The use of war games for the development regarding strategies and people.
War games have been a popular hobby for many gamers. From digital games such as Star-Craft to the traditional fantasy war games such as War-Hammer 40k they have provided endless hours of entertainment. However, there is another much more serious side to this pastime. This essay reviews the origins of war games, their evolution and steadfast popularity in the development of strategies and training for the military and more recently business. While some may scoff at the idea that one could 'play war' and have it translate to effective real-world battle strategy, the military and defense departments around the world do not.
An important concept regarding war games is the size and scope of the war game. The history of war games generally expands in size and scope as countries are able to bring more and more people into the conflict. As the size of the battle being represented though the war game increases the mechanics of the war game start to change. More things must be simulated through the games mechanics such as environmental characteristics, economics, even the politics of surrounding nations. The earliest of these games generally only dealt with military intelligence, objectives and resources. By the 1800s to the 1930s war-games generally concerned themselves with the environmental, logistical and economic impact the actions in the war game could effect. By the 1950s war games started to become much more in the scope of global affairs, and included political motivations and additional sides besides just the attacker and aggressor ( Weiner 13).
The exact origin of war games may be impossible to pinpoint, however M.G. Weiner describes that there are four commonly accepted views as to how they most likely got their start. His first opinion is that they started from generals and their advisers drawing into the sand to plan the major moves of an operation. They may even have elected someone to act as an opponent and create counter moves to the battle plan. Another related way that war games could have come about was through similar scrawls in the sand to describe to troops and commanders of their role in military operations. It is also possible that war games originated from a more game like scenario where they were developed to keep generals skills sharp and to occupy their time. The fourth and final way is that war games completely originated from leisure past times initially derived from enjoyment (Weiner 2-3). What is known for certain is that by the 1st century ad Romans used ‘sand tables’ to predict possible military scenarios for their military strategies (McLeroy).
One of the first documented war games appeared in Europe during the Middle-Ages in the form of chess. The way chess was played at the time was very similar to the way military conflicts of the day played out. However by the 17th century most war games were modifications of chess, but were not useful for military training since warfare had changed and they were lacking in the critical quality of realist conflict resolution. Simply put the game mechanics of these early war games did not reflect the mechanics of warfare.
By the early 19th century Prussian/German military commanders who studied actual battles started developing war games that had game mechanics that mirrored the situations and outcomes of actual battles (Dunnigan 190-91). Roger Smith, Chief Scientist and Technology Officer for the Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation, stated that some of the greatest innovations of German war games was how they used statistics and numbers to resolve battlefield actions instead of more traditional methods (McLeroy).
The military's initial documented use of war games started with the German/Prussian military's creation of paper war games. These war games started with a military writer in the 1700s by the name of Gerog Vinturinus. His initial game had 3600 squares on a board with different squares representing different types of terrain. He also published a very detailed 60 page rule book as to how his game should be played. The next Prussian game of note was made by Georg Leopold Von Reisswitz, the Prussian war counselor of Breslav in the year 1811. This transferred war-game rules to a sand table at 1:2373 scale and had rules for troop movement that was unrestricted by squares. In 1824 his son, Von Reisswitz Jr. came up with his own war-game. Von Reisswitz Jr. is often to be considered the father of modern war games with his innovations such as red and blue square units as well as commander units, the use of dice, an umpire, and rules for unit command. When the chief general staff of the German army Von Meffling was initial told of this game he was skeptical, but after a demonstration he became of its largest supporters. However, the game itself was long and tedious to play (Weiner 6-7). These games proved their effectiveness as an aid for military training in the six weeks war with Austrian in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71. After these wars other countries started taking note of the Kriegspiel variants that were being used by the Prussian military (Michael 52). In 1876, Von Verdy du Vernois simplified the rules and allowed for greater player freedom. This created division between rules heavy ‘ridged war game’ vs. tactical freedom and experienced umpire based ‘free war game’. These divisions still exist in the war games even today (Weiner 7).
After World War 2 operations research was the main type war-game played. This was generally larger scale and included logistics instead of just battle scenarios (Dunnigan 192). For determining the outcome of battles rigid war games that did not need a experienced general as a referee became favored to moderated ones since they offered a degree of consistency that free-form war games did not. Developments in computing made in the 1950s made it possible to carry out detailed computations quickly to do multiple computations of a game thus preventing the games from becoming to tedious (Weiner 6-7). operational research war games were also being developed such as ATLAS. This computer OR program was run by the Department of Defense in various versions starting in the 60s and continued to the 1980s (Michael 53).The RAND Stratagey Assesment Center (RSAC) was developed in the 1970s to evaluate the possible outcomes for scenarios in which the Soviet Union wished to enhance their prospects as a nation and the United States was to deter nuclear war at the lowest effort possible.(Davis 7).
RSAC purposes to do this with automated war gaming (Davis 12). Automated war games are played out through AI and have distinct advantages over traditional war games. The four main issues with non-automated war games were, the time it took to play, lack of interest after several iterations, distaste for highly structured rules, cost of maintaining humans and experts. Have lead to the need to develop automated war games (Davis 16). Previous to 1983 computers were not advanced enough to be used for war games, but by 1983 AI could be used for this for several reasons. Rule based programs could be developed in which cause effect relationships between the moves, stratageies and components of a large scale war game or operational research could be evaluated. Computers also had developed complex enough pattern matching software to try to guess how a country would react to given scenarios via their past actions. This was important because larger scale conflicts of the period required strategies that could take into account the actions of multiple players in a given or purposed conflict. Computer languages had also advanced to the point where it was easier to train and develop people to write programs for computers even if they did not have a programming degree. Finally chess playing computer algorithms provided a basis for computers to make semi intelligent decisions based on sorting through all the possible moves and outcomes and choosing the best move (Davis 18). The Advanced Studies department of the Raytheon Missile Systems Division also created a simulation of air battles, space missions, missile exchanges, disarmament inspection systems and international political-economic competitions during the 1960s (Michael 53).
