Are you familiar with <<Bravo Romeo Delta>>? It too seemed like a mix between your NUKEMAP and DEFCON mixed in with breakdowns in command and control as the conflict goes on but made for the Amiga back in the day. It's available by Abandonware.
Hi, it seems I can't get the game run at Internet Archive. It says something about failing to download metadata. Do you happen to know how to get it to work?
They're working on it, but in the meantime you can download the game files (look for the ZIP link under "Download Options") and run it offline in a DOS virtual machine or an emulator like DOSBox.
Thanks for the advice. The Internet Archive version is working again now, which is good because I couldn't get it to run in DOSBox. I get the initial screen where the game prompts you to pick US by pressing 1 or USSR by pressing 2, but whichever I do the screen just goes black.
In any case, I was able to play it at IA. I love the level of detail and complexity, imperfect information, the uncertainity and the complicated decisions you have to deal with all the time. I suspect these same things would make the game frustrating for anyone who's not a nuke nerd, but for me it's perfect.
Oh, what a flashback! Balance of Power! many hours playing that on my 9-inch B&W Mac Plus screen back I the 80s. I still have Chris Crawford's book on the game. A semi-forgotten classic.
Indeed! I use This War of Mine in teaching quite a bit, as it is one of the few successful "anti-war war games," and is a useful framework for thinking about what it means to undermine the control fantasy in a (still playable) game. Maybe I will write something at length about it at some future time, as it is something I've played and played over the years, and watched how others play.
My main "issues" with it are that a) the "source material" it is based on is pretty sketchy (their model of the "civilian experience in war" seems based almost exclusively on like, one LiveJournal post or something, if I recall correctly, which includes some aspects that I suspect are fictional or extremely non-representative), and b) it can be very tempting to learn the strategies for maximizing character success in the game in ways that, in my view, serve to reinforce the control fantasy as well as undercut the game's main message (there is a devastating loop, from a gameplay perspective, when you use the "soldier" character to simply murder people — as he feels little/no remorse and is very capable of doing it – and then bend all of your efforts towards becoming a liquor baron, which can provide you with unlimited resources and then trivializes the gameplay). The latter, admittedly, takes a lot of deliberate activity to pull off (like, you have to read the Wiki), and is probably not part of the standard experience. But these are things I've thought about a bit.
Thanks for your thorough response! As someone who teaches anti-war war classes, I have a low bar for appreciating efforts to make war less (rather than more!) appealing in video games; I was just happy this existed. Strange that it hadn't occurred to me to actually play through it. Will do now. Thanks!
I’ve just finished the new edition of Playing At the World and I think you’re mostly right. But there is a conversation throughout the book about the history of wargaming, with Wells’s book and its tradition of “war as a game” contrasted with what military professionals do as training. It’s also just super readable. You won’t be disappointed.
I would be curious to compare the table of contents between the new version (both volumes) and the original one, just to see how they align. I very much enjoyed the first edition, and was a little disappointed to see they had split it into two. The pre-D&D stuff was the most interesting to me, personally (more than the "how D&D interacted with its fan community" stuff, which makes up a lot of the end of the book), and so I was (and remain) a little confused on how the "split" was done, given that volume 1's description from the publisher seem to emphasize the D&D aspects and volume 2 seems to emphasize the pre-D&D aspects.
I daydreamed for years about making a World War II game that starts in 1933, so that the alliances that just about every WWII game takes for granted would not be guaranteed. The idea was to show people that the era was truly chaotic and the story we are so familiar with was not inevitable. The Japanese and the British could team up to rid the world of communism, for example. I also wanted to show how much that war was, in many ways, a scramble for resources, not least of all food. But having done that, I wanted to also introduce economic aspects... which led to colonialism... and from there to the racism that affected all the major powers. I eventually realized that such a level of realism would probably make the game beloved of neo-Nazis, and I never really figured out a way around that.
So I highly empathize with your point that certain types of war games can't teach what you want them to teach.
That said, any thoughts about Twilight Struggle? Not quite a nuclear war game, as nuclear war = defeat. But also not quite an anti-nuclear war game, either.
