Le Jeu de la Guerre (1987)

A game that few people know and fewer have probably played it. Before being a game, it was a kind of legend. The concept was developed by French essayist Guy Debord (1931-1994) in 1965, but not published yet. Debord described himself as a filmmaker. But he is known as the founder and most important member of the Situationist International, a small band of avant-garde artists and intellectuals. The key concept of their theory is spectacular: modern capitalist society is a society of "spectacular" commodity consumption. Having long been treated as a producer, the worker is now courted and seduced as a consumer.

In 1977, Debord creates a small publishing company named "Les Jeux Stratégiques et Historiques" with French movie producer Gérard Lebovici. First title will of course be "Le Jeu de la Guerre", but only 4 prototypes are produced. The game will finally be published, with a map, rules and detailed descriptions in 1987, after the death of Lebovici, mysteriously shot in a parking lot in Paris. In 1991, Guy Debord decides to let all his movies & books be destroyed. It is also the fate of the published game. Debord commits suicide in 1994. During the '90s, his work gains more and more influence. The book / game is published again in 2006 by French publisher Gallimard (price: 18 €), but it's only a book (in French), co-signed by Debord's lifetime partner Alice Becker-Ho.

The game uses a mapboard containing 500 squares (25 x 20) divided in two by a border line. Each territory has 2 arsenal squares, 3 fortress squares, and 9 mountain squares (blocking movement,shooting and communication lines). Setup of units (infantry, cavalry, artillery, horse artillery) is free and secret. At his turn, each player may move up to 5 units and/or attack. Aim of the game is to completely destroy the enemy or conquer his 2 arsenals. No dice: combats are resolved taking into account the attack/defense ratios of the opponents (unit retreats from -1, and is destroyed from -22) Communication lines are critical.

Play it online with this free implementation from Alex Galloway's Radical Software Group:

http://r-s-g.org/kriegspiel/

For when and where to play Debord's game in London, check out the Class Wargames' website: http://www.classwargames.net

[from Simulacrum 28] A Game of War cannot be judged purely on its merits as a conflict simulation, at least in the sense that we understand the term. A Game of War has a dual personality, one intended by the designer and one conferred on it by others. Note: The approved English title of Debord’s book is A Game Of War. It appears as many variants in reviews, including The Game of War and, simply, Game of War. Debord himself used the different names seemingly interchangeably. The game itself, on which his book was based, has also been referred to as Kriegspiel or The Kriegspiel by Dubord. They all relate to the same game and book.

Guy Debord invented A Game of War (Le Jeu de la Guerre) in the 1950s and patented it in 1965. He wrote that it “embodied the dialectic of all conflict”. He was fascinated by it, and saw it as an abstraction and perfection of war. Some commentators now go so far as to say it was his most autobiographical work, though it has received considerably less attention than his films and writings. After the May 1968 Revolution (aka the Paris Student Movement), Debord and his wife, Alice Becker-Ho, left Paris for a remote French village. Debord devoted much of the rest of his life to refining and promoting A Game of War which he came to regard as his most important project. He was greatly assisted by funding from Gérard Lebovici, with whom he shared a paradoxical partnership for nearly 15 years, the Capitalist and the Marxist. In 1977, the pair founded the Society of Strategic and Historical Games, and published Debord’s rules, as well as commissioning a craftsman to make four or five sets in copper and silver. The version that finally reached market in 1987 in book form included a blow-by-blow commentary on a match between Debord and his wife. Gallimard reissued A Game of War in 2006. Atlas Press recently released A Game of War in a new (first) English edition translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, a translator Debord appears to have trusted. In other related news, Anarchy magazine sells a handmade version of the game, and sponsors the Kriegspiel Blog, as a place where anarchists who are interested in war games can get together and discuss them. The site draws its name and inspiration from Guy Debord’s game. As if that weren’t enough, the Radical Software Group and Alexander Galloway have developed a Java version of A Game of War. The game is currently in limbo, though, as Guy Debord’s estate has filed a cease-and-desist order against RSG, claiming infringement of copyright. But Debord was philosophically against copyright during his lifetime, or at least subsequent to 1965 when he copyrighted his game. One wonders if this is just another one of those conundrums that Marxists either seem to thrive on or fail to recognize.

For Debord, this wasn’t just a game, it was a guide to how people should live their lives within Fordist society (the capitalism of the Fordist era, named after Henry Ford, was kinder, gentler and more predictable than its Victorian predecessor; the Fordist era was an era of regulation, income equality, state planning and stability). By playing this Clausewitz simulator, as it has been referred to by others if not by Debord himself, revolutionary activists could learn how to fight and win against the oppressors of spectacular society (Debord’s 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle, attacked a cultural ‘spectacle’ in which consumer items and pat images had replaced social relationships). “I succeeded, a long time ago, in presenting the basics of [war] on a rather simple board game,” Debord wrote in 1989. “The surprises of this kriegspiel seem inexhaustible; and I fear that this may well be the only one of my works that anyone will dare acknowledge as having some value.”