Prediction and Hindsight in Game Design:
The ARABIAN NIGHTMARE Experience

by Keith R. Schlesinger (5 March 1991)

     History was made in the field of commercial game design during the past
six months. Austin Bay's ARABIAN NIGHTMARE: THE KUWAIT WAR (Strategy &
Tactics Magazine #139, November/December 1990) established several "famous
firsts." 

    * ANKW was the first manual military simulation featured on network
television (Ted Koppel's NIGHTLINE program in October 1990), along with its
designer and James F. Dunnigan, the game's editor and editor of Strategy &
Tactics magazine at the time. 

    * It shared the limelight with Mark Herman's "Desert Shield" expansion
module for the venerable GULF STRIKE (Victory Games, Nov. 1990) as the first
simulations prominently featured (complete with illustrations and photos) in
the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. 

    * It remains the only commercial wargame explicitly designed to cover the
second "Persian Gulf War." (Omega Games' tactical simulation DESERT VICTORY
[Jan. 1991] and TSR's military/diplomatic game LINE IN THE SAND [Feb. 1991],
along with Victory's DESERT SHIELD, are all derived from preexisting game
systems.) 

    * ANKW is also the first Middle East game (and one of the few games
anywhere) seriously to attempt a balanced treatment of the military and
political aspects of the conflict, at a level of detail far exceeding LINE IN
THE SAND. 
 
    * Perhaps most remarkably of all, from a production standpoint, ANKW was
the first game designed and playtested by a group of people relying on a
computer network for rapid communications and exchange of game materials.
>From its inception around Labor Day until shipment just after Christmas, the
process took less than three months on the General Electric News &
Information Service (GEnie).

    * ANKW is also the first game to receive an immediate overhaul using a
computer network. At this writing, the game (renamed ANKW: DESERT STORM) has
been updated and expanded into a two-map, 600 counter, 93-page zip-loc
package that will be ready for sale just slightly over two months after I
began working with designer Austin Bay on GEnie the week after New Year's
Day, toward what I at first imagined would be a simple errata and update
column for magazine publication.

     This is a remarkable tribute to the creative talents involved, but
beyond this collection of well-deserved honors lies even more important
accomplishments stemming from the design itself which may well go
unrecognized. From the standpoint of game playability, the Gulf War has at
first glance turned out to be a bust. With only about 100 American casualties
versus up to 100,000 Iraqi losses, one is reminded of the lopsided figures
regularly recorded by British colonial forces against spear-throwing African
tribesmen in the previous century. 

     Of course, we all must remember that this is the best news that the
young women and men of Operation Desert Storm could have hoped to receive! To
the Hundred Years War and Napoleon's Hundred Days we must now add the
"Hundred Hours War" of 24-28 February 1991; or, as Jim Dunnigan put it while
providing commentary on NBC-TV, the "Mother of all Target Opportunities." As
another friend of mine put it, "You win [the game] if you can read the rules,
set up the game, and play one turn in
less time than it took the Allies to overrun the Iraqis." 

    All this suggests that ANKW and its follow-on update/expansion will be
gathering dust on players' shelves (or worse, from the publisher's
perspective, on store shelves) before spring cleaning time arrives this year.
That would be a shame. Despite having an obvious personal stake in the game's
success, as an editor/developer I believe I still retain enough distance from
ANKW to offer some valid judgments about its content. 
     
     I can certainly provide an "insider's view" of the decision making
process, and to what extent the designer anticipated events or attempted to
capture their effects after the fact. The results of such a survey
suggest a great deal about the age-old problem of human perception changing
radically once an uncertain flow of events finally resolves itself into a
single concrete outcome. The powerful grip of hindsight in politico-military
affairs is remarkable, and it should come as no surprise that the same force
is at work in simulations seeking to capture the essentials of politics and
military action. 

