“Everyone knows that wargamers thrive on ‘complexity’,” wrote Angus Ryall in October 1984, introducing CRASH’s new column for them, “and this is what has kept the hobby so elitist for so long.” Home computers, he thought, should have changed that, “by getting rid of the number-crunching and all those fiddly little card counters that always end up down the back of the settee”. Most of the Spectrum wargames he had just played had not managed it.
A wargame puts the player in the commander’s chair. Instead of steering one tank or one soldier, the player moves divisions, fleets or squads across a map, manages supply and reinforcements, and wins by position and timing more than by reflexes. The computer version grew straight out of the board-wargame hobby of hex maps and cardboard counters, and for years it kept that hobby’s rulebooks, its historical subjects and much of its audience. The history of the genre on home computers is largely the story of that inheritance, and of designers trying to sell it to people who had never pushed a counter.
Fast facts
- What it models: a battle, campaign or war, from a command perspective; usually a historical one.
- Typical structure: turns, with orders given and then resolved; maps of hexes or squares; terrain, supply and morale affecting movement and combat.
- Early publishers: Strategic Simulations Inc. (California, from 1980), Strategic Studies Group (Sydney, from 1983), and in Britain M.C. Lothlorien, Cases Computer Simulations (CCS) and PSS.
- Landmarks: Computer Bismarck (SSI, 1980), Eastern Front (1941) (Chris Crawford, Atari, 1981), Carriers at War (SSG, 1984), Theatre Europe (PSS, 1985), Arnhem (CCS, 1985), Rebelstar (Firebird, 1986), Panzer General (SSI, 1994).
- In the press: its own columns, including CRASH’s “Frontline” from October 1984; Computer Gaming World was full of wargames from its first issue.
From the board to the Apple II
Board wargames were a hobby with its own publishers long before home computers. Joel Billings had played through “the whole series of Avalon Hill wargames”, Antic reported in 1985, and his lasting problem had been finding opponents. Computers could take the paperwork away and, more important, could be the opponent: “90% of board war gamers played solitaire, moving the troops on both sides of the board.”
In 1979 Billings looked for programmers who were also wargamers, and found John Lyon, who was already writing a game about the hunt for the Bismarck on an Apple II. Their company, Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI), released Computer Bismarck early in 1980 at $59.95. Its advertisements pitched it at exactly the players Billings knew: “the computer program eliminates the drudgery of paper & pencil wargames”, and it was “More like Chess than Pong”. Computer Gaming World later called SSI “the very first company to publish a serious wargame for a micro-computer”, while admitting that someone would write in about an earlier game for the Altair. What set SSI apart was presentation: Bismarck came in a box, with a typeset rulebook, reference cards, plastic-coated maps and grease pencils, when most computer games came in a plastic bag.
SSI built a catalogue on the formula. Billings told Creative Computing in 1981 that its games were designed for two players first and a computer opponent second, because a game designed only for solitaire play tends to “simplify a lot of things”. In its first three years five designers or teams, including Lyon, Dan Bunten and the Australian Roger Keating, wrote 18 of SSI’s 28 games. By 1988 SSI had published almost 90 titles and had sales of more than $5 million in its best year.
Keating went on to co-found Strategic Studies Group in Sydney. In the same years Chris Crawford’s Eastern Front (1941) for the Atari 400 and 800 showed what a wargame could look like on a machine with good graphics: a scrolling map of about ten screens, orders given with the joystick. Computer Gaming World’s first issue, in November 1981, called it “the most impressive computer wargame on the market”.
Strategic Studies Group
Roger Keating and Ian Trout started Strategic Studies Group in Sydney. Its first game, Reach for the Stars (1983), was a space strategy game for up to four players, three of which could be the computer, and Computer Gaming World’s reviewer credited its “great artificial intelligence” to Keating’s earlier designs for SSI. He also noted that the rules had been written “in a foreign language (Australian)”, in which “C/R” meant Control-R, not carriage return. SSG then turned to history. Carriers at War, fleet carrier operations in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945, was advertised in 1984 as “Roger Keating and Ian Trout’s greatest gaming achievement”, and in 1986 Europe Ablaze moved the same system to the strategic bombing of Europe.
