A board wargame needs someone to take the other side. It may also need a referee to hide information from both players. Strategic Simulations, usually SSI, built a business around giving those jobs to a computer. Its first release, Computer Bismarck, came with a substantial physical package: rules, reference cards, maps and grease pencils. The computer changed how a wargame could work without making its printed materials disappear.
Joel Billings’s collection at The Strong dates the company’s founding to 1979 and its first game to 1980. Bob Proctor’s history in Computer Gaming World, March 1988, identifies John Lyon as the programmer of the Apple II game. Billings brought the business together; Lyon wrote the program. Their contributions belong separately in the account.
An opponent and incomplete information
In a 2014 interview with Joachim Froholt, Billings recalled playing board wargames alone and wanting a computer opponent. He also remembered experiments with a referee keeping each player’s information separate. A computer could do both: decide the enemy’s moves and reveal only what the player’s forces could discover. That second job is fog of war, and it helped make the hunt for the battleship Bismarck a suitable first project. Billings said its opponent was manageable enough for a small team’s first game. (Interview, published in 2019.)
Proctor’s contemporary account describes how Billings sought programmers through notices in local hobby shops. It also credits Trip Hawkins, then at Apple, with encouraging the choice of the Apple II. The finished game was ready in early 1980; mailings and an Applefest appearance helped it find customers. This was publishing work as well as programming: packaging, explaining and reaching the people likely to want the game.
A publisher of different designers
SSI’s catalogue grew through outside submissions. Proctor names Roger Keating, Chuck Kroegel and David Landrey, Charles Merrow and Jack Avery among its early contributors. Dani Bunten’s Computer Quarterback shows how sports simulations fitted alongside military subjects. The company name describes a field of interest, rather than one designer or one shared game engine.
Testing was part of that network. Billings recalled mailing disks to testers and receiving updates from external designers the same way. Turnaround depended on physical delivery, long before files could be shared instantly.
From battlefields to role-playing games
Fantasy RPGs became increasingly important. SSI secured the TSR licence in 1987, and Pool of Radiance followed in 1988, beginning its Gold Box AD&D games. The Strong’s account connects this commercial success to the company’s growth. Billings remembered RPGs becoming the main source of profit even while SSI continued making wargames.
Mindscape bought SSI in 1994. The earlier catalogue links computer wargaming to Western RPGs: both ask a computer to maintain rules, resolve actions and keep track of information a player cannot see.
Sources
- Bob Proctor, “Titans of the Computer Gaming World”, Computer Gaming World 45, March 1988, pp.36 and 48: Lyon, Hawkins, launch, packaging, outside designers and the catalogue. Original issue. Its claim of a first “serious” microcomputer wargame is not adopted here.
- Joachim Froholt, interview with Joel Billings, conducted 2014, published 10 December 2019: attributed recollections of design motives, mailed disks and RPG sales.
- The Strong, “The Strategic Simulations, Inc. Collection”: founding, Computer Bismarck, TSR, Gold Box and the Mindscape acquisition (web, secondary account based on the museum’s collection).