The State of Digital Wargames Nov. 2021

[CapnDarwin]

To get back on topic, here is my summary of this state of wargaming: 30 years later and we still sit in front of a screen, keyboard, and mouse. Yes, the screens are bigger, and the resolution is greater and some screens look like surfboards. The only real change over this time is what goes on under the cover of the PC. Faster CPUs, bigger GPUs, more RAM, and massive storage space. Plus, this little thing called the internet. While people seem to yearn for this mystical change in how to game, the reality is there are no new means to do the basic functions of input and output. Barring plugging a chip into our brains to think to the computer, that will come someday, we are locked into the same methods of information flow. The same menu/toolbar, right-click, and left-click mechanics used over 30 years still work today and the mechanics and conventions are well known. People see that and go, "hey the 90s called and they want their UI back", but everyone who used a windows PC is not confused about how that UI works. If I make you suddenly have to make clover-leak mouse gestures while tapping the space bar with your nose to open a dialog or do a movement on a map, while innovative, it is damn stupid and most gamers who never read manuals won't understand how to play the game or even start it. I have refunded or uninstalled a few games for this type of "innovative" UI issue.

What has innovated in the past three decades is what most players never see. What goes on in the code. What we have gained in the past 30 years is the means to constantly reduce the level of abstraction required to perform many of the calculations covering everything from movement to spotting/LOS to combat. What was once a simple formula and a die roll or two can now be a more detailed and realistic calculation based on many different factors that weigh on the outcome of events. Even with all this newfound computing capability, one area lagging in most games is the AI. Partly that is the fault of deeming early weighted if-then trees and die rolls as being "AI", when in fact we are still slowly getting to a technology point where home PCs can truly have a running game AI. Here again, we have a very major abstraction of a "human" mindset. Most games lean on the weighted die rolls and complex if-then logic. Some innovative games try to better mimic more advanced processes to achieve a "smart" answer to a game situation. The best means of having a true AI game is playing another human. As the horsepower of computers continues to grow, better implementations of AI will rise and the abstraction of thought and even memory of events will improve in the games we play.

So, sit back and enjoy the ride. [8D]

[Elessar2]

It may be the whole set of wargaming conventions has reached its inevitable end, in the general idiom in question. What I want to see is a combination of a FPS, flight sim, & RTS, thousands of players on a theatre-wide map (every human is an officer, commanding platoons/torpedo boats/squadrons on up-yep, needing some good bot code), fully dynamic world. This would require some devs who treat their subject as a labor of love, vs. a cash cow, of course, and in this day and age I dunno about that. Bring in the World Of War X/Call of Duty/flight simmers/wargamers all under one huge umbrella.

[Yes I am aware of the 1st attempt to do this in WW2 Online, which is no longer getting any substantial overhauls given that their original coding team is long gone. I wouldn't let their failure be any sort of harbinger here.]

[DingBat]

Seriously, if you think war game developers look on their games as "cash cows", well, I'm not sure what to say.

[jmlima]

ORIGINAL: Elessar2

What I want to see is a combination of a FPS, flight sim, & RTS, ...

That's sort of what Campaign was back in the day, well if allow for the tech at the time.

[gamer78]

ORIGINAL: CapnDarwin

... What was once a simple formula and a die roll or two can now be a more detailed and realistic calculation based on many different factors that weigh on the outcome of events. Even with all this newfound computing capability, one area lagging in most games is the AI. Partly that is the fault of deeming early weighted if-then trees and die rolls as being "AI", when in fact we are still slowly getting to a technology point where home PCs can truly have a running game AI. Here again, we have a very major abstraction of a "human" mindset. Most games lean on the weighted die rolls and complex if-then logic. Some innovative games try to better mimic more advanced processes to achieve a "smart" answer to a game situation. The best means of having a true AI game is playing another human. As the horsepower of computers continues to grow, better implementations of AI will rise and the abstraction of thought and even memory of events will improve in the games we play.

So, sit back and enjoy the ride. [8D]

For a hex wargame most probably the problem is about AI, nothing estetic -graphic wise- to show. As it is historic game it should have a challange for a historical point. For a fantasy&RPG such as Conquest of Elysium lore&magic and different races and roguelike play cover bad AI. Dev for Conquest of Elysium did publish 5th version of his game. I think he has second job or game sells well.

[gamer78]

ORIGINAL: loki100


There are plenty of really innovative game designs out there. AGEOD's Empires manages to capture the dynamics of state rise, ossification and collapse in a single core concept, easy to grasp but like entropy a bit harder to avoid.