SSG was still making operational wargames in the 21st century. In 2010 its own website listed Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets and a new Carriers at War, sold through the publisher Matrix Games.
British wargames
In Britain the first wargames came in on import. Computer Gamer’s Martin Croft wrote in 1986 that “the first real computer wargame to reach this country” was Eastern Front, and that American titles came first; later “people began writing for the Spectrum and the BBC”. U.S. Gold went on to publish SSI and MicroProse wargames in Britain “at far more competitive prices”.
M.C. Lothlorien, of Cheadle Hulme in Cheshire, started with ancient-world strategy games for the ZX81, such as Tyrant of Athens and Roman Empire, and by April 1983 advertised itself as “Britain’s leading wargames software house”. Its Warmaster series included Johnny Reb and Paras. CRASH explained the appeal in 1984: “Lothlorien specialise in battle strategy war games which require hours to play properly.” Croft was less kind. The games were “very complex, but unfortunately rather dull”, and mostly for two players, which meant looking away while an opponent typed in orders for dozens of units: few things were “more likely to lead to terminal boredom”. A marketing deal with Argus Press Software brought a change. Its game of the Battle of the Bulge, sold as Bulge, which CRASH’s Sean Masterson called “the first title to take advantage of Lothlorien’s skills as a design and programming house in combination with Argus Press Software’s marketing power”, was glossily produced, had single- and two-player options and, Croft noted, ran in real time.
Cases Computer Simulations (CCS) began in 1982 in south-east London with business simulations such as Airline and Autochef, then had a wargaming hit with R.T. Smith’s Arnhem. CRASH reviewed it in June 1985. It came in a big box with a sixteen-page booklet and fold-out map, and replaced typed coordinates with a cursor. Its five scenarios ran from seven turns, about an hour, to 26 turns and “eight to ten hours”. Smith followed it with Desert Rats. In 1986 CRASH’s wargame columnist named CCS and Lothlorien as “responsible for many of the pioneering titles” on the Spectrum.
PSS of Coventry ran a Wargamers series, and its best-known game was also its most controversial. In Theatre Europe (1985) NATO and the Warsaw Pact fight a war in Germany, and the player can call for chemical and nuclear strikes; to take full control of the nuclear option the player had to phone a real number for an authorisation code. The designer, Alan Steele, told ZZAP!64 that PSS had researched both sides’ forces, including contacts with the Ministry of Defence and the Soviet embassy. When they let the computer play itself, the Warsaw Pact won every time, leaving NATO the choice of nuclear weapons or losing West Germany, so PSS “had to fiddle the figures” to make a playable game. PSS added optional arcade action screens to its wargames; ZZAP!64’s advice was that “serious wargamers” should play without them.
Sugar-coating
The squad-level wargame took a different road to a wider audience. Julian Gollop’s Rebelstar Raiders (Red Shift, 1984) was a two-player skirmish on one Spectrum screen. Edge, looking back in 1996, said it “sold less than ‘some’”; Gollop later remembered being told it sold 40,000 to 50,000. He rebuilt it with a bigger map and a computer opponent, and Firebird released it as Rebelstar in 1986. In Edge’s account Firebird “saw a simple 2D wargame which understandably meant niche market” and priced it at £1.99, “whereupon it promptly sold thousands”. Edge credited it with action points and opportunity fire, and with introducing “the concept of sugar-coated wargames, where a strategy game with sufficient dressing up would appeal to the middle-of-the-road consumer”. Laser Squad (1988) and UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994) followed from it. How that turn system works is described under turn-based combat.
SSI made the same move with the operational wargame. Computer Gaming World reviewed Panzer General in January 1995 as “in many ways an atypical SSI wargame”, with no “detailed orders of battle, complicated supply rules, or arcane combat routines”. It was easy enough to learn without the manual, and its campaigns were “such fun that even non-wargamers are likely to find themselves hooked”. Its design team included Joel Billings.
The 1990s and after
The turn was the wargame’s most recognisable convention, and in the 1990s it began to look old. Edge’s strategy feature of November 1995 thought it “ironic that the most hectic simulations of real life — wargames — feature the most regimented turn-based structure of all”. The real-time strategy games that followed Dune II took much of the mainstream strategy audience.