I've tried once or twice to create a set of rules for a game that would simulate nuclear war with realism in mind. The idea is that two players would have a budget which they could use to buy different weapon systems like bombers, missiles and defences. Then they would try to nuke the other without getting destroyed themselves.
After playing a few times against myself with pencil and paper I found out it was pretty much impossible to win. An average game ended with both countries getting wiped out, which is realistic I guess. The only winning move really is not to play.
Wellerstein writes, "The fact that the “nuclear war would be really bad” seems to have become possibly linked to “and that’s why it won’t happen” is indeed one of the concerns I have...."
That is indeed a very interesting mindset.
The "it's too bad to actually happen" perspective seems based on an assumption that human affairs are governed by reason. Such an assumption requires one to ignore the history of human warfare, the well documented cases where we've come within minutes of global nuclear war by mistake, and the remarkable fact that even when we are right in the middle selecting a single human being to have sole authority over civilization ending weapons, almost nobody wants to talk about those weapons.
That is, the "it's too bad to actually happen" perspective uses very poor logic and data to propose that human affairs are governed by reason, thus becoming an argument with itself.
Seeing this logic failure clearly raises another question which seem very appropriate for an expert in the history of science.
Is there a limit to how much power human beings can successfully manage?
The following article proposes one answer:
The Logic Failure At The Heart Of The Modern World
Ah, i was really looking forwards to read that article !
The simplicity of the gameplay of Defcon really seems like a sweet spot. The rock-paper-scissors nature of naval combat, the equality of means to disposition that each superpower has. The "spiritual" sequel that is ICBM really feels more cluttered with its research and production mechanic, but it seems quite possible to turn it into a "DEFCON with a round map"
For the "missile defense buff", i wonder if it might be a "British bias". The efficiency of ABM systems in that game (which is indeed not really realistic, but does help the game into being balanced) feels like it push people into thinking like you're a medium nuclear power in the 1970s facing the perspective of having your missile broadsides being skimmed by a missile shield. Or i might just overthink it, and it might just be the zeitgeist about the new ABM systems that were being developed in the early 2000s.
I've a good and very recent experience about doing a quick game of Defcon while doing an internship at the Laboratoire Souterrain à Bas Bruit in Rustrel, which is located in the decommissioned and reconverted control bunker of the french IRBM missile complex of the Albion Plateau. It felt quite eerie
Another great classic: "Theatre Europe" of JacksonSoft (mid '80s). When I was a child I've nightmares for playing with it, but I was addicted and I cannot stop.
The bombing scene of the game is traced on the destruction of Kansas City in "The Day After" movie.
The noise of the teletype and its frantic messages were chilling.
(I still play this game on an emulator, i confess :D )
Fascinating post, was sad to see you stopped it at DEFCON when there have been gems like ICBM and more recently The Nuclear War Simulator. Book wise, Peterson’s book is great…but think you’d have greatly appreciated Zones of Control instead!
Damn, that image of the two guys with the game board throws me back to high school and the strategic games that we were into: Tobruk, Von Ricthofen's Air War, Stalingrad, and all the rest.
Ok... so I skimmed this post...long story short, if anyone thinks they can survive a nuclear exchange is either diabolical or really, really stupid. Pax
As a kid growing up in the mid 80s, I created a board game and then a TRS-80 game called Nukewar. These were not as sophisticated as Defcon, probably closer to Nuclear War in "depth." Probably lots of kids with my particular set of skills did the same. Anyway, one thing that became clear to me was that it was a boring game -- the best strategy was always to throw everything you had at the opposing country in the first round. So maybe there's something to the idea that WOPR's conclusion could be reached through a command-oriented game. From what you've disclosed about your game project, though, it sounds much more interesting.
Are you familiar with <<Bravo Romeo Delta>>? It too seemed like a mix between your NUKEMAP and DEFCON mixed in with breakdowns in command and control as the conflict goes on but made for the Amiga back in the day. It's available by Abandonware.
I am not — I will check it out!
"Bravo Romeo Delta" is both super interesting and extremely nerdy. I wrote a thing about it myself here: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2014/11/choreographing-armageddon-bravo-romeo-delta/
It is indeed abandonware, but thanks to the Internet Archive it can be played in a web browser here: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Bravo_Romeo_Delta_1993
Would love to hear your thoughts on it!
