University of Mannheim: Research project brings new insights into war games

The settlers of Catan, risk or chess – games that almost everyone has played at least once. But very few will have thought about the fact that – and in what way – such games convey a certain understanding of war. The Mannheim Romanist Dr. However, Daniela Kuschel is interested in exactly this: In her two-year research project, she analyzed which wars from the Romansh-speaking world were included in board and video games and how they were presented.

A core result of the research is that in recent years more and more digital and analogue games have been developed that deal with wars in Romance-speaking countries. On the one hand, this seems to be due to changed production conditions, which enable the manufacture of niche products, for example through crowdfunding, but also to the increasing development of games industries in the respective countries. On the other hand, the first signs of fatigue with “classic war scenarios” such as the First and Second World Wars seem to be appearing, and game designers are now focusing more strongly on national memories and war events.

The national culture of remembrance plays a major role here, as it influences whether and how wars are depicted in games. “For example, there is no video game about the Algerian war and only a few board games, none of which are French or Algerian productions. For Algeria, the lack of industrial infrastructure could be an important factor, for the French side it is more the fact that this war was not labeled as such for a long time and that dealing with it continues to be accompanied by strong discourse control. On the other hand, some producers use analogue and digital games, for example to come to terms with the Latin American dictatorships,” explains the researcher.

Furthermore, the project revealed that several current games break with the usual depiction of war and take the action from the point of view of simple soldiers, Maquis/Show guerrillas or civilians. In addition, Kuschel noticed a trend towards less realistic representations of the wars, which created a distance to historical events. The need to tell or play the other side of the war is certainly related to current tendencies in other areas as well. “We can also pursue the attempt to break down traditional patterns of thought in gender studies or in migration and racism research,” says Kuschel. “Games, as another form of cultural artefacts, naturally accompany this rethinking and further thinking in very different ways. Turning away from realistic representations, for example in the context of the Spanish Civil War, can be interpreted as an attempt to avoid open criticism and unease with the subject, by clearly marking the game as a fictional product. In other contexts – interesting examples would be the video gameValient Hearts by Ubisoft or the wargame Verdun , which works with illustrations by comic artist Jacques Tardi – the design seems to increase the possibilities for immersion and emotional participation by stimulating one’s imagination. “Another reason for resorting to less realistic representation is said that the confrontation of the players with scenes of violence that are omnipresent in war becomes more indirect. A problem that goes hand in hand with this is that caricature that is too strong can also lead to trivializing the experience of violence.

Due to her open approach to the project, the Romance philologist resorted to several methodological approaches: “As a literary and media scholar, I was primarily interested in the narratological component – i.e. the way in which a game tells about war. Among other things, I looked at which visual elements are used, what the game materials are made of or what conclusions can be drawn from the background story told and the rules of the game.” Kuschel has realized this with literary methods such as film and narrative text analysis, approaches from the Game Studies and Discourse Analysis. The researcher also conducted interaction analyzes to find out how the players interacted with the game.

The two-year research project has a scientific journal that Kuschel edited together with a colleague, Prof. Dr. Bernd Schmid-Ruhe (HdM Stuttgart) publishes. The first issue of “Games, Culture & Context: Journal for Interdisciplinary Games Research” was published in March 2022 under the title “Table Talks” and deals with the representation of war and conflict in board games. The second edition will bring together the results of the two-day workshop “War, Memory & Games in the Romance-Speaking World” that took place in July 2022 at the University of Mannheim. A third edition is already being planned, in which various theoretical approaches to board games will be presented in order to provide other scientists with analysis tools. An anthology with international colleagues on the topic “La Guerra Civil española en los juegos y contextos lúdicos” (The Spanish Civil War in games and playful contexts) is also in the works. “An important point is also the network of researchers and gamers as well as game producers that was created by the project and from which further projects will hopefully develop,” says the Romanist. In addition, she is pursuing the goal of integrating this research field into university teaching in the future. “An important point is also the network of researchers and gamers as well as game producers that was created by the project and from which further projects will hopefully develop,” says the Romanist. In addition, she is pursuing the goal of integrating this research field into university teaching in the future. “An important point is also the network of researchers and gamers as well as game producers that was created by the project and from which further projects will hopefully develop,” says the Romanist. In addition, she is pursuing the goal of integrating this research field into university teaching in the future.

In the past two years, Kuschel has been funded by the “Research Seed Capital” (RiSC) program line of the University of Mannheim and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts. The funding is aimed at young scientists with a doctorate who want to implement unusual and high-risk projects in new research fields. Depending on the project, funding of up to 100,000 euros is possible.