THE STORY OF MONOPOLY, SlLLY PUTTY, BINGO, TWISTER, FRISSBEE, SCRABBLE, ETCETERA (16 page)

There is no doubt an educational quotient to every true game for grown-ups. Some are specifically aimed at developing skill in an academic subject; such products are usually called “classroom games,” even though their appeal extends beyond the schoolroom.

The most important manufacturer in this category is WFF ’N Proof, maker of the game of the same name, as well as On Sets (a game of set theory), Equations, On Words (structural linguistics), Queries ’n Theories (an inductive reasoning game of generative languages), Configurations (a geometric puzzle kit), the Propaganda Game, and several others.

WFF ’N Proof itself is a game of propositional logic. Its origin is probably the most unusual in the game industry: it was the result of an effort to develop deductive skills for teaching mathematics and other subjects which require manipulation of artificial symbols.

The prime mover in this scholastic quest is Layman E. Allen, a law professor and research social scientist at the University of Michigan. He began evolving the concept for WFF ’N Proof in 1956.

The game is, basically, a set of twenty-one games which give the player practice in manipulating abstract symbols. At first, the symbols are important only in themselves. Later, the game program (which includes a 168-page instruction book) relates the abstracts to involved problems of logic such as the Tardy Bus Problem:

If Bill takes the bus, then Bill misses his appointment, if the bus is late.

Bill shouldn’t go home, if (a) Bill misses his appointment, and (b) Bill feels downcast.

If Bill doesn’t get the job, then (a) Bill feels downcast, and (b) Bill should go home.

Taking the above premises, the puzzler must then answer a variety of rather confusing questions about Bill, such as “Is it valid to conclude that if Bill takes the bus, then Bill does get the job, if the bus is late?” or “Is it valid to conclude that if Bill doesn’t miss his appointment, then (a) Bill shouldn’t go home, and (b) Bill doesn’t get the job?”

In its early days the company ran a brief version of this problem in many newspapers as a brain-twizzling advertisement. It drove many readers batty, especially since the ad neglected to mention that the key to solving it lay in assigning artificial symbols to the various statements. By dealing with a kind of mathematical shorthand, the puzzler could reach a solution schematically without getting hung up on the meanings of the words themselves.

In the actual game, basic sentences are represented by any of four letters (P, Q, R, or S) while another series of symbols (CAKE) represent sentence variables, such as “and” or “if. . . then.” The purpose of the game is to construct viable expressions in this artificial language. Allen used the same basic play pattern in Equations and other games produced by the WFF ’N Proof firm.

Until 1961, Allen let the game remain exclusively in the classroom. In various classes and different grade levels, WFF ’N Proof was extremely popular with the students. Not only was it entertaining, but participating students seemed to get better grades than those in the control groups. Allen was convinced that games belonged in the classroom; and in fact, WFF ’N Proof paved the way for more and more educators to structure learning programs on game patterns—and vice versa.

The interest in Allen’s game, as well as later classroom titles that he and his colleagues developed, spread beyond the schoolroom to the general consumer. Finally deciding there was enough potential in classroom games to expand their distribution, Allen supervised the formation of a manufacturing/marketing organization. “It was strictly a mom-and-pop basement operation when we started out,” he recalls, “and we’ve stayed small. We were never much interested in popularization. We have always regarded our games as educational tools.”

This attitude has created a Jekyll-and-Hyde identity for WFF ’N Proof. The firm’s goal is to extend the academic game concept to every school system that wants it, but 80 percent of its sales stem from bookstores, gift shops, and some toy departments, even though the instruction books in the WFF ’N Proof line are more like teaching manuals than consumer rule guides. “We have been criticized for this didacticism,” Allen notes, “but we try to give the consumer fair warning in our ads, and we also have a money-back guarantee.”

Allen sees a definite upswing ahead for educational games, even after the current learning-toy fad inevitably dies down. “Our example has stimulated the interest of other manufacturers. We’re happy to be the prod and needle for the institutional growth of the educational sector of the adult-game market.”