Hi, it seems I can't get the game run at Internet Archive. It says something about failing to download metadata. Do you happen to know how to get it to work?
The Internet Archive was hit by a huge hack recently (see https://www.npr.org/2024/10/20/nx-s1-5159000/internet-archive-hack-leak-wayback-machine), so it would not surprise me if some things were still not working properly there.
They're working on it, but in the meantime you can download the game files (look for the ZIP link under "Download Options") and run it offline in a DOS virtual machine or an emulator like DOSBox.
Thanks for the advice. The Internet Archive version is working again now, which is good because I couldn't get it to run in DOSBox. I get the initial screen where the game prompts you to pick US by pressing 1 or USSR by pressing 2, but whichever I do the screen just goes black.
In any case, I was able to play it at IA. I love the level of detail and complexity, imperfect information, the uncertainity and the complicated decisions you have to deal with all the time. I suspect these same things would make the game frustrating for anyone who's not a nuke nerd, but for me it's perfect.
Kudos for the Trinity reference, though missed Balance of Power - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game)
I was trying to remember its name, actually! I could remember its look and gestalt only. Thanks!
Oh, what a flashback! Balance of Power! many hours playing that on my 9-inch B&W Mac Plus screen back I the 80s. I still have Chris Crawford's book on the game. A semi-forgotten classic.
Very different from Fallout: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/youll-struggle-to-survive-in-this-war-of-mine-571731e1a624
Indeed! I use This War of Mine in teaching quite a bit, as it is one of the few successful "anti-war war games," and is a useful framework for thinking about what it means to undermine the control fantasy in a (still playable) game. Maybe I will write something at length about it at some future time, as it is something I've played and played over the years, and watched how others play.
My main "issues" with it are that a) the "source material" it is based on is pretty sketchy (their model of the "civilian experience in war" seems based almost exclusively on like, one LiveJournal post or something, if I recall correctly, which includes some aspects that I suspect are fictional or extremely non-representative), and b) it can be very tempting to learn the strategies for maximizing character success in the game in ways that, in my view, serve to reinforce the control fantasy as well as undercut the game's main message (there is a devastating loop, from a gameplay perspective, when you use the "soldier" character to simply murder people — as he feels little/no remorse and is very capable of doing it – and then bend all of your efforts towards becoming a liquor baron, which can provide you with unlimited resources and then trivializes the gameplay). The latter, admittedly, takes a lot of deliberate activity to pull off (like, you have to read the Wiki), and is probably not part of the standard experience. But these are things I've thought about a bit.
Thanks for your thorough response! As someone who teaches anti-war war classes, I have a low bar for appreciating efforts to make war less (rather than more!) appealing in video games; I was just happy this existed. Strange that it hadn't occurred to me to actually play through it. Will do now. Thanks!
I’ve just finished the new edition of Playing At the World and I think you’re mostly right. But there is a conversation throughout the book about the history of wargaming, with Wells’s book and its tradition of “war as a game” contrasted with what military professionals do as training. It’s also just super readable. You won’t be disappointed.
I would be curious to compare the table of contents between the new version (both volumes) and the original one, just to see how they align. I very much enjoyed the first edition, and was a little disappointed to see they had split it into two. The pre-D&D stuff was the most interesting to me, personally (more than the "how D&D interacted with its fan community" stuff, which makes up a lot of the end of the book), and so I was (and remain) a little confused on how the "split" was done, given that volume 1's description from the publisher seem to emphasize the D&D aspects and volume 2 seems to emphasize the pre-D&D aspects.
I daydreamed for years about making a World War II game that starts in 1933, so that the alliances that just about every WWII game takes for granted would not be guaranteed. The idea was to show people that the era was truly chaotic and the story we are so familiar with was not inevitable. The Japanese and the British could team up to rid the world of communism, for example. I also wanted to show how much that war was, in many ways, a scramble for resources, not least of all food. But having done that, I wanted to also introduce economic aspects... which led to colonialism... and from there to the racism that affected all the major powers. I eventually realized that such a level of realism would probably make the game beloved of neo-Nazis, and I never really figured out a way around that.