For a grand strategy game AGEOD could look for Victoria times once again. İlber Ortaylı has incredible book about OE -The Empire’s Longest Century-

[Rosseau]

ORIGINAL: gamer78

ORIGINAL: loki100


There are plenty of really innovative game designs out there. AGEOD's Empires manages to capture the dynamics of state rise, ossification and collapse in a single core concept, easy to grasp but like entropy a bit harder to avoid.

For a grand strategy game AGEOD could look for Victoria times once again. İlber Ortaylı has incredible book about OE -The Empire’s Longest Century-

Yes, AGEOD, is another industry innovator. The company's older Revolution Under Siege campaign game remains incredible in its scope and detail. (And, of course, the Gold edition is still available here on Matrix.)

I am with all of you on your comments and do not want to appear "ungrateful" for the bounty of digital wargames available, literally within seconds of purchase.

For instance, I could not have imagined the genre would have evolved from playing Battleship with my brother with plastic ships and pegs in 1968, to WitP:AE. And, admittedly, that evolution did take a long time!

Now, we're comparing the evolution from V4V Utah Beach to present-day (about 30 years). I still don't fully see it as quite as dramatic as that first 30-year period of evolution...

[Elessar2]

ORIGINAL: DingBat


Seriously, if you think war game developers look on their games as "cash cows", well, I'm not sure what to say.

No, you misconstrued what I said. I'm mainly talking about the devs of MMO shooters like World of Tanks (and only when it clearly applies and not as any sort of blanket statement by any stretch). Seems like these games get made with the highest of aspirations (maybe), but then incrementalism sneaks in, subsequent changes seem to favor the cash stream and not gameplay so much, cue grumbling of the player base as people start to leave for greener pastures. Perusing any negative Steam reviews of these kinds of games and you'll see tons of criticism along those lines.

No doubt that most devs here by contrast are in it for the subject matter.

[Rosseau]

I was thinking more of "traditional" wargames, rather than World of Tanks (an MMO shooter), that albeit looks incredible!

Some people have mentioned Steel Panthers WaW and MBT that continue to be "updated" on Shrapnel's site for the last 20 years or so.

However, in 2021, I feel we should be playing the same WaW and MBT games with the graphics and interface level of Panzer Corps 2. I'd spend the rest of my life playing them.

Why (with all due respect) must the world continue to wait on 2x3 Games to create such a product? Was Panzer Corps 2 intentionally "simplified," or could it have been a breakthrough wargame?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: gamer78

ORIGINAL: loki100


There are plenty of really innovative game designs out there. AGEOD's Empires manages to capture the dynamics of state rise, ossification and collapse in a single core concept, easy to grasp but like entropy a bit harder to avoid.

For a grand strategy game AGEOD could look for Victoria times once again. İlber Ortaylı has incredible book about OE -The Empire’s Longest Century-

oh if Phillipe could be encouraged/funded to remake Pride of Nations with the Empires game engine I think I'd end up completely anti-social. PoN is an example of a game brimming with brilliant concepts that create intereresting game mechanics out of a rich understanding of the period in question.

Unfortunately far too ambitious for the game engine it was based on.

In a way this is what I mean about innovative design. Some of it is improving game accessibility (UI if you like) but a lot of is a designer with a strong narrative view of how their game should work and what really matters in the modelling and player interaction. Vic does this extremely well, Shadow Empire has no 'historical' base but has a clear narrative structure, WiTE2 is a design based on a clear understanding of key dynamics. I think more and more games (at least those supported by Matrix) are coming from this mindset?

[altipueri]

I was only thinking of this thread last night as I fired up an old laptop to find a file and lo and behold there was Civilization 2 on the desktop - so I fired it up and three hours later I was still playing one more turn..

It also has Sid Meier's Gettysburg; Imperialism; and a few others.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Time and space are paramount and war and pivot to any game/simulation.
I feel that the computing power has been used to great extent for more detail, better combat simulation and better graphics, but the core mechanics are still boardgamish. I believe that WEGO and incomplete information offer potential for innovative games. A real-time combat engine that stops in intervals so you can do admin/organization/thinking could work too as a fusion of turn-based and real time.

WitE2 is an amazing game and I enjoyed testing it, no doubt. But I would love to see a game in the same setting where the resources are not spent on minutiae details (like aircraft attacking height settings and a plethora of support units), but on WEGO ground mechanics, dynamic ZOC costs and possibly more realistic decision cycles (3 1/2 days instead of a week).

The MilOps game had an innovative approach in terms of gameplay and technology (large-scale use of GPU computing). It is dead but showcases what could be done with modern technology and a grand vision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjl1Y1c ... Operations
https://steamcommunity.com/app/821680

[willgamer]

I doubt this is a new idea, but has anybody suggested that, considering many modern games vacuum up data from games as they are played, games use that data to dynamically input winning strategies back to games (also as they are played).

