Evidently, over the course of different eras, epochs and military confrontations, war games have evolved and have been inspired by military strategy manuals and lessons have been learned from the history of great battles. Guy Debord, for example, sought to perfect the war game by “by taking cognizance of a system that was no longer hierarchical and repressive but flexible and organized into a network” as Frédéric Prot(6) explains in his contribution devoted to the war games of the former. This game is directly inspired by the theories of Clausewitz for whom war is a ‘chameleon’. This was not sufficient to discourage Debord who wanted to confer on his game “the power to model war”(7). He would even go so far as to affirm that the war game “reproduced exactly the same list of factors that act in war […]” and that “The surprises offered by this Kriegsspiele seem inexhaustible”. This is jumping to conclusions somewhat because three deficiencies of this war game must be highlighted, three deficiencies which confine this game to a fictional space, far from the battlefield of ‘the real war’. Indeed, he is seemingly indifferent to weather conditions and the alternation between night and day; relatively indifferent to the moral force of the troops and their fatigue; he offers “a panoptical omniscient vision of combat positions and the deployment of the enemy’s units which is impossible in a war situation”. The principles of uncertainty, ignorance and the random are therefore not integrated.

Consequently, and this is an extra link with game as seen by Huizinga, war games remain fictional. Chance, itself, definitively separates the ‘gameed war’ from the ‘experienced war’ even though “no winner believes in chance”(8).

Simulation and event staging shape both war and game

“There is a central point which links the two concepts as the nuclear weapon issue has shown us and the communication question which surrounds it. It is necessary to persuade the other party of something that is either true or false”, Achim Küpper reminds us. What is real, what is false, the illusion of both. Once again, let us refer to the etymology of ‘illusion’ which is a derivative of the Latin word ‘illudere’ which literally means ‘game’. The universe of game is therefore a universe of illusion. This universe can be transposed to the area of war.

The best example of this is the nuclear question. This is developed by André Dumoulin, a lecturer at the University of Liege and an attaché at the Royal Military School of Brussels. The ‘nuclear game’, and the illusion that it leads to, really lies in a dialectical game, a psychological duel. This game is based on the strategy of deterrence. This involves a subtle balance between risk and high stakes; between cost and benefit. The opposing party must be convinced that the cost of aggression is disproportionate to the stakes. Nonetheless, it is a game that becomes more complex because the nuclear gameers are more numerous than in the past. Furthermore, the above assertion represents the game of nuclear war declaration. The aim of the game for other states will be to succeed in proving that they do not have the weapon and/or conceal its existence. The final objective consists of ensuring the balance of forces because two equal forces pitched against each other can only result in a negative outcome. This is why nuclear weapons are always presented as a political weapon.

The illusion also stems from the way a decision is made to stage the real, the ‘experienced war’. The observation point adopted to take account of a conflict will in this sense determine the construction of a clear opinion on the part of the reader or spectator in relation to this same conflict.  This issue is analysed in a very original way in War and Game by Renaud Grigoletto(9). He shows an interest in the issue in his contribution to the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. The first part sets the tone: “Heavy Metal in Baghdad, a documentary filmed (and partially non-filmed) between 2003 and 2006 in the freedom-starved context that exists in a country at war, during Operation Iraqi Freedom and its aftermath, uses the gameful and jubilant pretext of the long-established hidden and inexhaustible affinities that exist between music and war as the driving force of a staged event that is shaken by the clashes and counter-clashes of undifferentiated contemporary images”. While Renaud Grigoletto returns to the subject of the documentary, the Iraki heavy metal group Acrassicauda, his actual objective here is to show how the theatre of conflict in Irak can be staged in a realistic way, while maintaining an illusion of reality at the same time. This is primarily because the director must remain within the boundaries of certain rules that apply to conflict zones and he finds himself limited with regard to the images he can film. The director’s view is therefore biased from the outset. Renaud Grigoletto clearly demonstrates how, under the pretext of the safety of the film crew, the focus is placed on the authors and not the field. This results, firstly, in a sense of proximity and of realism which is really “an illusory construct, because they (and the spectator too) remain constantly at a distance, confined, justifying this hidden threat”. Finally, the event-staging is also based on the illusion that is given of placing oneself at a distance from the American occupier by tricks of the camera therefore suggesting “logistical independence and independence of thought which does not exist in reality: the logic remains that of the production of a point of view". This is not insignificant if we consider the power of suggestion that images have by nature, all the more so when they present themselves as the representation of reality which is not the case with works of fiction.

(6) Frédéric Prot is head lecturer at the Michel de Montaigne University, Bordeaux 3, for the languages and civilizations department. Frédéric Prot is specialised in Romance languages and literature with a preference for the Iberian and Latin American countries.
(7) Frédéric Prot, “The Game of war by Guy Debord and its adaptation into the computer game of the same name: A Situationist restoration”?, in War & game.
(8) Friedrich Nietzsche, Le Gai savoir, 1882.
(9) Renaud Grigoletto is a researcher at the FNRS in the Department of Arts and Communication Sciences of ULg. His doctoral research is focused on three-dimensional cinema and visual arts. His contribution in War & game is entitled: “Heavy Metal in Baghdad: war drums and other recreational considerations”.