So I highly empathize with your point that certain types of war games can't teach what you want them to teach.
That said, any thoughts about Twilight Struggle? Not quite a nuclear war game, as nuclear war = defeat. But also not quite an anti-nuclear war game, either.
Definitely have a look at Nuclear War Simulator on Steam - a step up from Defcon. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603940/Nuclear_War_Simulator/
I've tried once or twice to create a set of rules for a game that would simulate nuclear war with realism in mind. The idea is that two players would have a budget which they could use to buy different weapon systems like bombers, missiles and defences. Then they would try to nuke the other without getting destroyed themselves.
After playing a few times against myself with pencil and paper I found out it was pretty much impossible to win. An average game ended with both countries getting wiped out, which is realistic I guess. The only winning move really is not to play.
Wellerstein writes, "The fact that the “nuclear war would be really bad” seems to have become possibly linked to “and that’s why it won’t happen” is indeed one of the concerns I have...."
That is indeed a very interesting mindset.
The "it's too bad to actually happen" perspective seems based on an assumption that human affairs are governed by reason. Such an assumption requires one to ignore the history of human warfare, the well documented cases where we've come within minutes of global nuclear war by mistake, and the remarkable fact that even when we are right in the middle selecting a single human being to have sole authority over civilization ending weapons, almost nobody wants to talk about those weapons.
That is, the "it's too bad to actually happen" perspective uses very poor logic and data to propose that human affairs are governed by reason, thus becoming an argument with itself.
Seeing this logic failure clearly raises another question which seem very appropriate for an expert in the history of science.
Is there a limit to how much power human beings can successfully manage?
The following article proposes one answer:
The Logic Failure At The Heart Of The Modern World
https://www.tannytalk.com/p/the-logic-failure-at-the-heart-of
Ah, i was really looking forwards to read that article !
The simplicity of the gameplay of Defcon really seems like a sweet spot. The rock-paper-scissors nature of naval combat, the equality of means to disposition that each superpower has. The "spiritual" sequel that is ICBM really feels more cluttered with its research and production mechanic, but it seems quite possible to turn it into a "DEFCON with a round map"
For the "missile defense buff", i wonder if it might be a "British bias". The efficiency of ABM systems in that game (which is indeed not really realistic, but does help the game into being balanced) feels like it push people into thinking like you're a medium nuclear power in the 1970s facing the perspective of having your missile broadsides being skimmed by a missile shield. Or i might just overthink it, and it might just be the zeitgeist about the new ABM systems that were being developed in the early 2000s.
I've a good and very recent experience about doing a quick game of Defcon while doing an internship at the Laboratoire Souterrain à Bas Bruit in Rustrel, which is located in the decommissioned and reconverted control bunker of the french IRBM missile complex of the Albion Plateau. It felt quite eerie
Another great classic: "Theatre Europe" of JacksonSoft (mid '80s). When I was a child I've nightmares for playing with it, but I was addicted and I cannot stop.
The bombing scene of the game is traced on the destruction of Kansas City in "The Day After" movie.
The noise of the teletype and its frantic messages were chilling.
(I still play this game on an emulator, i confess :D )
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Europe
Fascinating post, was sad to see you stopped it at DEFCON when there have been gems like ICBM and more recently The Nuclear War Simulator. Book wise, Peterson’s book is great…but think you’d have greatly appreciated Zones of Control instead!
Damn, that image of the two guys with the game board throws me back to high school and the strategic games that we were into: Tobruk, Von Ricthofen's Air War, Stalingrad, and all the rest.
Ok... so I skimmed this post...long story short, if anyone thinks they can survive a nuclear exchange is either diabolical or really, really stupid. Pax
As a kid growing up in the mid 80s, I created a board game and then a TRS-80 game called Nukewar. These were not as sophisticated as Defcon, probably closer to Nuclear War in "depth." Probably lots of kids with my particular set of skills did the same. Anyway, one thing that became clear to me was that it was a boring game -- the best strategy was always to throw everything you had at the opposing country in the first round. So maybe there's something to the idea that WOPR's conclusion could be reached through a command-oriented game. From what you've disclosed about your game project, though, it sounds much more interesting.