Why a Famous Counterfactual Historian Loves Making History With Games looks at Niall Ferguson and Making History, a game I may have to pick up:
Ferguson was approached by Muzzy Lane, a game company that had created Making History — a game where players run World War II scenarios based on exhaustively researched economic realities of the period.As he played it, he realized the game was good — so good, in fact, that it forced him to rethink some of his long-cherished theories. For example, he’d often argued that World War II could have been prevented if Britain had confronted Germany over its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. France would have joined with Britain, he figured, pinching Germany between their combined might and that of the Russian army. “Germany wasn’t ready for war, and they would have been defeated,” he figured. “War in 1938 would have been better than war in 1942.”
But when he ran the simulation in Making History, everything fell to pieces. The French defected, leaving Britain’s expeditionary force to fly solo — and get crushed by Germany. His theory, as it turns out, didn’t hold water. He hadn’t realized that a 1938 attack would not leave Britain enough time to build the diplomatic case with France.
The game, in essence, helped him think more clearly about history. “I found that my scenarios weren’t as robust as I thought. And that’s really exciting, because normally counterfactuals happen in my head,” he says. “Now they can happen on the screen.”
Ferguson discovered something that fans of war-strategy and civilization-building “god” games have realized for years: Games are a superb vehicle for thinking deeply about complex systems.