SSI itself changed hands. In 1994 Mindscape bought it, and Computer Gaming World’s report of the sale summed up the company as one “founded in 1979” that had “built its reputation on high quality war and strategy games for the Apple II”. Its later owners included the toy company Mattel, and by 2001 the business was part of Ubi Soft, which stopped using the SSI name a few years later.
Sources
- CRASH issue 9, October 1984, p. 76: Angus Ryall introduces the wargamers’ column (“Everyone knows that wargamers thrive on ‘complexity’…”).
- Byte vol. 5 no. 3, March 1980, p. 165: Strategic Simulations advertisement for Computer Bismarck ($59.95; “eliminates the drudgery of paper & pencil wargames”; “More like Chess than Pong”).
- Antic vol. 4 no. 3, July 1985, p. 29: profile of Joel Billings (Avalon Hill games; solitaire play; finding John Lyon and Ed Willeger in 1979; Lyon wrote Computer Bismarck).
- David H. Ahl, “Sweet Success at Strategic Simulations”, interview with Joel Billings, Creative Computing vol. 7 no. 12, December 1981, pp. 92–94 (two-player design and solitaire modes).
- Bob Proctor, history of SSI, Computer Gaming World issue 45, March 1988, p. 37 (“the very first company to publish a serious wargame for a micro-computer”; the boxed Bismarck; the designers of the first three years; almost 90 titles; sales over $5 million in fiscal 1987).
- Computer Gaming World issue 1, November 1981, pp. 29–30: Daniel Hockman’s review of Eastern Front (“the most impressive computer wargame on the market”).
- Ed Curtis, review of Reach for the Stars, Computer Gaming World issue 13, November 1983, pp. 27 and 49 (Roger Keating and Ian Trout, Strategic Studies Group of Sydney; Keating’s designs for SSI; the Australian rulebook).
- Computer Gaming World issue 18, September 1984, p. 43: Strategic Studies Group advertisement for Carriers at War. Issue 27, April 1986, p. 16: Europe Ablaze.
- Martin Croft, wargames round-up, Computer Gamer issue 16, July 1986, pp. 21–23 (Eastern Front as the first to reach Britain; U.S. Gold’s SSI and MicroProse titles; Lothlorien, its Argus deal and Bulge; CCS’s Arnhem and Desert Rats; PSS).
- Sinclair User issue 7, October 1982, p. 43: M.C. Lothlorien advertisement (Tyrant of Athens, Roman Empire). Issue 13, April 1983, p. 88: “Britain’s leading wargames software house”.
- CRASH issue 4, May 1984, p. 70: reviews of Lothlorien’s Johnny Reb and Privateer.
- Your Computer, November 1982, p. 37: Cases Computer Simulations’ Airline and Autochef.
- CRASH issue 17, June 1985, pp. 122–123: Arnhem review (CCS, R.T. Smith, £8.95; five scenarios; cursor control).
- Sean Masterson, “Frontline”, CRASH issue 28, May 1986, p. 85 (CCS and Lothlorien as pioneers; Lothlorien and Argus Press Software).
- ZZAP!64 issue 2, June 1985, pp. 18–20: Theatre Europe review and “Developing Theatre Europe” (the authorisation number; Alan Steele; the Ministry of Defence and the Soviet embassy; the figures fiddled).
- Edge issue 36, September 1996, p. 69: retro review of Rebelstar (“sold less than ‘some’”; £1.99; “sugar-coated wargames”).
- Edge issue 93, January 2001, pp. 107–110: Gollop’s recollection of Rebelstar Raiders’ sales.
- Terry Lee Coleman, review of Panzer General, Computer Gaming World issue 126, January 1995, p. 296.
- Edge issue 26, November 1995, p. 43: strategy feature (wargames and the turn).
- “Mindscape Acquires SSI”, Computer Gaming World issue 125, December 1994, p. 28.
- Strategic Studies Group, home page, 2010 (web, secondary): Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets, Carriers at War, sales through Matrix Games. https://www.ssg.com.au/
- “Strategic Simulations”, Wikipedia (web, secondary), citing MobyGames: SSI part of Mattel and then of Ubi Soft from March 2001, the name retired a few years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Simulations