I'm thinking of all the data collected by Vic in his Decisive Campaigns games. There was a vigorous discussion of strategies for both sides. What if the best, say Soviet strategies in Barbarossa, were input back into the game each time it was started. Naturally, these strategies would improve and change as more games are played. The developer's AI, for example, could learn to watch for certain vulnerable situations and respond with moves that take advantage.

Just asking...[8D]

[CapnDarwin]

@willgamer, while that sounds so easy to do, it is really a difficult situation to really do for a game. The first question is what really constitutes a "winning" strategy? Next at what intervals of time in a game does the AI need to evaluate the known picture on the map (or cheat and know where all the enemy units are at)? How do I collect data to refer to these points in space-time? What if the player is a delta time step faster or slower than the collected data? And trust me many, many other questions exist in this puzzle. I will say that PC hardware is getting to a point where having a separate AI agent running in its own program may be able to look at a current game state and run some courses of action and see what is the better outcome of a near-future action and then issuing orders to forces to act on that new session of looks. I will say that we have tested some simple machine learning (ML) with our Pro Game Engine for doing courses of action by running scenarios repeatedly and looking for where both good and bad outcomes occur and using that to change to course of action of the next runs to optimize a better outcome for the AI. Still not a technology that sits in a game at the moment, but it does start to paint a future picture of the possibility of integrating a more functional AI that utilizes some ML functions to make the in-game AI smarter and better able to "react" to dynamic changes in the game space and be more like a human opponent. Time will tell. [8D]

[willgamer]

Retired software developer here, so I never thought it would be easy! [:D]

Re: winning strategy, I was thinking about machine learning from players with the best records against the AI at difficult levels. Here I'm thinking in terms of tbs games like DC:Barbarossa.

A good start for these games might be capturing the best players' starting moves. Specifically, for DC:B the best strategies for using cards or, for the Soviets, how to use generals.

Another approach might be (each x turns?, while the player is moving?) to send a current game state to a server AI for evaluation, and the server AI send back adjustments to the local AI.

Totally agree with time will tell!

[*Lava*]

ORIGINAL: Rosseau
I find that "warm, fuzzy feeling" largely absent when considering the State of Digital Wargames 2021.

I think when we look around us that most things increase by increments, so it would not be unusual to say that wargames have done so as well.

ORIGINAL: Rosseau
What matters here is not my opinion, but the observations of some of the most experienced (and brilliant) posters and devs in the wargaming industry right here on Matrix Games.

I am neither of the above.

But I do have an opinion, FWIW.

I was hoping by now that we would have wargames that would incorporate all levels of war: the strategic, the operational and the tactical. The vast majority of games still only comprise two of those levels at best.

The Operational level always gets left out. At present there is a game out there which I believe is called Grand Tactician: The American Civil War, which tries to simulate all 3 levels of war. Unfortunately, I believe it is far too complicated to achieve a really nice flowing game, but at least it gives it a shot.

If by wargames we mean electronic board games, I don't believe there is really much more that can be done, with the exception of increasing the capability of the AI.

[RFalvo69]

I think that any new wargame designer should first of all consider two things:

- What do we already did?

and

- What do we already did that we are leaving behind?

For the first case, let's take the Bulge - something that borders on the obsessive side re: wargaming topics. In my case:

I played AH'S "Battle of the Bulge" in high-school; then "The Ardennes Offensive" by SSI; I played the Bulge game in the Panzer Campaigns series; I played Bulge in TOAW; I said "wow!" and played "Battles of the Bulge" when it came out and redefined the continuous movement/chain of command concept. I played "Bitter Woods" when a friend of mine bought it but we never finished that game. Tactically, I played Bulge-set scenarios in Steel Panthers, The Campaign Series, Panthers in the Shadows - and I'm sure that I'm forgetting something.

Notice how "Battles of the Bulge" redefined the whole idea of fighting in the narrow roads and icy snow of the Ardennes. That's what made it worth playing even if the topic was direly in need of some decades-long vacation. What are looking for now, so? The next hex based Bulge game. Yay...

Regarding "what we are leaving behind", I already mentioned engagement ranges from PitS/TotP II. But then we have "Command", a game who does a lot of things better than "Harpoon" but, after two iterations, still lacks independent tactical windows, a dynamic weather model, an advanced formation manager (Harpoon 2 had all of these things in 1994!) and true P2P multiplayer (Harpoon ANW had it in 2006).

We are still fixated with hexes. Games ranging from the "Airborne Assault" series to "TacOps" had point to point movement in the early 2000s. Talking about "Airborne Assault", it launched an innovative line of grand tactical games; when can we expect to see the same principles applied to operational/strategic games?