WFF ’N Proof games are somewhat unusual in that they are nonsimulative in nature; that is, they don’t copy some “real-life” activity. But most adult games are simulations of actual experiences and processes. For instance, the Avalon Hill game line is justly famous for its series of re-creations of classic military campaigns—Guadalcanal, Gettysburg, Waterloo, Midway, Stalingrad, Jutland, the Battle of the Bulge, and others.

Each game in the Avalon Hill line reproduces the logistical and terrain conditions that actually existed in the battle. Level of play varies from the comparatively simple introductory games to the so-called tournament contests which require tremendous concentration and brainpower just to figure out the instructions.

The company began in the early nineteen-fifties as a mail order operation. Says Tom Shaw, vice president of operations: “The founder was a high school buddy of mine named Charles S. Roberts. We both lived in Catonsville, Maryland, at the time, and Charlie was a great history buff—especially the Civil War. Charlie created the layout of the battle of Gettysburg on a large piece of oilcloth, and he would pretend to be Robert E. Lee and challenge friends to play opposite him.”

It was not strictly a game in those formative days, just a three-dimensional argument. But Roberts began to note the many variables involved in the historic battle. “He’d ask things like, ‘Why did so-and-so camp in the valley instead of on a mountain?’ and so on. We would all talk it out and improvise the way the battle might have gone if some commander had done something a little bit different. We were all Monday-morning quarterbacks for the battle of Gettysburg.”

Over a period of four years, a game structure evolved. Roberts graduated from high school in 1947 and by 1951 was in business with a small game line: Gettysburg; Tactics, an abstract battle game; and Dispatcher, a railroad game.

At the time, Roberts lived in the Baltimore suburb of Avalon and his house was high on a hill—hence the company name. It took a while for him to build up the business, but eventually the “spread effect” of word of mouth made Avalon Hill’s reputation known to tabletop generals throughout the nation. Today, the company is the most important manufacturer of military-strategy games, primarily because of its painstaking efforts to reproduce the finest details of the actual campaigns.

The company relies on the Pentagon, as well as several retired military commanders, to verify the accuracy of its games. One of their advisers is Rear Admiral (Ret.) C. Wade McClusky, USN, who helped re-create June 3, 1942, for Avalon Hill—the battle of Midway. Reportedly, McClusky is not fond of the game which Avalon Hill based on the battle, and often loses to his son, Phillip—which must be galling to the commander of the Navy aircraft that defeated the Japanese in the actual battle!

Gettysburg is still in the Avalon Hill line, and it is a popular starter for would-be war-game buffs. The board shows the terrain of the battle, and the pieces stand for the various divisions, brigades, and battalions that were involved. Each turn represents one hour in the period from 6 A.M. July 1 to noon July 4, as Union and Confederate reinforcements arrive by various roads exactly as they did in 1863. Battles are fought whenever opposing pieces confront one another in prescribed manners, and the odds of victory depend on the terrain and direction in which attacks and defenses are mounted. The Confederate player wins if he can eliminate all the Union pieces by the last turn of the game. The Union player’s objective is much simpler, since he has more manpower at his disposal: he can either eliminate all Confederate units or merely avoid being destroyed himself before the last turn.

The imbalance of forces is an interesting characteristic of the game. Though the Confederate player has fewer pieces, the ones he does have are generally stronger in battle weight than the Union pieces. Also, the way the units are brought on the game board makes the Confederate army easy to mass together in an efficient fighting machine, while the Union pieces are spread out and hard to coalesce.

Despite the superior maneuverability of Lee’s army, the Confederate player in Gettysburg is definitely the underdog. Several Avalon Hill games reflect a similar historical imbalance of forces, such as the game of Stalingrad, which recreates the Nazi advance into Russia during the Second World War. The game is so heavily weighted that the player who takes the German side is almost sure to lose.

“You’d think,” said Shaw, “that this would make Gettysburg or Stalingrad far less popular than some of our more evenly balanced games, but such is not the case. I would say there are three major appeals to our games: the interest in history, the opportunity to become a strategic expert, and the challenge of the loser.

“In Stalingrad, the German player hardly has a chance of winning. So, if he loses the game, there’s no shame attached. He can salve his ego by saying, ‘It’s not my fault, look at the odds I had to face.’ On the other hand, if he should win, wow! All of a sudden, he’s a military genius!”

