If we look at game in isolation, Huizinga attributed the following characteristics to it: firstly, game has an agonistic dimension, and what is agonistic is recreational according to Huizinga; game, then, is freedom and spontaneity. Certainly, there are rules but these are not immutable. On the other hand, the rules have to be understood and accepted by the other gameers. Game is also recreation and contentment. It is fiction too, in the sense that it is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. The way we use the verb ‘play’ (game-playing) is significant from this point of view. We play a musical instrument, we play in a theatrical production or in a film, we play tennis just as we play cards, chess, parlor games, etc. Different examples are developed in War and game on this subject. Therefore, several works of literature or cinema are cited. Huizinga also highlights the fact that game in itself is neither good nor bad, “it is situated outside the sphere of moral norms” while also making it possible to somehow moralize society because it “channels the lives of human beings and avoids excesses, in war, for example, where the rules of the game prevent us from descending into total barbarity”. In short, the aspiration of game is beauty and culture emanates from this. This idea is the subject of the utopian novel, The game of glass beads by Hermann Hesse. In Hermann Hesse’s book, the game of glass beads is the pinnacle of culture. It constitutes “an effective remedy against war”(4) and war can also itself be “a means of fostering true culture”. The 20^th century, ‘the era of pages of varieties’, is presented as the dawn of creative culture. In these conditions, war is no longer considered a state from which one should flee but rather as a useful means of radically transforming the world order into a new culture.

War and game evolve according to the vagaries of chance and randomness

A chess board is something that is often used as an illustration of strategic military or geopolitical thinking. Yet, what could be more random than the geopolitical situations and conflicts it leads to. What could be more transparent than a game of chess? The rules are precise, the pieces can only be moved in accordance with pre-ordained rules, and the adversaries face each other and advance openly. Nothing in this even remotely corresponds to reality. The game of chess leaves nothing to chance, nothing about it is simulated or staged. However, these last two points, the simulated and staged, are precisely what links war to game and game to war, as Achim Küpper reminds us. Some see chess as a symbol of traditional war. “This form of war excludes any kind of unexpected development following the example of chess where what is not allowed does not happen”, explains Achim Küpper. However, “it is a utopian vision that has long since disappeared”. Indeed, chess should rather be considered as an integral part of every war, representing only phases of combat but never taking account of what happens behind the scenes, political decisions and negotiations, strategic thinking, unexpected developments, etc. This is why Huizinga’s work devotes only a few lines to the game of chess.

On the other hand, card-games in all their various forms such as poker, for example, make it possible to better understand the real face of war. Certainly, cards are dealt randomly; none of the gameers knows his opponent’s ‘hand’. War results from a planned and premeditated construction but cannot escape the vagaries of human and other factors. “The notion of clarity is being lost. The entire system depends on chance”, suggests Achim Küpper. How many examples from history do we have that illustrate this fact? How many unforeseen factors have affected a well-oiled military machine and have totally changed the course of history?(5) War is a very real situation which confronts human beings with realities and many more chance happenings than those to which apply to game.

Certainly, the maximum number of chance elements in a war or any other combat operation will be taken into account during the preparation of a strategy. Such was the case with the famous ‘Von Schlieffen plan’ which is analysed in War and game by Christophe Bechet and Christoph Brüll. It is to be noted that the German Kriegsspiele (war game) is a very old practice and is of capital importance in the training of a German officer. It is like a didactic game the aim of which is to prepare as well as possible for and to predict the different possible configurations in time of war. This meant that Von Schlieffen tried to integrate as many unknown elements as possible that could occur into his Kriegsspiele (see article The Von Schlieffen plan). This meant obliging the officers to “manage the unexpected” in accordance with the formula of Christophe Bechet and Christophe Brüll so that as surprising as that may seem, the German war game touches on the notion of freedom that was so dear to Huizinga. Faced with an unforeseen situation, the Chiefs of Staff must be able to react with spontaneity in their strategic and tactical choices. But however ambitious they may be, the Kriegsspiele cannot be exhaustive. For example, the number of kilometers covered in a day by an army is a fixed notion at the outset. The same applies to the valor of troops. Christophe Bechet and Christoph Brüll notably refer to a commentary by Von Schlieffen concerning his Kriegsspiele of November-December 1905 in which “the valor of Belgian and Dutch troops was very under-estimated”. This was so even though their participation during the game turned out to be a determining factor for German victory.

(4) Anne Staquet, ‘Hermann Hesse or game as a strategy against war’, in War & game, p. 142. Anne Staquet is a doctor of Philosophy and a professor at the University of Mons.
(5) On this subject see the collective work What if, Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, 2001, published by Macmillan, under the direction of Robert Cowley.