To what extent is abstraction having a poorer representational value than realism in games?

 

Just like how the realms created by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Inception can be deemed both conceptual and convincing, individual games consist of unique blends of abstraction and realism in the forms they are received by the public. These forms, functioning to evoke an idea or an image, are often purposed to represent, or portray, a piece of the real world. It is, therefore, impossible for any game to take an extreme stand on the spectrum of representational value, characterized by abstraction and realism at both ends (Lecture 14). Nevertheless, their places on the spectrum do not indicate the richness of their representational value; rather, the only difference is the type of representation. With deliberate choice and close examination of two games — chess and war game (Kriegsspiel) both intended to represent the same idea — we carefully argued that it is simply not true to regard abstraction as having a poorer representational value than figural realism; it is, rather, the distinct form and type of representation they took that brought branches of the same tree to opposite ends of the representational spectrum. Context influences the effectiveness of representation. We will, thus, consider the context under which the two games were created.

 

The most evidential theory regarding the origin of chess upholds the ancient Indian origin, where Chaturanga, an ancestor of chess was developed. Purposed to “make as convincing a depiction of a battle as possible” (Mark, 152), chess was “derived from the use in India of didactic models and model battlefields to teach the art of warfare” (Mark, 152). It was a “war game representing the forces of an Indian army” (Mark, 151). While the central idea of chess is to represent the “battlefield maneuvers with miniature pieces on a grid” (Mark, 152), the resulting game we see today is not a close imitation of the battlefield. This was mostly due to the abstract form of its game space — the chess board. Unlike the original chess pieces, which vividly depict the king on a throne, the bishop with a sword, and the knight on a horse, the grid of black and white squares had a broader representational value since its invention: the grid limited the movement of pieces and doesn’t delineate the terrain, liberating its representational content from a mere portrayal of the battlefield, despite its original intention. 

 

The abstract chess board can represent anything. When paired up with Scandinavian king piece (Lecture 1), the chess board can depict a throne room in a medieval king’s hall; when matched with the Chrysler Building as the king, the World Trade Center as the queen, the Guggenheim Museum as the rooks, and the flat iron buildings as the knights, the chess board can outline the gridded New York city space (Lecture 1); when put together with abstract chess pieces, the chess board can represent nothing but itself (Lecture 14): the game now has little representational content, but its representational value can arise elsewhere, such as the immense focus on pure strategy. Unlike abstraction, realism is rich with representational context. The chess board has illustrated that its representational content depends on the representational context of its chess pieces; in other words, figural realism grants abstraction the link to the real world. However, what comes as the cost of realism is the loss of representational freedom: without realistic chess pieces, the chess board can represent anything, but once the king piece is fixed with the outline of the Chrysler Building, it will be difficult to regard the chess board as a king’s hall or anything else other than the city of New York.

 

Even though Kriegsspiel is a derivation since the 18th century, its purpose was identical to that of chess — to depict a realistic battle. However, the heavy weight on Kriegsspiel’s realism approach deems it more a simulation than a game. Late in the 18th century, “war game arose in the German-speaking world as a means for training army” (Harrigan, 3), so that “decisions in the game would more resemble the decisions commanders made in contemporary battlefields” (Harrigan, 5). This “modernization” of chess began in 1780 from the aspect of geography: Johann Hellwig adding landscapes to the simulation by assigning “terrain types to each square, representing mountains, water, or forests” (Harrigan, 5), arguing that battles should be under constraints of terrain; Georg Venturini adding trenches, embankments, weather and seasons, imitating the actual battle conditions as closely as possible (Lecture 13). The Reisswitz family further replaced the gridded map with a sand table and “statuettes representing soldiers with nondescript wooden blocks” (Harrigan, 7) and introduced the dice system, the scale system, the Combat Results Table to simulate crossfires with statistics. The most significant innovation, however, was the establishment of the fog of war and the double-blind system that “encompass the uncertainty of real events” (Harrigan, 8). This perpetual state of partial information “keeps a player ignorant of outcomes in a way that a chess player never is” (Harrigan, 8). “No commanders in the field see all their troops’ exact positions, let alone those of an enemy, so well as a chess player does” (Harrigan, 9). The combination of all these innovations granted enough freedom for representational historical context to be introduced to the game as players craft their own settings to reproduce famous battles or even fight future battles. As a result, war game shifted from the abstract end of chess to the realistic end on the representational spectrum; such paradigm shift was unseen in the history of games.

 

Just as what we have seen in the case of chess, there is a cost whenever there is a shift in the representational spectrum. “Hellwig discovered the trade-off between realism and playability” (Harrigan, 6) after realizing that the firing range of the guns in his game is not realistic. One reason why chess can be popular is its simplicity in rules and setup; however, chess traded realism for playability, making it an abstract strategy game. War game traded realism for playability as well: the firing range of artilleries and the combat system based on probability can be deemed unrealistic if strictly compared to real-life battles; however, if we remove every slightly unrealistic element from the war game, the game will not be playable. Similarly, this was how war games became popular: by trading abstraction for realism.

 

Form influences representation, and abstraction and realism are traits of form. With the forms chess — a gridded abstract strategic game — and war game — a statistical combat system — take, they reside on opposite ends of the representational spectrum. It can be tempting to think that an abstract game like chess must have a poorer representational value compared to a realistic game like war game. Through considering chess and war games that both share an identical origin and serve the same purpose, we can conclude that this is simply not true. An abstract form may have little or no representational content due to the lack of representational context or lack of dimension, but its representational value is never lost. Instead, as we have seen in the transformation from chess to war game, the representational value is conserved through trade-offs: realism may be traded for playability much like how representational freedom is compromised for the shift towards realism. This is in close analogy to the conservation of energy: electrical energy is converted to light energy through a light bulb but never lost. An abstract game has a broad representational scope with great representational freedom, while a figural realistic game has a niche representational scope with limited representational freedom. An abstract game thus has a representational value as rich as that of an figural realistic game, just in different types with different effects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Harrigan, Pat, et al. “A Game Out of All Proportions: How a Hobby Miniaturized War.” Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming, 1st ed., The MIT Press, 2016, pp. 3–31.

 

Mark, Michael. “18 The Beginnings of Chess.” Ancient Board Games in Perspective by Irving Finkel, British Museum Press, 2021, pp. 138–57.

 

Professor Jeremy White.  (2021, May 9). Lecture 1, 13, 14. [Video file]. Retrieved from ARTHI 6L Gauchospace