Recently
a producer friend of mine came to me with an interesting design problem.
He was working with a developer to hammer out the details of a wargame
set in the future, and they were having trouble agreeing on a suitable
opponent for Our Heroes, who are, of course, human space marines.
The developer was firmly against using organic aliens (read: slimy bugs),
since in their opinion aliens have been overdone recently. They were interested
in doing something involving religious fanatics, and my friend wasn't
sure that could be made to work. He and I batted ideas around for a while,
and it got me thinking about how wars come about and how the different
circumstances can be incorporated into computer games.
First, if you're going to do aliens, particularly if they're bug-eyed
monsters, then the backstory doesn't matter that much. Either we want
their planet or they want our planet; they're trying to assimilate us
or we're trying to wipe them out. Wargames about aliens are usually about
as subtle as a can of Raid. Starcraft gave us two different kinds
of aliens, the organic and the high-tech, with extensive backstories for
each, but without a timeline and a map it was all rather difficult to
follow. It didn't matter: they were bugs and they wanted to kill us.
With humans, however, it gets much more interesting. Humans are certainly
willing to kill each other without much provocation, but if you care about
the backstory, you have to have credible motivations for war.
Wars can be divided into two main categories: international and intra-national,
or civil. I'll look at each of these in turn.
International Wars
International
wars usually occur because of some conflict between two groups of people
over a resource, or because one group seeks power over another. The flames
are fanned by good old-fashioned xenophobia, and even if there aren't
racial differences between the parties, cultural differences can be made
to serve instead.
Imperialism is one of the most basic sources of war. The 16th and
17th-century battles between England and France, or England and Spain,
are perfect examples of the kind; they were imperial nations seeking to
expand their power and influence at the expense of the other. A point
worth noting is that the imperial nations don't necessarily disagree over
issues of political ideology - England, France, and Spain were all strong
monarchies. They'll usually find justification somewhere, however. For
instance, Spain justified its opposition to England by claiming to be
supporting the Catholic Church following Henry VIII's seizure of Church
property. What Spain really wanted, though, was to force Queen Elizabeth
to marry King Philip and unite the two empires.
Imperialism is an easy subject for computer games because of its
fundamental simplicity; it's not that different from wars against alien
bugs.
Proxy wars occur when large, powerful nations want to avoid full-scale
warfare with each other: they get somebody else to fight for them. The
US backs South Vietnam, the USSR backs North Vietnam, and you get the
idea. They're an interesting subject for wargames because there's always
the possibility of drawing the big guys into direct battle with each other,
with devastating consequences. For the patron nations it's a game of poker:
how much prestige are they willing to stake on a minor war in a foreign
country? For the proxy nations, the trick is to win the war without depending
so much on their powerful ally that they become a puppet and lose their
own sovereignty.
Colonialism (or imperial expansionism) is what happens when imperial
nations attack poorly-armed indigenous populations in an effort to gain
control of their land and resources. The British, French, Spanish, and
Portuguese colonized the Western Hemisphere; the British, French and Dutch
colonized southeast Asia, and so on. Colonialism is an awkward subject
for computer games for a couple of reasons: first, it's rather frowned
upon nowadays; and second, most of the battles in history were pretty
one-sided. With a few exceptions such as the Zulu wars, the superior technology
and organization of the colonizing powers tended to result in utter defeat
for the hapless natives.
Ideological differences were given as the main reason for the Cold
War, which fortunately never developed into a hot war. International wars
that are genuinely about ideological differences are relatively rare;
most countries are fairly willing to practice toleration for their neighbors'
quirks as long as they aren't threatening to themselves.
Religious fanatacism can often lead to war, but it comes with curious
limitations. Religious fanatics are by definition not rational, and seldom
allow their actions to be governed by sound strategic thinking. The Crusades
are one of the best examples of this. The First Crusade was started by
the Church, which urged the European peasantry to abandon their homes
and march to Jerusalem to rid the Holy Land of the infidel. Disorganized,
under-equipped, and ill-disciplined, most of the Crusaders died of starvation
and exposure in the forests of Bulgaria without ever getting near the
Holy Land.
Religious fanatics are content to follow a charismatic leader as long
as all of his actions are consistent with their goal; but caution or hesitation
are likely to result in his immediate replacement. The modern wargame
player prefers to play strategically, not fanatically, and probably isn't
going to want to play using troops who can veto his decisions. They might
be suitable for an AI opponent, but not for a side that a human player
would choose.
Humanitarian intervention is recognized by international law as
a sufficient reason for one country to invade another, and was the justification
for such military operations as the Israeli rescue of hostages at Entebbe,
Uganda. It's also a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. If country
A has a minority group who are ethnically related to the people in country
B, and country A starts to repress them, country B is likely to invade
on their behalf. The US invasion of Grenada was theoretically to protect
American medical students, although from what was never made clear. On
the other hand, if a country does not have a vested interest, it's often
willing to turn a blind eye to the most appalling atrocities. Hitler might
well have gotten away with the extermination of Germany's Jews, Catholics,
Communists, homosexuals and handicapped, if he hadn't insisted on dominating
the rest of Europe as well.
