Thursday, April 15, 2010

A better article on the King Philip's War game

The Associated Press contributed a much superior article today on the "controversy" over the upcoming MMP wargame on King Philip's War. I use the word advisedly because there's really nothing controversial about the game itself, which is a wargame well within the mainstream of such topics. It's basically a media-generated controversy caused by a reporter calling up a bunch of people who have probably never heard about wargames and asking them what they thought about a game that depicted the near-destruction of their people a few hundred years ago.

The whole affair reminds me of the old controversy in the 1970s when the German mayor of Wurzburg found out there was an SPI wargame named after his city that depicted it being subject to being hit by tactical nuclear weapons.

I do hope the game gets published because it provides a real opportunity for some teaching moments about wargames and a neglected part of history. King Philip's War was undoubtedly the closest the English colonists ever got to being driven out of the New World by force of arms.

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