An Occasional (as opposed to a Periodical) font of infalliable wisdom concerning, well, mostly boardgames, books, and life as a navel-gazing pseudointellecutal thirty-year-old hip-deep in grad school.

Friday, June 04, 2010

What is a wargame?

That title comes up as an I Want to have an Argument, Please starter on BGG from time to time. There was an argument once upon a time about whether Civilization is or is not a wargame. This was the closing argument from the winning side ("No"):

Definitely not a wargame, but an econ game with a conflict system.

And even the conflict system isn't really a combat system; it is a means of determining whose culture survives in a given area.

If there's a better definition of ancient war, I haven't heard it...

(Slight exaggeration, but still.)

(Stupid wargames and their "battles;" the more I study war the more I'm interested in what happens behind-the-lines, from changing conceptions of manhood brought on by war to occupations to bond drives.)