their formal education, the lion’s share had pursued STEM
courses. Another sixty-three respondents (54.8% of the total), purported to
have undertaken a significant amount of informal research for their first game.
Twenty-four of the respondents that professed to have engaged in deep informal
research could also point to a single volume (or game) that began their journey
to their first design.
Motivations and Intentions
Game designs need to
strike the balance of historical accuracy, playability, and fun. There should
be something that both sides need to do. Static or stand and die battles aren't
fun and may not offer interesting choices for one side. The reason why we remember
certain game experiences was because of the events in the game, not necessarily
that it captured perfectly a battle that might otherwise have been dull to
play.
— Carl Fung
I’m actually not so
much interested in wargames as a competitive exercise as a way of exploring the
possibilities of a situation – the unanswerable ‘what ifs”, which makes games
design a tool driving research. On
several occasions, working on a game has required answers to questions that
were not addressed in even the most detailed books about a particular battle or
event.
— Al Nofi
As a rule,
wargame designers – and more broadly historical game designers in general – will
pick a subject or situation, work out which elements of the situation they wish
to emphasise in the game, then set about applying rules and inventing
mechanisms to produce a simulacra of those elements, in opposition to many
other areas of game design where it often seems a mechanical system is
produced, then a theme – sometimes historical – is applied that more or less
fits that system (I’m looking at you, Reiner Knizia).
[…] I just wanted to
get things published and try to learn the business. It's the same reason why,
and even around the same time, I designed Northern Pacific, a train game, for
Winsome (a publisher which specialized in train games): I wanted to get work
out there, I wanted to work with experienced developers so I could learn my
craft quickly, and I wanted to design for very specific and small form factors
so I could do all this relatively quickly & with a higher chance of the
game getting signed.
— Anabel Holland
In regard to the mechanical aspect of the Why, I wanted to group the responses into a handful of overlapping topics or aspects of the data-set to reflect a couple of recurring themes that appeared in the data. I realised that these could be placed in one of six broad categories.
While I was
preparing the analysis, I wavered between referring to these as Intentions and Motivations.
The epiphany came when it became clear that the data within the categories
behaved as both motivations to design and intentions in design, depending on the
emphasis that was being placed on the data-subset, much like light behaving as
a wave or a particle depending on the manner of observation.
So, I’ve
gone with both labels. I apologise for any confusion; it makes sense to me, but
that could be an artifact of spending so long looking at the overall data. I
have applied one or the other label to each of the six categories, as an
indicator of the end of the continuum the data tends to lean toward. This is
less a principle and more a guideline.
Scope (Intention) – many
designers referenced their desire to either keep their first design discrete or
“manageable”, often sticking to a single battle, or inversely to “go big”,
encompassing an entire theatre; either way, where was a definite statement of
intent.
That's easy, Empires in Arms (Australian Design Group,
1983), designed when I was 13 when I first took up playing historical games
(Blitzkrieg (Avalon Hill, 1965) and France, 1940 (Avalon Hill, 1971) being my
first two ever purchased). The game is based on the SPI 1812 (SPI, 1972)
strategic game (not the hex based version which also came in the package) only
expanded to all of Europe from 1805-1815.
I thought it was finished when I was 14 (1972), but it
wasn't until I moved to Canberra and met up with Greg Pinder, Neil Mackenzie
and other members of the Canberra Wargames Society in 1978 that we dug the game
out and started working on it before releasing it ourselves in 1983.
— Harry Rowland
Forty-five of the respondents
mentioned the significance of the game’s scope in their first designs. As
mentioned previously, this appeared in different ways. At least seven of the
designs mentioned in the data-set covered the whole or near-whole of Europe (it
should be noted that every of these cases eventually made their way into
print).
I am a resident of Ontario and for us, it is the great war
or campaign, or we defended ourselves against invading Americans. For a
Canadian, the war of 1812 is the war on the Canadian front since that is what
mattered most to us. The battle of Baltimore, the burning of Washington, even
the battle of New Orleans, which occurred after the end of the war are all just
sideshows to us.
Many more encompassed complete
theatres of war, the French and Indian War, the Spanish Civil War and the
Russian Front of World War II all being represented more than once. For others,
it was crucial to maintain strict parameters for the exercise.
I chose to model World War I tactical ground combat because
through my reading of WWI history I came to understand that people had
conflated the strategic and tactical pictures of WWI for widespread
misunderstanding of warfare during that era. While it's true that much of WWI
saw strategic stalemate, at the tactical level, even seemingly frozen lines
exhibited considerable dynamism. Indeed, it was in those micro-movements, and
the efforts to expand them, that the components of WWII Blitzkrieg evolved. In
that I saw a tension between troop concentration versus troop dispersion that
made a compelling theme around which to build a tactical game.
