In the December 2002 edition of Computer Gaming World", writer John Fletcher referred to John Tillers run of 18 Wargame produced in 36 months as worthy of the title "The Iron Man of Wargaming".
The print media however has some very strict requirements in the number of words they can publish, so we are pleased to be able to provide for you here the entire contents of that interview here. Readers are of course encouraged to pick up this edition and indeed this magazine every month to follow all sorts of Gaming develops. I know the information in this edition on "Sim City 4" caught my eye.
...and now, the Interview
Q: It seems that every month sees a new HPS title by John Tiller. How do you stay so prolific? If applicable, introduce us to some of your team members and their duties. There are a couple of aspects to this, some of them technical and others non-technical. First, in technical terms, I've been programming for many years, having started years and years ago with languages like FORTRAN and BASIC, but then over the years evolving into C and finally C++. Once I was programming in C++, then it was possible to do Object-Oriented Programming, which took me several attempts to master, but finally I think I got good at it. During this time, I was programming for NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center and so I was exposed to programming challenges that I hadn't seen before and this forced me to adopt more efficient techniques. Even given that experience, I will say that game programming is the most challenging that I know of, even having done Space Shuttle Main Engine simulations for NASA. But once you get good at Object-Oriented Programming, you can start to build a large set of what you might call "foundation classes". These classes solve many problems having to do with the basics of graphics, networking, and multimedia, so that starting a new game doesn't mean starting from scratch. Also, we have an approach in our team to start off simple in a new game series, including the basics and establishing a solid foundation for the game engine. Then over time we enhance that game engine with carefully selected new features so that each release is still interesting, even to people who started with the first game in the series. With this approach, we can create some very interesting games and build on existing techniques. And in non-technical terms, I believe I have about the absolute best wargame development team ever assembled. Years ago, the collaboration that we have wouldn't have been possible, but given the state of the Internet, it is now possible to draw together motivated and highly talented people from literally across the world to work together. Probably the single most important person to me is my graphics artist Joe Amoral, who has worked with me on my HPS games from the very beginning. Joe has a lot of experience going back to Avalon Hill and then TalonSoft. He has more talent that I have ever seen in a graphics artist, but also combines this with an ability to produce an incredible amount of graphics in a short amount of time through hard work, skill, and years of experience. Joe continues to dazzle me with the quality and quantity of his work. Another person I depend on very heavily in the graphics area is Mark Adams. Mark is a very talented graphics artist whose talents complement those of Joe so that together they produce a lot of high quality work together. Mark is extremely good at getting the details right so I depend on him to gather information about uniforms and other details. Together Mark and Joe are responsible for the high quality and volume of the graphics you see in my games.
At the next level, I'm fortunate to have a very strong team of scenario designers working with me. Given the number of games we want to do, it just isn't possible for me to micromanage each project and so I depend on the good judgement of several people to get the work done and to make good decisions. Greg "Sturm" Smith, a veteran HPS designer, is someone I depend on very heavily to do first-class research and to advise me on practical military matters. Sturm was a Major in the Army, a tank commander, and fought in Desert Storm, so when Sturm advises me about a practical military consideration, I listen very hard. Another person who is very heavily involved in many of my games, both as a scenario designer and a playtest coordinator is Glenn Saunders, a Canadian from Alberta. Glenn is very skilled in two major areas: ensuring that each game he works on is a pleasure to play and that each game is thoroughly playtested and balanced. Glenn has a great team of playtesters, the so-called Panzergruppe Saunders, who enthusiastically work on each game and ensure that it is of the highest quality before we release it. Glenn works with his good friend Dave Blackburn on a number of projects, Dave being a very talented map maker, and also works with two other primary Panzer Campaigns designers "Wig" Graves and Jim Dunnam. Having several people who can work together and combine their talents means that a lot of good work is possible in a small amount of time. You can look through the credits of the games I've done for HPS and see several additional people critical to the team including Rich Hamilton, who was the scenario designer for the War of 1812 game and also provides HPS technical support, as well as Bill Peters, scenario designer for Campaign Eckmuhl, Drew Wagenhoffer, scenario designer for Campaign Corinth, Charlie Cutshall, scenario designer for Napoleon's Russian Campaign, and "Wild Bill" Wilder, who has developed The Proud and the Few, as well as the lastest Squad Battles game, Eagles Strike, set in World War II. For our Fulda Gap game, the scenario designer was Joerg Lissa, a German naturally enough and with a natural interest in the campaign, taking place in his backyard as it were. In addition, there are several scenario designers working on their first release with us on a number of titles from the Civil War to modern warfare. If you have good people like this and you are willing to give them the freedom to pursue their ideas, then an incredible amount of work can be produced. I don't always agree with their approach, but by being willing to accept their judgment, I