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My Philosophy Behind
Card Driven Game Design
by Mark Herman
Introduction where deception is the critical variable. The
Back in the late 20th century, I had the good fortune to publish We mainreasonIplay computer games ishidden
movement this is an area where they far
The People, the first of the Card Driven Games (CDG) genre. surpass board wargames.
Through my study of the American Revolution certain critical design
elements crystallized for me. I felt these elements must be in a game Many years ago I worked on a project that
tried to analyze the relative merits of two
on this subject if it was to be a faithful historical design. In particular
information age concepts:
there was the nature of guerrilla warfare, and its impact on conflict, that
Domnant Battlespace Awareness (DBA) and
challenged the way I approached this game design. Guerrilla warfare Dominant Battlespace Knowledge (DBK).
illustrates how to leverage political context through Dominant Battlespace Awareness can be
thought of as knowing the strength and
a superior application of military
whereabouts of the enemy in the area of
deception to confer strategic operations. Dominant Battlespace Knowledge is
initiative and victory. knowing what the enemy intends to do and how
It was upon reflection, they are going to do it within the area of
and years of real world operations. The basic conclusions that one draws
from understanding the merits of these two
experience, that I came
ideas is DBAis important and confers great tactical
to understand that these advantage, but DBK is what confers strategic
factors were dominant in advantage. DBA is a physical phenomena that is
all warfare, not just very amenable to resolution with modern sensor
systems, whereas DBKis a mentalphenomena that,
guerrilla conflict, and they when achieved, is very powerful, but is very hard to
were missing elements in most game designs. create with any regularity.