Liyla and the Shadows of War - human impact and the purpose of wargames

Some time ago, I went to a book event in London where Paul Mason was interviewing Molly Crabapple about her book Drawing Blood. Paul was also promoting his book on Post-Capitalism. I found the experience a little surreal, as I usually attend Sci-fi and Fantasy book launches, and the audience was very much a mix of social activists and artists.

When talking to Paul after the event, I mentioned how at times Molly had mentioned "the artists here will know..." or "the activists here..." and that how my brain had got to thinking that as probably the sole wargamer in attendance, it was rather unlikely that there'd be a reference to "the wargamers in the room".

Paul said something that will stick with me for a long while.

"I haven't wanted to wargame since the last time I went to Gaza."

So, it turned out that Paul knows Richard Barbrook, who is a member of Class Wargames. (My wargaming readers might recognise one of their other players - the name Mark Copplestone jumped out at me!) They use wargaming as tool for teaching about their political beliefs and explore games to further their understanding of the world.

I was reminded of this more recently, when I spotted on twitter a bit of a kerfuffle about the computer game Liyla and the Shadows of War. In short, Apple originally refused to publish it as a game on the grounds that it was political, but did reverse this decision on appeal, and you can now download it here. (Android had no such problems and it's available on that platform here.)

While it's a computer game, there is very clearly a purpose and a message to it as well. It is very much from the perspective of civilians caught up in a modern war. If you stop to think about how easily your character dies if you make a mistake, it can make you stop and think about the reality of what being caught in a modern war as a civilian might be like.

I've also been reading Lost Battles by Philip Sabin recently. Professor Sabin was one of my lecturers when I was in university, and he explores using wargaming from an academic perspective to look at ancient battles where details are scarce or believed inaccurate to get a better understanding of what may have actually happened.

So, I can see the 'value' of wargaming, outside of the fun it can be, in the learning it can bring, either in terms of understanding ancient history, or in helping understand or communicate modern political issues.

And yet.

"I haven't wanted to wargame since the last time I went to Gaza."

I don't play historical or modern games - I'm entirely a sci-fi / fantasy gamer. The fantasy and science fiction games I play are for the tactical challenge or the artistic aspects (particularly world creation). Death and suffering are understandable high stakes or hold an emotional weight that underpin those aspects. But I am starting to consider - are we trivialising these things?

War is innately horrible, and in our games which we play to amuse ourselves, we downplay that, because we are not monsters. We don't dwell on the loss, the gut-wrench of the death of a loved one. Even the 'dark' games are sanitised from the real experience of war, because a real war is not fun.

I don't have an answer to this. It's something I'm still thinking about.

I didn't ask Paul what he saw the last time he went to Gaza. I didn't want to know the answer.

WarhammerFest: Licensing Seminar - Computer Game Demos!

The WarhammerFest Licensing Seminars didn't seem quite as busy as the Forge World ones, which I didn't quite get, as there's a lot of really awesome computer games due soon.

First up is Eternal Crusade, a massive online third person shooter. It's currently on Steam early access, and the idea is that they'll run campaigns with you fighting for your faction to gain territory.

Released between me seeing this seminar and actually writing it up, we have Total War: Warhammer. With it being so close to release, we got to see a lot more of it!

It's pretty much everything you'd expect from a Total War game. It's based in the Old World, with the different races each having their own objectives in the campaign.

You also get monsters, flyers and spell casting.

During the FAQ, it was mentioned that downloadable expansions are intended to eventually deliver all the Warhammer races from 8th edition.

As a fan of old stuff, this was the point I lost my mind a little bit...

They were mostly showing concept art, as I don't think they'd announced that the Drachenfels expansion was coming at this point.

They apparently spent the time to go through all the source material on Drachenfels, both from the novel and mentions elsewhere, like the WFRP supplement.

It's a running around and stabbing Skaven game, but the nod to the old lore is really nice.

Blah, blah, some new weapons, stuff that you'd be interested in if you'd played the game already and weren't just freaking out over the idea of the Drachenfels lore being used again.

Inquisitor: Martyr is an action RPG that is being worked on. Here's a baddie.

They're intending for it to be a massive open world style game.

There were a lot of pictures and not much description of the game, but they did mention that the example character running around was what a late game Inquisitor would look like, and you'd start off much smaller.

There was some cool stuff about being able to use plasma guns to shoot through weak cover and stuff like that though!

Here's a different Inquisitor game! Eisenhorn: Xenos is going to be a pretty close rendition of the book, so it will be pretty linear, but you'll have the option to vary from the book in small ways at times.

There was then a presentation of Dark Future: Blood Red States. They asked us very nicely not to take photos of the presentation, which mostly consisted of some renders of some of the cars at a very early stage. It's still pre-Alpha.

It looks like they're staying true to the background - Elvis as a Bounty Hunter, Nelson Mandela as the pope. It's quite an irreverent alternate history. Apparently James Swallow will be helping with the background writing.

You'll see all the traditional stuff - machine guns, mines, ramming. They're using the Unreal Engine. You don't drive the cars yourself, but you're an agency boss giving orders to your drivers. It'll be a real time game where you pause to give orders. It'll be out around the end of the year.