— John Gorkowski
Novelty (Intention) – this motivation seems less about finding something hereto untouched
than it is shining a light on a historical moment that deserved more attention.
Perhaps more than any other motivation, this aspect prompts people to try
designing a game (rather than deciding to try out game design).
I was preparing my master's thesis on the Boer War and I
had always been interested in little-known armed conflicts.
— Krzysztof Dytczak
Fifty-one respondents (44.4% -
awfully close to half of them) either cited or alluded to a desire to create
something original, or simply presented a truly novel first game. It’s hard to parse
some of these to identify intentional originality or accidental brilliance.
Alas, here is another factor that would make some eager student of design a
really interesting Masters thesis topic.
Contribution (Motivation) – nearly all game designers begin as players to some
degree, and they will often slide into the creative side of the equation out of
a sense of offering something back to the hobby they love. This can take many
forms, and is often expressed in tandem with another motivation, such as novelty
of subject/theme or the reapplication of a preexisting mechanical system.
It was created because I wanted to improve and streamline
on game series like “La bataille” (CoA) or “Jours de gloire”
(Hexasim).
— Frederic Delstanches
Fifty-six respondents (46.7%) cited a
desire to contribute either to an extant game system/family or to improve on
something that had come before. This may sound a little cocky, but nearly 77%
of this sub-group saw their first designs to print.
Mechanical reapplication (Intention) – like Sir Issac Newton standing on the shoulders of giants, many
designers began their journey building on what already works. In many cases,
this means contributing to an established series of games. In some instances,
it involved applying an existing model in whole or in part to a hereto
unimagined function or period. Forty-five respondents (39.1%) highlighted their
consideration of or focus on scope in their first game.
Around 1989 I designed a complete game that was Axis and
Allies but only the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945. In hindsight it was far ahead of its time.
— Michael Rinella
Of this subset, a full eighty percent
managed to get their games into print. Again I feel compelled to point out that
this is a relatively small sample set and that no hard conclusions should be
drawn from the statistical evidence presented here. Having said that,
four-fifths is a pretty compelling statistic. On the face of it, an aspiring
designer could do worse than trying to build the next game in an existing game
or series.
Right around then, I read the first Wargame Design book
that was published by the SPI staff. That book really excited me for the way it
pulled back the curtain on how wargames in that era got conceived, researched,
maps and art were made, and how development and playtesting worked. Suddenly,
designing a game seemed like something I could do if I just followed that
"cookbook" step by step.
— Gina Willis
Addressing an absence/shortfall
(Motivation) – this can be related to Novelty,
but it comes from a different kind of motivation. Every wargame is the product
of a set of declarative decisions, highlighting some elements of the situation
and obscuring or ignoring others. Some designers set out to “address the
record” by highlighting aspects of a battle or campaign that have either been
ignored or given short shrift in other treatments.
I think it was the “legend” of Rommel and the Afrika Korps,
and the fascinating back and forth advances across North Africa that inspired
me. There were already many games out on the North Africa campaign, but I
wanted to highlight the excitement of Rommel’s initial advance to Tobruk and
the battles around Tobruk.
— Mark Simonitch
Of the 173 data-points collected, 51
covered subjects that had been by-and-large neglected by previous game
designers or covered some part of a larger situation that had hereto remained
under-examined. This isn’t all that surprising; as many historical games as
already exist, there is still an awful lot of history, and so very much of it
not yet presented in a playable format. It should be noted that this count
doesn’t include the eight sci-fi and fantasy games included in the overall
count.
I
come from Provence, in southern France. For me, it was an opportunity to shine
a light on Operation Anvil–Dragoon, a campaign that is too often overshadowed
by the Normandy landings, despite its enormous strategic importance. The
liberation of the southern ports, particularly Marseille and Toulon, provided
the Allies with the logistical lifeline that later sustained General Patton's
advance across France. I felt this operation deserved far more recognition than
it usually receives.
—
Yves Roig
This
is simple in my case. I only want to cover the not-yet-covered historical
topics so far. And since almost nobody is doing games about the history of my
country, I have plenty of topics to choose from.
Outside stimulus - request/challenge (Motivation) – some, it seems, are born designers, and some have the mantle of design
thrust upon them. And it seems to happen more often than you might think.
After writing and doing
research for Strategy & Tactics games, one day, having just read Oman’s
book on medieval warfare, I said to [Jim] Dunnigan, “Why don’t you do a game on
the revival of infantry in the Renaissance?”
He replied, “Why don’t you...?”
— Al Nofi
By their own
admission, of the 115 respondents to the questionnaire, twenty-three – that’s a
full 20% – were coerced, cajoled, threatened, lured, brow-beaten, or otherwise
dragooned into game design by an outside party (in Mr Nofi’s case it was his
boss, so maybe it could be argued it comes under “other duties as directed”).
