A wargame, generally, is a type of strategy game which realistically simulates warfare. A professional wargame, specifically, is a wargame that is used by military organizations to train officers in tactical and strategic decision-making, to test new tactics and strategies, or to predict trends in future conflicts. This is in contrast to recreational wargames, which are designed for fun and competition.
Overview Definition The exact definition of "wargame" varies from one writer to the next and one organization to the next. To prevent confusion, this section will establish the general definition employed by this article.
A wargame simulates an armed conflict, be it a battle, a campaign, or an entire war. "Business wargames" do not simulate armed conflict and are therefore outside the scope of this article. A wargame is adversarial. There must be at least two opposing sides whose players react intelligently to each other's decisions. A wargame must have human players.Perla (1990), The Art of Wargaming: "A real wargame must have human players whose decisions affect and are affected by the flow of game events." A wargame does not involve the use of actual troops and armaments. This definition is used by the US Naval War College.War Gamer's Handbook (US Naval War College), p. 4: "The [U.S. Naval War College's War Gaming Department] uses the Perla (1990) definition, which describes war gaming as "...a warfare model or simulation whose operation does not involve the activities of actual military forces, and whose sequence of events affects and is, in turn, affected by the decisions made by players representing the opposing sides" (Perla, 1990, p. 164). By doing so, this differentiates a war game from a training exercise, which uses real forces." Some writers use the term "live wargames" to refer to games that use actual troops in the field,Caffrey (2019), On Wargaming, p. 270: "Live wargames are the next oldest. Everything from medieval jousts to Red Flag exercises are live wargames because actual forces engage in (simulated) combat, adjudicated by nonlethal means." but this article shall instead refer to these as field exercises. A wargame is about tactical or strategic decision-making. A game that exercises only the player's technical skills, such as a combat flight simulator, is not a wargame.
Still, some professional wargamers feel that the term "game" trivializes what they see as a serious, professional tool. One of these was Georg von Reisswitz, the creator of Kriegsspiel and the father of professional wargaming, but he stuck with the word "game" because he could not think of a better term.: "The one thing which did not satisfy Von Reisswitz was the word "game;" but not finding anything to take its place he retained it." In the US Army, many preferred the term "map maneuvers" (in contrast to "field maneuvers"). At the US Naval War College, some preferred the terms "chart maneuvers" (when simulating campaigns) and "board maneuvers" (when simulating battles), although the term "war game" was never officially proscribed.William McCarty Little (1912), quoted in Perla (1990), The Art of Wargaming: "In embarking on this lecture I would like to say, by way of preface, that the name Game, War Game, has had much the same depreciating effect as the term Sham Fight has had with regard to field maneuvers. To avoid this, the Army has had recourse to the expression Map Maneuver. We, of the Navy, may in like manner say Chart Maneuver, and we have lately decided so to do."Lillard (2016), Playing War, p. 46: "The Big Game, generally a series of maneuvers played in stages set in the same scenario, started with chart maneuvers for logistics planning, search, and screening, and it culminated in a large-scale tactical board maneuver."
Professional wargames vs commercial wargames Professional wargames tend to have looser rules and simpler models than recreational wargames, with an umpire arbitrating situations based on personal knowledge. If the umpire is highly knowledgeable about warfare (perhaps they are a veteran), then such wargames can achieve a higher degree of realism than wargames with rigid rulesets. In a recreational wargame, such looseness would lead to concerns over fairness, but the point of a professional wargame is education, not competition. Having simple, loose rules also keeps the learning curve small, which is convenient since most officers have little or no wargaming experience.
Likewise, there is less concern regarding "balance" when determining each player's armaments and strategic advantages. In a commercial wargame, the rules are usually designed to ensure that the players' armies are of equal strength to ensure fairness, but professional wargames will tailor each side's capabilities to the scenario to be investigated, and warfare in the real world is rarely fair.
As professional wargames are used to prepare officers for actual warfare, there is naturally a strong emphasis on realism and current events. Historical wargames are wargames set in the distant past, such as World War II or the Napoleonic Wars—simulating these wars realistically may be of interest to historians, but are of little use to the military. Recreational wargames may take some creative liberties with reality, such as simplifying models to make them more enjoyable, or adding fictional armaments and units such as orcs and wizards, making them of little use to officers who must fight in the real world.