And then there are the contents. In 1995 "Steel Panthers" gave you the whole WWII at tactical level - no questions asked; Steel Panthers II did the same for modern conflicts; while welcome, the effort was maybe a bit much too much: both the PitS series and the "Campaign Series" gave us the Eastern Front, the Western Front and the PTO in three different packages, and people were perfectly happy. Combat Mission gave us "Barbarossa to Berlin" - again, no question asked. "Toaw I & II" did for the operational level what "Steel Panthers did for the tactical.

Today? "Mission of Honor - Band of In-Laws: the Western Sector of Omaha Beach from 9 O'Clock to Midday". Yes I'm joking. A bit. One could argue that WitE 2 gives you the whole OOB for the Eastern Front 1941-45 - but, I would counter-argue, as the evolution of a game by Gary Grigsby that started with "War in Russia" in 1984 (!). And WitE 2 has no scenario editor: if you disagree about the exact day, month and year that the Pkw IV H got its wire-mesh side-skirts (and here I'm joking only a bit less) you can only resort to vibrant protests on the forum. And don't get me started about when "progress" = "more information on the XII Panzer Division that even its commander bothered to know" in a game where you are the OKH (this is how "the capabilities of modern PCs" are used - but if hexes and turns are ditched the Very Wrath of God will come down on the developers worse than when they dared to open the Ark - or so people do seem to fear).

(Operation: Flashpoint, in all fairness, presents a very detailed OOB for the Cold War in Europe in the '80s - but, once again, no scenario editor and no possibility to play in Korea or the Middle East. Steel Panthers III covered from 1939 to 1999).

I'm sure that for every example I made there are exceptions and counter-examples. That's not the point. The point is that these exceptions are not the trend. There is no reason for "Command" not to have multiplayer eight years after it was published when Harpoon ANW is relegated in the "also ran" section of the forum (why? BTW; the things lacking in "Command" make ANW still a viable alternative - the way WitE 2 didn't bench an alternative approach to the Eastern Front like "Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa"). There is no reason why continuous time operational and strategic wargames are absent from the scene. I like "Armored Brigade" a lot, but in the '90s we had tactical modern-era games that covered from 1950 to 1999. And the list could go on.

So, to sum it up, what I would like to see now is either a classic topic tackled in some fresh was that, ironically, aren't even fresh since we saw them working decades ago (continuous time - Paradox uses it since 2001), or some modern game that, at the very least considers as a given what earlier games gave us... er... decades ago (Harpoon II/III/ANW).

My dream game right now? "Operation Flashpoint: the Eastern Front 1941-45". With continuous time; no hexes; a scenario editor. And engagement ranges.

[CapnDarwin]

Operation: Flashpoint is a tactical FPS game set in the cold war (and other timeframes) and I would not say that is a wargame to compare to Steel Panthers. Now Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, is our game, and it does have scenario editing and detailed OOBs and Equipment lists. The hope is to cover more places and times over the next few years including new game engines for both Modern day and World War settings. The games will always have hexes and be asynchronous WEGO but everything else will be there for players to add scenarios/campaigns (on existing maps).

[ernieschwitz]

As a modder, and someone who was offered a chance to make a game, once, I think I can explain what the first thought that goes through a creator of any mod or game is: Do I want to do it?

Much like players get a kick out of playing something that they love, a game designer also has feelings about the things they do. There has to be a drive. I think this drive will supersede any other thought to begin with. Then perhaps that person will look into, what can I do here that is unique, but also serves the subject well. Nobody wants to copy something that is already out there.

You can say all you want to a designer of games what you want. It won't change the way they feel about a subject. For instance, I feel that wargames made after the advent of the atomic bomb are impractical, and to me feel "funny" (in a bad sense) because the players always have the option of breaking the emergency glass (firing those nukes, and getting retaliated at) and then the game ends in a tie. That is just how I feel.

In the same way I don't want to make a game from a time before tanks (and with guns). My reasoning for this is that I don't see the joy in playing and thus making a game that will be static warfare, with very little chance of breakthroughs and rapid movement. That is just how I see these periods.

These views may be wrong or right, but it doesn't change my joy of doing one rather than another.

Often what a game maker, will need is a vision. A reason to do something. This will drive creativity much more than trying to sit down and solve the squaring of the circle, by inspiration (which is what it is to demand that games be innovative).

Anyway, those are my 3/4s of a crown.

[DingBat]

My observation of the computer war games market:

1. It's small
2. It's fragmented
3. It's demanding

None of those characteristics is really friendly to massive innovation in delivery. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but it's a handicap.