By the 1980s the military started using networked games to allow soldiers to work with each other and against each other in teams for training purposes. From this not only flight simulators were created but also tank and Humvee simulators (Michael 55). However by the turn of the millennium the defense department started turning to the entertainment games industry for additional technology to use in their military simulations. DARWARS, a defense program, has developed war games such as modifications of commercial games to train soldiers how to survive convoy ambushes (Michael61). According to business development manager at MultiGen-Paradigm Inc, Juliana m. Slye, there is greater sophistication in military products than in the games. The military’s war games also are focused differently than consumer products. Consumer products are often only concerned with the end engagement and have a very limited scope. They also contain many optimizations and are focused on the fun factor. When converting these games to military simulations there is trouble with the fact that the games are made with technology optimized for only the end engagement. Thus this means that flight simulation technology isn’t made to work with first person shooter technology and there is no technology developed for the advanced logistics required by the military. For instance there is no game technology that integrates the logistics of launching an f18 military aircraft from an aircraft carrier. Also military simulation needs to show the interaction of a large number of systems such as the ship, the airplanes, and also the tanks and vehicles on the ground. Also no commercial games simulate all the preparation and down-time and logistics in a real battle. Off the shelf technology developed for games has reduced the cost it takes to develop for these technologies but it still requires full scale development to develop a state of the art military simulation. Rear Adm. Fred Lewis (ret.) executive director Nation Training Systems Association states that there is no guidelines as to what should be taken from the civilian entertainment field which makes the integration of such technology difficult to gauge. Tim Palmer chief technical officer of CG2 states that the technology is changing so fast that it is out pacing their predictions (Drumheller).
By the 1990s and millennial era the technology for advanced war games became accessible to more than the US military. War games, with modified mechanics to represent the corporate world are also used to play out scenarios in US business. For training, these war games let managers implement strategies they have only hear about in class room training courses. These also help to enlighten the lower level workers with regards to what their management is dealing with in regards to things like unproductive work or cutting costs (Marshall). While these war games do not replace business consultants, they are able to help in rapidly prototyping new business strategies. Also, just like their military counterparts, these war games are increasingly becoming automated and being used for training of lower level business people who need to understand the logistics. These war games allow the employees to understand the kinds of logistics they may be dealing with as well as the sort of random occurrences and natural disasters that can impact sales and profits. These kind of simulations also track the strategies used and try to get ‘smarter’ from tactics that have been enacted. They also include the possibility of inputting real world data into the war game to be used as a simulation tool. The users of these war games and simulation programs do stress however that they do not want to take the decision making out of the hands of the people. The cost of these war games is also very expensive in excess of a million dollars for some larger companies like AT&T and $100,000 for corporate war games on the low end (Bulkeley). War game development evolution shows no signs of slowing down as its small but important consumer base always needs to gauge and simulate all manners of conflicts.
War games have had a steadfast popularity for a multitude of reasons, but there is always one main reason that they will never go out of favor. They are cheaper than full scale operations or, in the military’s case, wars. The time, money, and resources are much smaller than the cost it takes to run a full scale military training exercises (190 Dunnigan). Beyond this one simple and undeniable fact Weiner in 1959 outlines some additional reasons as to why war games have uses. He first identifies them as valuable training aids which can help with multiple tasks to-days military must undertake. One is communicating orders and procedures to troops as well as calculating planning and logistics both of which current simulations are designed to help. He also denotes that the use of time weather and local conditions are an important factor that make war games important as a portion of training. The second reason he believes that war games are are important is that they allow the military commanders to see things in a different point of view and play from the side of the enemy. Weiner believes that this allows people to see holes in their operations they may not have considered. One of the most important reasons Weiner has for war games being needed by the military is their ability to plan for new tactics, doctrines and military systems. Through the use of hypothetical war games relationships of units and systems can be discovered to help in the creation of new strategies and tactics. Through playing the same situation over again with one major change to see the difference in outcomes it can help project the needed forces for future scenarios. Deployment of plans and strategies can also be tested in multiple scenarios allowing the testing of tactics without the threat of losses that are normally incurred. All of this coalesces into Weiners’ final point that war games can be used to develop theory. War games allow commanders to see the greater structure in war that most generals only could learn otherwise by fighting large scale wars (Weiner 25).
The RAND Strategy Assessment Center (RSAC) does exactly what Weiner has purposed. Simply put they develop AI, or a process of strategies to play automated war games under multiple conditions to determine the most effective strategies. They then use this information to formulate actions in the field. This is a cheap and effective way for the United States to test strategies multiple times, under multiple conditions to determine their effectiveness. This system is also used to test concepts and strategies with regards to possible enemy actions if certain scenarios are enacted. These type of things were used to help predict soviet actions during the cold war and test the possibility of escalation between the countries (Davis).
From war games vast history, evolution and continued use we can see that war games are in fact an important part of planning for large organizations. The analysis here proves that war games, while a popular leisure for some gamers, is also a very serious form of entertainment.
Biliography:
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Dunnigan, James F. Wargames Handbook, Third Edition: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames. San Jose, Ca.: Writers Club, 2000. Print.
Marshall, Jeffrey and Maselli, Marigrace. "Computer Simulations Offer War Games' for Bankers. " American Banker (pre-1997 Fulltext) 23 Jan. 1989 ProQuest.com Web. 11 Feb. 2011.
McLeroy, C.. "History of Military Gaming. " Soldiers 1 Sep. 2008: Research Library, ProQuest.com Web. 11 Feb. 2011.
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