      ANKW's greatest strengths as a predictive tool lie in the air power and
reinforcement/logistics rules. The key variables in the game are how fast and
in what size the coalition can build up its forces, and the nature of air to
ground combat. In neither case do artificial rules tie the players' hands.
The US/Allied coalition has enormous power at its disposal, but it must pay
for it (politically as well as financially) and then move the forces by air
and sea. In the early weeks, the coalition is not awash in logistics points
(LPs) so the task can become quite delicate and difficult, especially if Iraq
is hard at work politically or (still worse) militarily. Only from December
onward (barring a major Iraqi military move) does the pressure ease as
coalition LP stockpiles grow to their maximum allowable limit (450 LPs).

     Likewise, Iraq's army and SAM installations are rated rather highly, and
not artificially weakened to insure any "historical outcome," real or
imagined. Instead, it is Iraqi deployment and use of Dug-In troops, plus the
care and planning involved in the coalition air campaign that determine the
true strength of the Iraqi army when the ground war begins. Playtesting by
the designer and others revealed an optimum air war segment lasting about 4
to 6 Military Action Segments (i.e. about 12 to 20 days) prior to ground
assault. This is not far from the actual time of 28 days, and nothing in the
design pointed toward a decline in air combat effectiveness until LPs began
running low after about 8 to 10 MAS's of intense air mission activity.

     Less effective predictors were the Political Endeavors and the initial
LP levels assigned in scenarios. With the endeavors, it became a matter of
developing new political avenues to match those actually tried or
contemplated. This was particularly true of the infamous Gulf Oil Slick,
which no one had thought of before it actually happened. Logistics Point
levels also proved to be a problem. The numbers always seemed much too low,
considering what the air force (and, later, the army and Marines) were
capable of performing day in and day out, for tens of thousands of missions
and dozens of training exercises. This remains a point of some uncertainty,
but the designer's own back-channel sources indicated that the coalition had
the supplies and ordinance available in the theater to "do anything we want."
So the numbers were raised dramatically, though somewhat arbitrarily, with
further growth capped at 450 LPs.

   ANKW did not "miss the boat" completely very often, but on some occasions
the gaps were significant, and in a couple of instances they have remained
unfilled. Until late in the update/expansion, the game lacked any rules for
Arab morale and mobile overruns. These were both crucial factors in making
the ground war so short. Fortunately, it proved easy to build both into the
basic fabric of the game. 

     The optional rules are still spotty on field fortification, and the
possibility of step-reduction of fortified units (instead of "all or nothing"
elimination of the entire unit common throughout the rest of the game) is
provided only as a special rule in the new "Desert Sword" scenario.
Countermix problems retarded development of a fully satisfactory step-loss
approach in this instance. (I would recommend the fortification rule be
mandatory, and any "kill" result against a full-strength fortified unit be
treated as on-half reduction in attack and defense, dropping fractions.
Half-strength units hit again would be destroyed, regardless of their
location.) 

     There is also no real way to gauge the military and political effects of
a long-term coalition embargo (a/k/a "give sanctions a chance") lasting
several months to a year, despite the fact that the Political Game can be
played out effectively within that time frame. This would require something
like a Sanctions Table for players to determine probable results. The
political impact of military casualties (especially on the coalition side) a
so needed further development, possibly with an optional rule allowing
players to keep rough track of casualty figures that would trigger die
rolling or automatic results on a new Casualty Table. These new rules and
procedures require more development, and will be dealt with on another
occasion.

     Having made this quick evaluation of what ANKW predicts and what it only
tries to capture in hindsight, the question of playability remains.  This
same question, couched in the sophisticated language of policy analysis, will
have a decisive role to play in the post-Gulf War world. If policy makers,
like veteran players, see the war as INEVITABLY a one-sided walk-over, they
will tend to gloss over the potential dangers to and weaknesses of America's
politico-military posture during the crisis. All that gamers and analysts
will see is a big, easy win for the "good guys." Historians and gamers need
not search long for examples of pride in accomplishment going before a great
fall. The Germans at Koniggratz in 1866 and Metz in 1871 conveniently forgot
about how much their victories depended on happenstance and one-time
imbalances that the defeated enemy was bound to correct over time. The result
was the Marne and years of horror in the trenches. The kriegspielers of the
era had spotted several problems in the German war machine, but were shunted
aside in favor of results more in keeping with the positive spirit of the
times. 