get the benefit of a large amount of hard work and dedication. Another person who is very special to me is John Kincaid, who was a Cobra pilot in Vietnam and gave me the benefit of his experience in that war and what it was really like to be there. I dedicated my Squad Battles Vietnam game to John, and hope that all Vietnam veterans will feel that maybe the time has come for our country to recognize their service to their country. Q:What criteria do you use in choosing a title? For example, why Fulda Gap ’85 instead of, say, Persian Gulf ’91? Well, maybe you should say "in addition to" rather than "instead of" (grinning). HPS has a policy of not announcing games prior to mastering, but there are several titles that I am working on that augment and complement each game series. The order they are released is determined mainly by our personal interest level. In that regard, Scott Hamilton, the head of HPS Simulations, is an absolute developer's dream in terms of publishers. I know from past experience, and I continue to read on a regular basis, of how developers can have a very tough time getting their product out and in a high-quality state given the strong business demands of the game industry. But Scott has the discipline to let a developer pursue his own ideas, knowing that the result is going to be far better as a result. Scott has advised me on many different matters, but never dictated a specific course of action on anything and when a developer is given this type of freedom, the momentum can really build. Fulda Gap probably resulted specifically from having read Sword Point by Harold Coyle. I find that a lot of games I'm motivated to do come from reading a good book on the subject. The books by Glantz have motivated a number of Panzer Campaigns games for example. And I read a very large number of books on the Vietnam War when I was doing the Squad Battles games on this, most of which were personal experiences by veterans and many of them led to specific scenarios in the games. Personal interest is the fuel that powers wargame development and for each game that we do or are developing, you can find at least one person who is very much motivated to see that game get finished. As a general principle, if we are working on games that we enjoy, then I believe that other people will enjoy them as well. Q:Once you’ve decided on a title, how do you approach a project? Walk us through your design process. In wargaming, the single most important decision is scale. How big will the scenarios be and at what level. For example, take two examples of very successful games that came from very challenging situations: my game on the American Revolution, Campaign 1776, and the Squad Battles games on Vietnam. These two wars are very hard to address in a way that results in something interesting. In the case of the American Revolution, the tempo of the war was so slow and measured, lasting several years but with only a few major battles, that most every approach to the war would have been very dull to play and lacking in detail. But by going down in scope, down to the company level where you have units of only about 50 men, and by linking the battles together with a campaign game that takes you from each signficant battle directly to the next, it was possible to develop a game system that not only has the scale to make things interesting, but the scope to give you the feeling of an overall war. The same type of problem exists with the Vietnam War. The higher you get in scale, the more discouraging the result becomes. But by staying down at the squad level, the level that individuals fought, and by just focusing on specific battles and not trying to include higher level considerations, it is possible to create something that is very representative of the tactical fighting and very interesting to play and consider. Vietnam veterans that I have talked with have told me that the games are an honest portrayal of the fighting. Next you need to make the fundamental decision on how you want the game to progress. That is, do you want it to be turn-based, simulaneous resolution, or real-time for example. There is no one approach that works best for all situations. Until just recently, all of my HPS games were turn based and for the situations I was dealing with, these were good fits. But I have just recently completed a real-time naval game covering the Battle of Jutland between the British and German fleets in World War I.
This setting pretty much required that the game be real-time, any other approach just wouldn't have been right. Each different approach brings its own characteristics to the game, with the more measured turn-based approach allowing a player to consider a large situation with many units, while the real-time approach provides a more dynamic flowing setting with lots of interesting interaction.
Q:Tell us about scenario design. How do you choose, develop and balance the scenarios and campaigns in your games? Given that one of the real life signs of good generalship is concentrating overwhelming force at a decisive location do you ever find yourself “stretching history” in order to produce a more balanced, playable game?
HPS Simulations is extremely strict that we never stretch the historical facts. We can choose to emphasize various aspects, by including some that we consider important and not including others that we consider non-essential to the situation, but we are under very strict guidelines never to fabricate something in the games. After all, given the knowledge base of our customers, any attempt in that regard would be called "foul" almost immediately. As far as playability goes, that is something we have control over in the design process since we can choose how we structure the game and the elements of the game. Then by combining a good structure with a good interface, we can strive to achieve playability with most every game. Now balance is often in the eyes of the beholder you might say. A game like Smolensk, where the Germans have an overwhelming superiority in men and material can still be considered a balanced game provided that the scenarios are set up so that a Russian player who plays at above average skill can still win by the definition of wining provided by the scenario.