Military organizations are typically secretive about their current wargames, and this makes designing a professional wargame a challenge. Secrecy makes it harder to disseminate corrections if the wargame has already been delivered to the clients. Whereas a commercial wargame might have thousands or even millions of players, professional wargames tend to have small player bases, which makes it harder for the designers to acquire feedback. As a consequence, errors in wargame models tend to persist."Creveld (2013), Wargames: "Much of the data that goes into the programs is classified: as a result, checking on whether it is correct is difficult, and errors, once they have crept in, tend to stay. Secrecy also makes it hard to update the games as needed."Perla (1990), The Art of Wargaming: "Unlike those in the wargaming hobby, professional wargamers work in a relatively closed society. One organization's games are not freely available for all to try, critique and modify. Professional wargame designers may document their games (usually in classified publications), but they seldom describe the design process they employed to create them."
Although commercial wargame designers take consumer trends and player feedback into account, their products are usually designed and sold with a take-it-or-leave-it approach. Professional wargames, by contrast, are typically commissioned by the military that plans to use them. If a wargame is commissioned by several clients, then the designer will have to juggle their competing demands. This can lead to great complexity, high development costs, and a compromised product that satisfies nobody.Creveld (2013), Wargames: "One is the need to satisfy the requirements of many different user organizations each of which does not wish to buy the game off the shelf but actively attempts to pull it in its own direction. Often the outcome is great complexity and compromises that end up, like the famous camel that was created by a committee, by satisfying nobody."
Commercial wargames are under more pressure to deliver an enjoyable experience for the players, who expect a user-friendly interface, a reasonable learning curve, exciting gameplay, and so forth. By contrast, military organizations tend to see wargaming as a tool and a chore, and players are often bluntly obliged to use whatever is provided to them.Creveld (2013), Wargames: "Finally, those who design, manufacture, and market games in the commercial world are obliged to pay attention to users' demands, such as ease of play and creating a good interface between player and game. Their counterparts working in, or for, the military, are not nearly as affected by these concerns. On occasion, this can lead to bad games that people simply do not want to play."
Design concepts Models The term "model" can mean two things in wargaming. One is the conceptual models that describe the properties, capabilities, and behaviors of the things the wargame attempts to simulate (weapons, vehicles, troops, terrain, weather, etc.). The other meaning, from miniature wargaming (a form of recreational wargaming), is physical models, i.e. sculptures of soldiers, vehicles, and terrain; which generally serve an aesthetic purpose and have little if any consequence on the simulation. Professional wargames rarely use physical models because aesthetics aren't important to the military and the scale at which professional wargames typically play make physical models impractical. Therefore, this article will focus on conceptual models.
A wargame is about decision-making, not about learning the technical capabilities of a particular weapon or vehicle. Therefore, a well-designed model will not describe something beyond what a player needs to know to make effective decisions. Players should not be burdened with cumbersome calculations, because this slows down the game and distracts the players. If a player makes a bad decision, it should only be because of poor strategic thinking, not some forgotten rule or arithmetic error, otherwise the game will yield less reliable insights. If the wargame is computer-assisted, then sophisticated models are feasible because they can be written into the software and processed quickly by the computer. For manual wargames, simplicity is paramount.
Level of war In a tactical-level wargame, the scope of the simulated conflict is a single battle. Kriegsspiel, the original professional wargame, is an example of a tactical-level wargame. The wargames of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (see below) were also tactical-level, simulating submarine attacks on a merchant convoy.
In a strategic-level wargame, the scope of the simulated conflict is a campaign or even an entire war. An example is the "Chart Maneuvers" practiced by the US Naval War College during the 1920s and 1930s, which most often simulated a hypothetical war in the Pacific against Japan. Another example is the Sigma wargames played in the 1960s to test proposed strategies for fighting the Vietnam War. Battles are resolved through simple computation. The players concern themselves with higher-level, strategic concerns such as logistics and diplomacy.
Utility General strengths and limitations In comparison to field exercises, wargames save time and money. They can be organized quickly and cheaply as they do not require the mobilization of thousands of men, their armaments, and logistics systems.
Some wargames can be completed more quickly than the conflicts they simulate by compressing time. In a naval wargame, the players need not wait days for their fleets to sail across the ocean, they could just advance the time-frame to the next decision they must make. This is particularly advantageous for strategic-level games, in which the simulated conflict might last months. A tactical-level wargame that has very cumbersome computations might take longer to play out than the battle it represents (this problem afflicted the original Kriegsspiel).
Wargamers can experiment with assets that their military does not actually possess, such as alliances that their country does not have, armaments that they have yet to acquire, and even hypothetical technologies that have yet to be invented.