Honestly, I’m kind of torn on this issue. While I can’t abide a bully, but at
the same time, if 20% of game designers aren’t getting pressured into designing
games, that might mean 20% less interesting, innovative games. (Or more print
slots for Gregory Smith and Hermann Luttmann.)
I was the developer for
[…] Air & Armor: Würzburg. I told the designer of the game that we should
do the next game covering the V Corps sector and told me to do so.
— Fred Schwarz
Out in
the world
There was
one statistic that astonished me much more than any other single number.
Eighty-eight of the 115 responding designers saw their first game make it to
print. That is 76.5% of all respondents, more than three-quarters of the
participating designers. I had to go back and review the data, but sure enough,
the number holds.
The first true game
design that was intended for broad use was This Accursed Civil War (GMT Games,
2002) that I designed in 1999-2000 on battles of the English Civil War. The
version I originally designed I sold online as a Desktop Published game (DTP).
This led to its being picked up by GMT Games in 2001.
— Ben Hull
My
background is more grounded among books and authors. I’ve known or met or
interviewed literally dozens of people, some of them quite successful authors,
who keep the typed manuscript of their unpublished first book in a desk drawer
or a hall cupboard like a scar; it’s the journey they had to take before they
achieved any success. I know books and games are radically different beasts.
First of all, nearly everyone thinks they have a novel in them. I’m sure the
same thing cannot be said for tabletop games; there must be 700 John Grishams
for every Klaus Teuber. The two industries are radically different, both in
scale and motivation – nobody gets into wargame publishing to amass vast riches
– but three-quarters of respondents making it to print with their first title
still strikes me as extraordinary.
My first design, done
when I was a 16-year-old high school junior in 1969, was an add-on map scenario
variant for Avalon Hill Stalingrad (Avalon Hill, 1963), titled Operation
Platinum Fox. It contained an 11x8.5” black-and-white photocopied hex map that
added the rest of Finland and the Kola Peninsula to the northern edge of the
parent game's map. There was also a sheet containing a few added PnP units and
new victory conditions. I sold it by mail for $1.50 under the corporate name
“Blutbad Enterprises.” I believe I sold about a dozen of them.
— Ty Bomba
It should be
noted that fifteen of these first designs (17%) were self-published, either
Desktop Published (DTP), as a print-and-play, or physically built in small runs
by the game’s creator. But of those, more than a third (six, or 40% of the fifteen) were subsequently picked up
by established companies for second, revised, or “deluxe” editions.
The
intangibles
Not everything that
counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
— Albert Einstein
Graphs and
data points can never tell the whole story. I have barely scratched the surface
with this very quick and dirty appraisal of the evidence provided. There is a
lot that couldn’t be captured in a statistical manner, and much that I probably
just missed. For this reason, I specifically asked permission of each of the
respondents to publish their responses in a follow-up appendix to this article.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading, rereading, and digging into the responses I received,
and I hope that you, indulgent reader, will take the time to run through the
reproduced responses in the five-part appendix below this article. Each part
should constitute a fifteen-to-twenty minute read for the casual visitor, and
each features a set of links to the others.
I wanted to
close with one more quote, which for me captured much of the feeling of discovery
I felt while pouring over the data-set, and that reminded me of the thrill of
anticipation I felt every time I visited my FLGS in my early double-digits.
The initial motivation
that led me to work on this game was that, as a kid, I collected all the
wargames from the NAC (Nike and Cooper) brand, and I managed to get everyone
except for one that was advertised as being about that very battle [Las Navas
de Tolosa]. I spent years looking for it, but there was no way to find it
anywhere. I thought it might never have been published, even though I’d seen a
photo of the game box, and over time those suspicions proved true—there
was only one prototype copy.
Anyway, I decided to
create what I’d longed for so much, and that was what sparked my interest in
that battle, until it ended up becoming my first published game as well.
— Carlos Diaz Narvaez
-----
Acknowledgements
Thank you to
all the designers who got back to me with responses to my queries. This project
literally would not have been possible without your contributions. I’m glad you
saw some merit in replying, and I hope I’ve managed to produce something
worthwhile from all your efforts.
As I mentioned, earlier, I approached most of the respondents via Boardgamegeek.com. I have been critical of some aspects of BGG in the past, but it really is an extraordinary resource for bringing together people with a mutual appreciation of games, and I wouldn’t have been able to reach nearly as many people as I did without it.
I wanted to
pay a special thanks to Steve Rawling, publisher of Against the Odds magazine,
Rachel Billingsley of GMT Games, Mark McLaughlin, and Ty Bomba, who each put me
in touch with designers I otherwise may not have been able to reach. And I owe
a debt of gratitude to accomplished designer and friend of the blog, Brian
Train. It was Mr Train who I first approached seeking advice about the framing
of the questionnaire, and who in turn provided the first response to the
survey.
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