But again, our success in scenario design is based on having several very talented people who can each address a separate aspect of the game. For example, when we did Bulge, I could depend on Greg Smith to provide us with a highly accurate order-of-battle and one that was at just the right level of detail for that game. Then I could depend on Glenn Saunders and his team to take the historical situations and create a number of very interesting and balanced scenarios from that. Sturm was doing what he did best and so was Glenn, so the result was satisfying in all respects. Finally then, no game is complete without the inclusion of some "what-if" scenarios, where we consider alternative outcomes to the historical events, but in ways that are completely justifiable. In most historical conflicts, from the Battle of Gettysburg to Desert Storm, there are always these tantilizing questions about what might have happened had different decisions been made. Could we have continued Desert Storm and ended up taking Baghdad, toppling Saddam Hussein in 1991? Wouldn't that be interesting to try? (grinning)
Q:In what areas do you think your games succeed? In what areas are you looking for improvement?
I'll make the statement that I consider every game I've done for HPS Simulations over the past three years, 18 games so far and counting, to be a solid and accurate representation of the historical situation while at the same time being very playable and a lot of fun. If we can continue that approach of having highly-detailed and accurate data, while at the same time providing the game player with an enjoyable experience, then we have succeeded at what I am attempting to do. So my challenge is to take all the components that the team provides me and put those together in a package that is consistent, of high-quality, and entertaining. And we've got to do that in an economical way, avoiding too much development cost which would quickly prevent us from continuing our efforts. It takes a certain amount of effort on my part to "draw the line" in our work so that we avoid producing games at an economic loss. While that can be done over the short-term, eventually we would be forced to abandon our efforts and go find something else to do. And of course it is easy to identify specific instances of this happening over the past couple of years where a game development effort produced wonderful games, but not economically viable and so you end up with a number of one-hit wonders as a result.
The main areas I'm working on improvement are in improving the playability of my games while retaining the detail that wargamers look for. It's clear to me that the intricate calculations of my old board-game days, where you happily flipped through several pages of charts computing involved mathematical equations and subtle yet mentally satisfying modifiers culminating in a breath-holding die roll, over and over again, hour after hour, is not necessarily the same thing that the game player of today is looking for. Most of my customers want the results to be backed by solid calculations, solid data, and meaningful interrelationships, but otherwise want the satisfaction of seeing a Tiger tank blow up just as it is about to overrun your position. They don't need to be "in the loop" on the results however, which is the main characteristic of traditional board gaming, as long as they find the results of the game convincing and if they can "audit" the results to their satisfaction from the documentation. I think if you look at my newer games, such as the Squad Battles games and even my most recent naval game series starting with Jutland, you can see the results of that approach. Getting that improvement back into the earlier games is one of my goals.
Q:Some of my favorite aspects of your games are those that make it “more than just a boardgame”. These aspects include the artwork, the sound effects and (in the case of Proud and the Few) the research appendix. Tell us a little about these non-core elements. Who does them? How do you work them into the game?
I have the satisfaction of being able to do my own sound effects, which is really not that hard given a good sound editor and a good library of off-the-shelf sound effects. It takes a bit of imagination sometimes. For example the military hovercraft sound effect in the Vietnam game actually was derived from the sound of a common vacuum cleaner though extensive "shaping" of the sound frequencies and range. I've spent a considerable amount of money, at least in wargame development terms, on building up a pretty good library of sound effects to draw upon. With some mixing and sound editing, it's possible to come up with some pretty satisfying effects. The combat sounds in my recent Jutland game are about the best I've ever done I think, but that comes as a result of having some high-quality sound effect CD's to work from. Initially, when I started game development I didn't appreciate this, but now I am fully convinced that secondary features such as good sound effects are absolutely essential to the enjoyment of the game. Anytime I need remining of that, all I have to do is mute the game sounds and it becomes very clear again.
The research additions to the game are really the contribution of the individual scenario designer. I think most wargamers really value getting the nuts-and-bolts of how the final research came about. In the case of the Proud and the Few, you have someone like "Wild Bill" Wilder who has an incredibly extensive knowledge of military history combined with a great talent for writing which results in a very large volume of research notes being produced, even more than I can handle in any one game. Anyone considering one of my games by Bill should appreciate that they are not only going to get a great game, but also the benefit of a lot of research material on the historical aspects of the situation.
And of course, Joe Amoral can generate some really great looking graphics for the games. Anyone will tell you that a wargame only gets better when you have great pictures of tanks and other military hardware to go with it. I find myself allocating more and more of Joe's time for nice looking graphics in the games as time goes on because I personally enjoy his work so much. The drawings he did for the recent Jutland game of the battleships and cruisers in that game are really nice to look at.
Q:One of the complaints about your games is that sometimes a particular topic is too large for the base system you are using (example: Korsun ’44 and the Panzer Campaigns system). The complaint usually revolves around troop density: that there are simply too many units for the game to handle and play bogs down. This same complaint was leveled against several of the Battleground series. How do you respond?
