Ava Jarvis: A Wii Bit of Contemplation

Thanksgiving week is a time to spend with friends, family, and the turkey or tofurkey of your choice.

It's also the week of Black Friday---so-called because that's when the profit for retailers goes from under the line to over the line---in the black, rather than the red. Which for me brings to mind the current contention between video game consoles as the holiday shopping season officially opens---but more on that later.

Where my mind has also been, and where I'm sure many of yours as well, is the up-and-coming and much-awaited release of BattleLore. (If you aren't aware of what BattleLore is, then you are a darn sight better at staying under a rock than I.) It's the latest game in the Commands & Colors series. From what Mark and Eric at Days of Wonder have been trickling out ever so gradually, BattleLore is set to be the next Warhammer---a kinder and gentler Warhammer, as I like to think of it....
As much fun as people do have with C&C, it makes some wonder at why people would enjoy a war game that is deucedly odd when compared to the rest of the genre. In fact, C&C games are so odd in structure that there are quite a few gamers and grognads who will never call them war games---"battle game" or "skirmish game" come up often as counter-terminology. How strange, since the goal of a C&C game is that of any war game: vanquish the enemy via a confrontational attack. This is not a characteristic of most Eurogames or even a portion of American-style market---but it is a characteristic shared by the ancient games of Go and Chess, often remarked upon as the oldest war games even if in an abstract sense.

The arguments against C&C as a war game system come down to the "means to the end", which is where things start going off the traditional path. For those who first come upon C&C from another war game (for me, it was from a bit of dabbling in block games, in particular Wizard Kings) there are things that don't match up with certain expectations. Some items that usually get noticed:

• "War" is just a single battle---and not over a very large area of terrain, either. There is no "full war" epic scope of feeling, and for some, playing multiple small battles in detail doesn't measure up to dealing with the full thing en force.
  
  
• Unlike other games, the counters---or figures, as the case may be---do not have their own hit points, and in all but special cases are not autonomous: a "unit" consists of a number of such figures, but they can never separate from that unit.
  
  
• Section cards determine what part of the battlefield (left, middle, right) you can order units in to move and attack, and also restrict the number of such units you can order. (There are also some special cards with a greater variety of special actions, but almost all of them are conditional in some form or another.) This is commented upon the most, as in other types of war games you have almost complete control over what and what number of units to move, unbound by a an artificial limit.
  

Why, then, do people enjoy the system? Can't they see what they're missing out on? Why, this system doesn't even compare in terms of polygon rendering to that of the lauded card-driven systems such as Paths of Glory, or even War of the Ring, it won't even be able to compete in terms of the ability to render water and delicate sunsets and a rain of bullets spraying through fences and trees from helicopters hovering above like gigantic death mantises....

Yes, I think we should think of it in exactly those terms.

If you're reading the press about the three new video consoles---heck, let's call it two, you know that everybody is really mostly paying attention to the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii---you'll see that there are roughly two camps that people fall into: the hard-core video gamers, and everybody else.

The hard-core video gamers are more in touch with the down-to-the-wire attributes of their gaming hardware: it's not just about quantity, it's also very much about quality. And with graphics, quality comes down to quantity---the sheer amounts of millions of polygons that can be rendered, along with any other expensive special effects that come down to different complexities of the various modes of shading, and keeping the whole show rolling through with the highest number of fps possible. This is what the PlayStation was born for, and thus is the concentration for development of the line.

The Wii, on the other hand, is quite different in approach and could not even begin to boast about its GPU operational speed in such company. But what the Wii does give the user is an intuitive, if unusual, interface and a simple console design with excess clutter removed (like a DVD playback system...). I'm sure you've all seen the stick and the optional nunchuck you use to play with the Wii. Well, they rock. It's the kind of interface your grandmother could get down with. Some people may groan at the thought of dancing around with a little stick/nunchucks instead of working with the traditional pad... but the unwashed masses could almost care less. Especially if they've been able to try one of these things. The Wii will never pound up to $2500 on eBay---but it will probably more than outsell the PlayStation.

I think of the C&C system as an equivalent of the Wii.

Now, to me the Wii is an open book as to why it works so well. I think that's a case of the more visceral nature of playing a video game, which engages your physical senses and reactions, even if you aren't waving a Wii stick around. It makes sense that an apparatus that allows you to physically interact in a more natural manner, and that does it well, would be a big winner.

Board games, on the other hand, work in the more abstract world of the mind.

When you think about it, a lot of the C&C system is designed to an intuitive shortcut to the chase, and some of these aspects stick out in a Wii "what's with that stick?" way:

• Many war games are usually very long affairs, especially when their scope is a large war with several simultaneous mini-battles happening all across a map of varying terrain and land features. The C&C system instead breaks up that large war into several much shorter games that are individual battles. Accordingly, those battles are magnified in detail, basically giving an "episodic" war if you play a series of C&C games---or a relatively quick war game in 30 minutes or so.
  
