During the Napoleonic Wars, a German “board game geek” set out to make a tabletop wargame that accurately simulated real combat in a way that earlier games in the genre did not. His son picked up development in the 1820s, and through what we would today call an “iterative design process,” created the game of Kriegsspiel (literally “war game”). An explicitly educational game, Krieggspiel was used as a training tool for officers in the Prussian military, contributing to its dramatic victories in several late 19th Century wars and, perhaps, indirectly to some of the 20th Century’s darkest chapters. It also introduced a number of crucial game design innovations that have unlocked entire popular genres we still play today.

Ver todos los episodios