Gettysburg and Stalingrad are relatively easy to comprehend, but Avalon Hill also makes a few extremely complex games. Blitzkrieg, for example, is believed to be the biggest, most involved battle game ever invented. It is a four-hundred-piece land, air, and sea contest in which players act as five-star generals, deploying infantry, armor, paratroop, artillery, marine, ranger, strategic air command, and other forces on a huge 44 x 22-inch mapboard that simulates every imaginable terrain: sea, forest, desert, mountain, urban, and rural areas. The winner either wipes out the opposing armies or occupies a certain number of cities by the fifteenth turn.

It is interesting to note that the hue and cry against war toys a few years ago had little effect on Avalon Hill. One reason is that the games in the firm’s line are as much antiwar propaganda as they are history lessons. For instance, the company describes one of its newer titles this way:

“Anyone who liked World War II will love our game, France 1940. Not because they love war, but because the game places war in its proper perspective—an abomination! France 1940 is as much a treatise on the folly of war as it is a game. Those who play it grasp the stupidity of war, the stupidity of the people running it, and the stupidity of between-wars peace talks that always beget the next war.” Another factor mitigating the cold-blooded militarism of Avalon Hill games is the historical remove of the battles on which the products are based. Time and distance seem to soften the emotionalism; as a result, there is no chance that the supplier will bring out a Vietnam game. “Also,” said Shaw, “it would be almost impossible to re-create as a game. There are too many economic and political factors—and if we
did
re-create all of them, many people would be very embarrassed by them, to say the least.”

Avalon Hill prefers calling its products “historical games,” in order to avoid the negative connotation of the word “war.” “Even so,” says Shaw, “the market is not a huge one. What we find a good sale on any given game would probably be of no interest at all to a Milton Bradley. Our games are especially popular, though, among young people— preteen to late teen. I doubt that the eleven- and twelve-year-olders relate to the horrors of war. I think they just like the uniforms and the ‘grown-up’ ersatz adventure. And the challenge.”

Shaw admits that some of the people who buy and play war games are probably crypto-Nazis, but he doubts that there are many such players among Avalon Hill customers.

The ranks of military game buffs in the United States are well organized. Two major groups exist—Spartan International and the International Federation of War Games. “They will go just about everywhere,” says Shaw, “to set up professional tournaments, and they even wear uniforms. They have bylaws, magazines, and standards of conduct.” In addition, Avalon Hill publishes a magazine,
The General,
to encourage its customers to delve further into the problems of strategy in its line. Another popular military-game magazine is
Strategy and Tactics,
for which Sid Sackson and other game inventors regularly write.

“What is the main appeal of the educational or adult game?” asks Shaw. “Of course, in the classroom, students can greatly benefit in learning from games, and our line is often employed in history classes—even in military schools. But I never really sat down and speculated about why people like to play games. I do think that they generally must be literate and have confidence in themselves. They must not be afraid to put themselves in competition with their friends and neighbors. They are people who like to play, to compete. Winning is a very important appeal, but it is more a consideration to the younger player than the older.”

As Americans grow more aware of the world around them through the medium of television, as they grow more sophisticated and understand their goals and needs better, they appear to be embracing game structure as recreation and as mode of discovery.

We have looked at a number of games in this and preceding chapters: Gettysburg, WFF ’N Proof, Scrabble, Twister, Acquire, Bingo, Yahtzee, Monopoly—as diverse a group of products as can be imagined within one category. What are their common features, and why do they appeal to both young and old?

It is no easy task to define games, but we may make the basic statement that a game is a competition of two or more individuals who aim for a goal while adhering to a predetermined code of rules. Some educational-games people look down on a Monopoly on the grounds that it teaches nothing but its own rules, but this seems rather shortsighted. In rehearsing ways to accrue wealth in an admittedly simple model community such as Monopoly’s Atlantic City, the player is actually fantasizing about the possible manipulation of his destiny. By defeating opponents in patterns that are not harmful, he may see a way to ethically overcome real obstacles to his own success.