Crogan
Patrick Crogan
Zero-Sum: Wargaming and Computer Games
This paper will explore aspects of the history of wargaming in order to develop fresh perspectives on the analysis of contemporary computer games. The history of the modern development of wargaming is punctuated by debates about its true value for the military, debates which revolve around the negotiation of the dialectic of calculation and the
incalculable, that is, of war as planned enterprise versus war as volatile contingency. Two aspects of wargaming central to these debates will be of interest here, namely, the validity of the enabling assumptions of the wargame's model of the conflict scenario, and the relative merits of human and automated application of game rulings. These two aspects will help me reexamine two major topics in the analysis of computer games. The first of these is the classic game design dilemma of 'realism versus playability', one which concerns the
nature and merits of the process of simplification involved in the modelling of the game action. The kinds of decisions made in answer to this dilemma concern both the form of the game interface as well as the nature and emphasis of gameplay. I will consider the historical and theoretical legacy of wargaming's concern with enabling assumptions for
an understanding of this game design dilemma. The other principal theme in the study of computer games (and, indeed, of new media more generally) I will consider in the light of wargaming is that of interactivity. The long tradition of anxious reflection on the degree of automation and the role of human agency in the conduct of wargames
provides a new means for thinking about the structural relationship between the hope and the concern expressed in mainstream discourses about computer games and/as the future of interactive entertainment media.
Bios
Patrick Crogan currently teaches film and media studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, and has published work on computer games, Paul Virilio and animation. Patrick is working on a book about the relationships between war, computers and computer games.
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