Humanitarian intervention can provide good backstory for a wargame but
it doesn't really affect the game's design very much.
Feudal wars were not really either international or civil wars,
because the concept of the nation-state is weak under feudalism. In the
feudal system, in principle, every person owes allegiance to someone higher
than himself (except for the king, who is at the top of the pyramid).
As a knight, your allegiance was primarily to your liege lord, and only
indirectly through him or her to your country. In practice, the barons
were constantly shifting allegiances and struggling for political dominance
over one another. The goal of feudal wars was seldom to conquer an enemy
outright, but to force him to agree with your terms. In some respects
they resembled family feuds, perpetuated by the warrior culture of the
nobility. Looting and holding prisoners for ransom was a significant part
of feudal warfare, which gave it an economic element unrelated to the
war's theoretical justification.
Feudalism is an ideal subject for on-line, multiplayer wargames
because of its opportunities for negotiating alliances.
Raiding was common among mobile peoples such as the Plains Indians
of North America, or the Vikings of Northern Europe. Both the native Americans
and the Vikings had warrior cultures in which personal displays of courage
and fighting prowess were highly valued. Although we can't really classify
raiding as a kind of war, doing it - and defending against it - does require
military skill.
The objective of raiding was not domination of another people or seizure
of their land, but simply loot and trophies from slain opponents ("scalps").
Although you could make a game about raiding, I don't think it would really
be a war game. Raids were chiefly about tactics, not strategy.
Civil Wars
Most of
the wars in the 20th century have been civil wars for control of a single
country. It's much easier to make a case for attacking your own government
than it is for attacking someone else's government. Civil wars arise for
a variety of reasons.
Political ideology was behind the Chinese civil war (1927-1949)
and the English civil war (1642-1648). In the former case, the parties
were the Communists and the Nationalists; in the latter, the King versus
the Parliament.
Differences in political ideology can make for interesting backstory in
a wargame, and they also have consequences for the game itself. Highly
aristocratic societies have little respect for the common foot soldier,
preferring smaller numbers of elite or mercenary troops. Egalitiarian
societies tend to put their faith in the masses. This could easily be
reflected in the game's design.
Rebellions are usually caused by some grievance a group of people
have against their government. Although we're taught as children that
the American Revolution was about political ideology, it was really more
about the American colonists being fed up with British taxation and what
they saw as abuses of power. American and British principles of liberty
and democracy were fairly similar; the problem was the taxes and all those
redcoats swaggering around. The American Civil War was also in the nature
of a rebellion. The two sides were not that politically different; the
reasons for the war were mostly economic.
This is a classic for games, and of course it's the basis for the Star
Wars saga. Everybody loves an underdog and fighting for freedom from
the oppressor, blah blah blah. The trick is to make it credible that the
rebels would have access to enough arms to constitute a real threat. Many
rebellions linger on for years as terrorism or guerrilla warfare because
the central government can't quite smoke them out, and the rebels
can't quite get hold of enough arms and soldiers to win.
Monarchical succession has been a constant source of civil war
over the years. If a monarch dies leaving no clearly-defined heir, or
one which many people find unsuitable, the result is almost inevitably
a civil war. The war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda of England
was a war of succession. Matilda was heir to her father's throne, but
she was personally unpopular and many of the nobility preferred a male
ruler.
Issues of monarchical succession may not be very successful as backstory
for a wargame today, since most people would find them difficult to relate
to as a motivation.
Factionalism based on charismatic leaders is another source, and
it doesn't really matter what their claims for legitimacy are. Many of
the civil wars of ancient Rome took this form: Julius Caesar versus Pompey,
Octavian versus Mark Antony, etc. Like monarchical succession, it's not
very accessible to modern players.
One of the most pervasive, and most tragic, reasons for civil war is racial,
religious, or cultural tensions, of which the Hutu-Tutsi conflict
in Rwanda and the Serb-Croat war in Bosnia-Herzegovina are only the latest
in a long and bloody line. Any time two hostile groups share the same
country, there's bound to be trouble. Efforts to settle the problem by
partitioning the land (as with India and Pakistan, or Israel and Jordan)
usually just end up turning a civil war into an international one.
To most westerners this is a fairly unpalatable subject for a wargame.
We've seen too much of it in our lifetimes as it is, and we know that
diplomacy, toleration, and mutual respect are the way to go. In Belgium,
the Flemish-speakers may grumble about the French-speakers and vice versa,
but it's fairly unlikely that they'll take up arms at this point.
To return to my friend's problem, interstellar wars in the future are
likely to arise from one or another of these circumstances. Two competing
groups will discover a valuable planet and both will want it. Colonists
will want independence from the mother planet. A tyrant will have to be
overthrown. A new political order will arise to challege the old. And
so on. The pages of history hold the answers; all you have to do is look.