Games people play: The (sometimes) serious business of war gaming

As a senior historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Andrew Burtch has taken to wandering the galleries during the day to see which displays pique the interest of visitors.

Amid the dimly-lit recesses of the Second World War and Cold War exhibits, he's noticed a strange phenomenon: clusters of school kids debating, in surprising detail, the merits of individual weapons.

"So, after seeing this habit occur a couple of times, I eventually said, 'Hey, yeah, do you know about these weapons? Why are you talking about them?'" Burtch said. "And they said, 'Oh, well, we play with these weapons in the games we play, you know, first-person shooters. Call of Duty.'"

It was startling for Burtch, a gamer himself.

"It got me to thinking that people approach history through many different ways," he said.

Some engage with past wars through personal experience, he said — by meeting a veteran or talking a family member who served.

"But a lot of people have none of those personal connections, and instead approach it through media, and in particular, in a growing number of ways, through games," he added.

It's an intriguing idea —  intriguing enough to convince the Ottawa-based museum to embark on a major research project with an eye to standing up a full display for visitors next spring.

The effect of war games on society — and history — is becoming a major field of study in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Burtch said he approaches the subject with caution and in the full knowledge that games, like movies, have the potential to skew or distort views of past events.

'War is not necessarily fun'

"Games are, at the end of the day, entertainment," he said.

"They are presenting a story. They are presenting an activity that is meant to be fun, and war is not necessarily fun. It's challenging, it's difficult. It's got a terrible human cost and that is not necessarily communicated effectively through these games."

That concern may be somewhat abstract. In online chat forums and in person, young gamers say they understand that when they switch on the console, they're not flipping through a history book.

Catherine Robson, 16, is an Ottawa high school student and an avid gamer. She said she uses games like Call of Duty: D-Day and Call of Duty: WW2 as launching pads for her own curiosity.

"I thought, 'Hey, this is really cool.' And so I just have always sort of been a big history nerd," she said in a recent interview. "It's very interesting because I see things in there, and I look more into it. I've researched battles more. I research why certain things happened the way they did."

Now in Grade 11, Robson, whose family has a passion for history, said the knowledge she gets from her gaming-related research has given her an edge in her current history class, which is studying 20th century conflict from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War.

She said she and her friends recognize the difference between real war and the digital version.

"It's a video game. So I feel like they took some liberties with that, but I'm sure they got the main ideas down," Robson said. "I'm sure it's not accurate to how it actually was in the war. But you get more of a feel for the people fighting."

And the immersive nature of some game story lines and characters gives young people a more intimate, more personal appreciation of the loss and sacrifice at the heart of Remembrance Day.

"These are real people. These people are almost just like you and me," Robson said.

"They have lives, they have loved ones, they have families, and you need to see that it is not just a fun shooter game, you have to remember that these are almost representing people who have gone and sacrificed their lives for the world we know today."

Matthew Caffrey, a civilian coordinator of wargaming for the U.S. Air Force, has been immersed in the study and analysis of war games for decades.

The practice of gaming — both military and civilian — is now being fully understood and appreciated, he said.

Wargaming, he said, is literally as old as civilization. Archeological digs in the Middle East have uncovered early games that were used to instruct children.

"The first toys, they were used by hunters and gatherers to train their children how to be more effective hunter-gatherers," said Caffrey in a recent interview with CBC News from Dayton, Ohio.

"But when cities grew, the rulers didn't need to train their kids how to hunt and gather. They needed to train their kids how to out-think the son of the other king or emperor, or pharaoh. So they've devised early abstract war games."

For centuries, those games were the purview of the ruling elite — until they were modified and used more widely among ordinary people in later civilizations.

"In the Greek democracies, people played war games, which I think speaks volumes," said Caffrey, who noted that the Greeks believed the games made for better citizens.

One of the earliest war games was chess. It can trace its origins to 6th century India, where it was initially called Chatarung.

Rehearsing for the next big war

Prussian Baron George von Reisswitz perfected modern board games in the late 18th century to instruct European monarchs who knew nothing about fighting wars. It was a response to the growth of warfare on the continent following the French Revolution.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Germans — banned from maintaining a large army following the First World War — secretly turned wargaming into high art at their military college. Eventually called Kriegsakademie, it helped create a cadre of generals that came close to winning the Second World War.

The Americans credit their pre-1941 naval war games with helping them win the Pacific war against Japan.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the games became more accessible in the civilian world. The commercial industry exploded with Second World War board games.

The arrival of computers gave us games like Civilization, which Caffrey classifies as a war game.

"It helps with critical thinking. And it helps anticipation, you know, that if you see problems ahead of time," he said.

"One way I like to sum it up very quickly is, war games help develop strategists and strategies. So, war games can help an individual think more strategically and be more effective in developing strategies."

He offers an important qualification, though: gaming — whether it's professional or personal, military or commercial — should be done in moderation.

"You need to get exercise, you need to also read books, you need to also do a lot of other things," Caffrey said.

"But if you, if they, play the right amount of gaming, and the right types of games, I think you could really give the kids a competitive advantage for the rest of their lives."