UPDATE: This post has corrections of the assumptions here and a new direction.
http://wolvesevolve.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/warp-weft-wark/
Liz Losh posts on the remarkable developments surrounding Alexander Galloway’s Kriegspiel project. Alice Becker Ho and Guy Debord’s game rules for Kreigspiel are very much in print, and still for direct sale through several retailers, including Amazon. Doubtless the Radical Software Group and Galloway were aware of the history and legality of game concepts, which puts the onus on the new designer/publisher to prove significant development of new rules and concepts. The legal precedent in Europe, from memory, was related to the famous William Morris lawsuits. The new designer has to show significant change from previous designs to claim originality, once again twinning the fate of the game designer to that of the loom weaver.
Whatever arrangement they had developed with Alice Becker Ho and the Debord estate, it seems worth looking at how RSG / Galloway’s game differs from the Debord version. In this respect, it seems absolutely clear that RSG has created a new Kreigspiel. Not only in the sense of rules changes, but a totally new texture of play.
As the magnificently detailed poster ’spw’ on Water Cooler Games reminds us,
…between 1780 and 1820, a number of games were invented in prussia which transformed and redefined the game of chess first towards a “tactical game based on chess” aka “war chess” (johann christian ludwig hellwig, 1780) towards what eventually became the “kriegsspiel” (sic! - double ’s’).
the original game of this name, first demoed by georg leopold baron of reißwitz in 1811 to prince wilhelm of prussia, used a sandbox into which a terrain had been modeled, applying the “irrational” scale of 1:2373 - i love this part - crazy baron.
reißwitz and later his son, georg heinrich, kept on iterating rules and make up of the game, for example by adjusting the scale to a more reasonable 1:8000, and by tabletopping it, using topographical, modular terrain pieces to puzzle war landscapes instead of baking sand, or by employing lightweight metal figurines for representing troops.
The comment mentions a book by Peter Perla, The Art of Wargaming (1990) that I have found a lead on and will report back with more detail, but in those pages, a detailed account of the development of the Kriegspiel would seem to insulate Galloway and the RSG from any charges of infringement. This is because European law generally accepts industry-specific standards for difference in intellectual property.
So returning to the main question, Debord’s quote from the original rules: (put on the RSG game’s webpage - do they need to get permission for that, too?)
“This Kriegspiel, or war game, brings into play the operations of two armies of equal strength, each seeking, through manœuvre and battle, the destruction of its adversary. Each is at the same time obliged to protect, within the territory it occupies, the resources needed for effective campaigning, and to keep its lines of communication open.” — Guy Debord
In Debord’s memoirs, Panegyric, he talks about ‘presenting’ and ‘playing’ the game and considering it probably his lasting legacy. In fact, what Debord did by all accounts was reconfigure the rules of the Kriegspiel and package them as a product of his considerable study of history and militarism. “I have studied the logic of war”, he wrote. Throughout Panegyric, Debord emphasises the task of the Kreigspiel is to impart the horror of war through abstracting its tragedy. Consider this Turenne quote, added near the end of the English translation underneath a picture of one of the Debord-original metal sets:
“We fear much more from an enemy, than he can really carry out, and although our experience may be substantial, we cannot help but dread things which we know full well we would never do, were we in his place, but because great harm would result were an enemy in fact to do more than we anticipated. We prefer to remedy even what we think he cannot do.”
- Turenne, Memoires
Debord’s game is about the Fog of War.
Now consider this from Ian Bogost, describing the RSG game (my emphasis):
“A lot of thought went into the adaptation, along with a number of difficult decisions. These included whether or not to make the computer automatically calculate and display the lines of communication that human players would have to calculate in their heads (they chose yes) and whether or not to include an AI player (they chose no). The implementation is both functional and gorgeous, thanks to a thoughtful 2D and 3D visual design.”
- Ian Bogost, Water Cooler Games
These two choices are not about the Fog of War. They are about simple, considered simulation of circumstance. The same game, with different soft rules, is not the same game. It may be that in the process, Galloway et al have not made a tribute to Guy Debord, but generated a new simulated construct of war.
One, it might be noted, does the two things that are of highest import in modern warfare - the vector of communication as formal junction, and the availability of real opponents. The game, is essence, is new and modern, as Debord and Becker Ho’s was for its time and place.
There are many more issues here.
There is no version of reality available in which Kriegspiel is not permanently and totally in the public domain. None. No other interpretation is possible. Public domain computer game versions of the game have been available since the dawn of the Internet - I myself played several games via a PBeM (Play by email) system in 1995. Without defending against those infringements, any claim to originality and uniqueness under law is totally forfeit. I have found just on Googling over a cup of Earl Grey and mild outrage, five other places that sell real-world versions of the Kriegspiel, none of which profess the slightest bit of deference to the Debord estate. Debord himself got a patent on the game in his thirties, but sometimes, thats besides the point.
But Galloway is not being sued, he has been sent a cease-and-desist. These monstrous constructs are of course, the ultimate in the contemporary Fog of War - “We fear much more from an enemy, than he can really carry out.”
(Galloway and McKenzie Wark, picture from Virtualpolitik, Liz Losh)
- Christian McCrea, 2008
Further reading on the game and on Debord’ fabulous thought processes in the electric summary by Nathan Heller over at Bookforum.
Credits should go to Debord’s ghost for the game and the patent, to Alice Becker Ho for the hard work in development, for Galloway for his brilliant but very different evolution of the game and for his book Gaming, McKenzie Wark for his books on war and videogames, and for keeping the striped-top faith.
Also a very special thanks to Liz Losh, if you’re out there, for having one of the most brilliant blogs ever, proving that they aren’t all cat macros and cross-linking.
Finally, to Ian Bogost - for also reminding me that Debord and Becker Ho’s version is in fact merely called A Game of War. In Panegyric, Debord refers to the kriegspiel in the lower-case. This may have a bearing on the claim to intellectual ownership. I’m not versed in law at all so all comments on legality herein are made from recollection and supposition, with a dash of witchcraft.
EDIT: There is also an entire post about the section of the Panegyric that concerns war and writing, around which his Game is construction. A section on the inability of writers to war and soldiers to write is some of Debord’s best. Due to the short-circuitry of this scenario, it immediately makes me think of McKenzie Wark account of watching the first Iraq Oil War on television. Another time, though.