     Like those German military wargamers, ANKW could readily be used to
explore likely outcomes other than an easy, decisive coalition victory. Prior
to the beginning of the war on 16 January, the consensus among playtesters
and regular players was for a quick assault without long air preparation that
would telegraph intentions to the enemy. They all won the war in less than a
month, but at the cost of anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 casualties. If this
seems too obviously wrong-headed to be seriously considered (at least in
hindsight!), then there is the Iraqi deployment that jammed a whole army into
the tiny, easily surrounded, virtually indefensible country of Kuwait. 

     An Iraqi Player allowed free deployment could experiment with defense in
depth, hedgehogs, and roadblocks designed to retard mobility and create
opportunities for counterattack. A third and even more obvious "what-if" (an
by far the most troubling) would be Iraq rolling into Saudi Arabia after
overrunning Kuwait, long before the coalition built up massive offensive
firepower. Even a quick Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait was possible, setting
the stage for a later crisis when Iraq would have a serious nuclear weapons
capability. All of these possibilities are built into the scenarios, or into
the political endeavors available to both players. 

     Finally, do not forget the "Armageddon" scenario -- Iraq vs. Israel for
control of Palestine. This is at least an interesting conjecture (based on
Saddam never having blundered over Kuwait), and could be made into a
future-history scenario by estimating the remaining strength of the Iraqi
army, plus any additional material obtained from the international arms
market, renewed Soviet support, etc. Even a "Give Sanctions A Chance"
scenario could be developed to check out the road to the New World Order that
was not taken.

     The list of unexplored but quite real alternatives provided here
suggests that ANKW should not gather dust. There are lessons to be learned
about the limits of American logistical capabilities (the operation had a
blank check when it came to using Saudi gasoline and jet fuel). There are
also subtle warnings in the special circumstances of an enemy armed with an
inferior air force and navy which fled or was destroyed, and a rocket force
filled with improved versions of the V-2 rocket that must have resembled
drunken pigs when acquired by the on-board censors of the Patriot II missiles
that regularly destroyed them. Iraq also failed to produce an effective
guerrilla or terrorist campaign. 

     Finally, the coalition was blessed with almost perfect tank terrain
(smooth, flat, not too sandy) that also suited ground attack aircraft, which
had no trouble selecting targets in the barren expanses. What happens when
the next enemy learns the value of advanced missile weapons and focusses on
them to the exclusion of most else? It is unlikely that even "Star Wars"
Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) will really be able to keep up with the
state-of-the-art advances in guided munitions, at least for the next few
years. Even the "smartest" and "stealthiest"  planes will search in vain for
most of the launchers (which may be silos), and fail to destroy them when
they do locate them. Such an enemy will not need an effective air force or
even much of an army, so long as it can deliver a few stunning political
blows with missiles. Iraq came uncomfortably close to doing this in the early
going, and again later with the coincidental strike on an American barracks
in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. (Ominously, American losses there accounted for
about a HALF of all combat losses in the war.) Substituting IRBMs for SSMs in
the game will provide players a peek into the future, perhaps. It is provided
in the Update/Expansion rules.

     With ANKW around, there is no excuse for interested hobbyists to avoid
exploring the real dimensions of the Gulf War, and catch a glimpse of what
the real analysts are just beginning to examine. If the experts do not do
this, then it is they who should look over the shoulders of gamers as they
play out a crisis that had many possible outcomes, not just one. The tool of
choice from the current simulations "tool box" is Austin Bay's Arabian
Nightmare.

copyright 1991, by Keith R. Schlesinger