My development team and I are very senstive to this aspect of our games. We put a lot of effort into this issue in multiple ways. First of all, we make sure that we only have enough detail in the game to cover the subject adequately and are always looking for ways of streamlining the data without sacrificing detail. It isn't visible when you look at the final result, but we may have gone through several iterations of the data, working and reworking it, looking for any possible approach that will result in a cleaner result. And then we spend a lot of time building a wide variety of scenarios so that every person can find a level of detail in the game that matches their interest level and personal preference. I think in each game we have done, you can find a range of scenarios all the way from short quick scenarios to those taking long periods of time to finish. So I don't think that anyone will feel that any game doesn't have something to offer them regardless of their interest level. But then finally, we have long and extensive discussions internally to the team about ways of improving the interface and moving towards that streamlined approach I mentioned earlier. In fact, based on our discussions with Bruce Geryk recently, we are on the verge of another round of improvements in the Panzer Campaigns games so that they have a faster game tempo like you would find in the Squad Battles games. As long as the player can back up the results with internal calculations, I think these improvements are always welcome by the game community.
Q: What do you think of the current state of the wargaming hobby? How do you view computers games in comparison to traditional board games or miniature wargaming? Do you think your games open the hobby to new participants or do you think your games primarily serve an existing audience? How do you think the hobby can grow and what do you think the future holds?
Computer games have introduced aspects to gaming that just didn't exist when all we had was board games and miniatures. The sound effects that we talked about earlier weren't possible or the animations or computer aspects such as play-against-the-computer just couldn't occur. But in a certain way, I also think that the transition to the computer can result in some loss of enjoyment. The person playing a board game can miss the face-to-face play that board games generate and they can also miss the anticipation of the die roll that I mentioned earlier, feeling the excitement of seeing the highly-improbable box-car roll occur resulting in the otherwise indestructable Tiger tank brewing up to your satisfaction. The miniature player can miss the control over the rules, managing the details of the combat just the way they think is appropriate and having to relenquish that control to the computer. They can also feel a bit disappointed in the graphics of the computer game, at least at the current state of the art, and prefer the "true 3D" gaming experience they can construct. However, with good design and technical improvements, it should be possible to re-achieve these desirable aspects in computer games until we get to the point where the player can be immersed in a Virtual Reality environment, sitting on their horseback at Gettysburg, watching their charge reach the Union line and....
I think Jim Dunnigan once said years ago that wargaming was for the overeducated. Certainly the players who are attracted to wargaming are looking for a meatier experience than a first-person shooter game provides. These days however they are also looking for something less sterile than wargames of previous years and look for wargaming to still provide the raw excitement that other games can generate. As time goes on and things progress, I see that happening. But if the most popular games in the stores are based on stealing cars and random shootings, then perhaps there will always be a divide between the average player and the one that finds wargaming of some interest. There's no reason why wargaming can't continue despite it having that niche characteristic.
Finally as far as the current state of the wargame industry goes, there is a well-known phrase: it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. I think the overall tech slump you might call it, that involved the Nasdaq crash and all the other downturns in the tech market, from the big reversal of the whole approach to the Internet, where "free" became a dirty word, to the slowdown in computer sales, has definitely also been felt in the computer wargame industry. These days you don't find the bigger companies involved like you did back in the '90's. Any approach that succeeds these days has got to be lean-and-mean with only the minimum required effort expended to avoid the economic death that I mentioned earlier. I'll be honest and say that I'm not totally confident that any wargame effort today will be able to succeed, at least without an improvement in the overall economy and the tech sector in particular. But on the other hand, we finally have in the Internet the perfect mechanism for providing customers with a large number of varied games that they can enjoy. The in-store marketing approach simply can't support the diversity and variety that is possible in the direct-sale market. So if you look at the number and variety of computer wargames that exist today, I think you can feel that we have it better in those terms than ever before. It is now possible with a smaller effort to pursue the topics that are less than mainstream, battles other than Gettysburg, the Bulge, and Waterloo, which were repeated over and over by the larger companies in previous years. We are definitely in a different, and you might say better, situation in the wargame industry now than we were 5 or 10 years ago. What will we have 5 or 10 years in the future? That's a tough question. It may be quite ideal with a very healthy wargame industry making a wide variety of interesting games, or it could be a stagnant hobby industry, with indivduals producing the occasional hand-made game with clunky graphics and a kludgy interface. We shall see.
John Fletcher
John Fletcher is a lifelong wargamer, musician and football fanatic. Besides writing regular reviews for CGW, John is also the author of an upcoming wargamer's guide to South American Independence and various articles on military history. He is married and lives in Los Angeles, California where he works as a freelance video producer and editor.