  
• Figures as hit points for a unit are easier to visualize, and easier to see. Instead of relying on a number on a counter, or a number of small ticks on a block, figures are simply removed as the unit gets weaker. It's easy to see that a four-strong foot unit is healthy, and that a two-strong foot unit is less so, even if you're on the other side of the board. More importantly, this allows the players a quick appraisal of the current health status of their overall armies.
  
  
• The cards do serve as "fog of war". In a typical war game, "fog of war" usually corresponds to the semi-hidden movement of troops on a far side of the map. With C&C, where everything is out in the open, the fog of war must be simulated in some other way. Given that the scope of a game is a single battle, the communication problems between troops is now at the forefront and can be effected with the section cards. (In the "big picture" of many war games, communication problems between troops, like some other battle-specific details,is lost, which is perhaps why people have a hard time accepting the section cards as a legitimate fog of war.)
  

Some other universal C&C attributes also apply here---for instance, the fact that the size of a unit doesn't affect how well the unit continues to hit means that unit attrition and resolution for subsequent battles involving that unit are much simplified. And there are the special dice; perhaps it's more "pure" to consider use d6s instead, but the symbolic results of a C&C die roll reproduce specific percentages for hits without referring to a table---simple and effective.

Additionally, the various C&C systems scale up in terms of combat complexity, such that Battle Cry, with its somewhat weak Generals and its only three different unit types, is at one level; while Ancients, with its strong leaders, support rules, battle back rules, and multiple levels of around 10 base unit types (so far), is at another level entirely. Just because C&C has "friendly" features doesn't mean that it's merely a simplistic system for dabblers. You can play Call of Duty 3 just as easily as Super Mario Galaxy on your Wii.

In the end, however, there are those who will be happiest with a PS3, and there is nothing wrong with that---it's technically the best console out there right now. It's not as though C&C, nor the Wii, are faultless.

But I think a wider audience will have fun with the Wii: it's innovative and elegant in its simplicity. Just like C&C.
© 2006 Ava Jarvis

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Comments:

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Thanks for a very interesting, well written article. I’m glad to see the electronic gaming analogy; I think the hobby will do well not to observe artificial barriers between electronic and non-electronic gaming. Based on your contrast between C&C and traditional wargames, it occurred to me that a natural evolution of the ‘skirmish’ game trend would be to begin producing GMT-style paper maps with a campaign book in which an actual war is mapped out and as you win or lose each C&C skirmish match, you win or lose control of key locations on the map. Such a game could be played over a series of sessions or maybe one big war could be played in a day or two, with historical or non-historical settings for Battlelore or the GMT series. I’ve seen computer games that have this feature--strategic and tactical level maps and conflicts. Posted by J.M. Green on Nov 24, 2006 at 09:01 AM | #

J.M., thanks for the kind comments!  I am not at all a natural at video games, which tend to be farthest from my mind at any given point and time, and do prefer to keep the two separate most of the time---many video games involve a different mindset, though not all of them, in particular reflex and reaction.  I am amused that in one world I am stuck at Ticket to Ride level (with or without a Wii), but in board games I can advance my game-relevant knowledge and abilities for any genre and type.  I have friends who are just the opposite.  It is a strong indication of the division between the two spheres, though I think most people can alternate between both worlds fairly well. Game systems, however, have commonalities between the two spheres---although this is not a perfect match either, but was enough to make a little article. As for the meld of C&C and wargames, I think along those lines as well.  C&C already has the concept of an ongoing set of battles for keeping score, ever since Battle Cry, but it’s in a tactical and timeline dimension.  Adding an additional dimension to form a 2d map rather than list of battles would be interesting, though very involved.  One of the attractions of a full-blown war game is that decisions you make in one part of the field greatly affect what you do in another, and you have to make sacrifices.  A C&C full-war system would need to replicate that aspect, otherwise you could only just focus on winning each battle.  Modulating forces or other factors based on winning streaks in particular related geographical regions would be one way to do this, and would bring on more of a campaign feel. Posted by Ava Jarvis on Nov 24, 2006 at 09:45 AM | #

Interesting comparision between the Wii and BattleLore.  Thankfully, it is a lot easier to get ahold of a copy of BattleLore. While I like a deep, brain-burner game as much as the next person, to continue to expand the boardgaming hobby, we have to have engaging games that can be taught and played in a short period of time.  I think the worlds of video games and boardgames aren’t so different.  As the user-interfaces in both worlds improve, more people will be drawn in to the respective hobbies. If I were more of a wargamer I would think the C&C line of games would serve as great gateway games to the world of wargames. Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Nov 24, 2006 at 12:27 PM | #

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