Performing the Cold War through the ‘The Best Board Game on the Planet’: The Ludic Geopolitics of Twilight Struggle

ABSTRACT

Scholarly study of the popular geopolitics of boardgames has lagged behind that of other ludic artefacts, such as toys and videogames. This article examines the boardgame Twilight Struggle as a premiere example of a historically-structured boardgame (HSBG). HSBGs are distinct for their tight and intentional integration of narrative, gameplay, and in-game freedoms consistent with historical events, processes, and actors. Although not requiring players to follow a pre-set script, HSBGs are structured so that their available options, incentives, and victory conditions ensure that players act in a historically accurate manner. The effect is that players re-enact or perform a version of this history, even if they are unfamiliar with it. By focusing on what HSBGs make players do, rather than the representations embedded within them, this study contributes to our understanding of the performative agency of popular geopolitical objects.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Joshua Harrison, Eric Olsen, and Ty Triebenbach for their gaming insights; Isaac Kobrinsky for introducing Twilight Struggle to the lead author; Anthony Curtis, Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews, and Volko Ruhnke for their willingness to assist with the completion of this project; GMT Games for permission to use images from the rulebook; Steve Maul and Little Big Wars for providing us with gaming space; and, as always, our spouses, Beth and Joelle, who supported our research on the tabletop.

Notes

1. DeSilva (2019) and Borit, Broit, and Olsen (2018) are exceptions.

2. Except for cheat codes (videogames) or house rules (boardgames).

3. The most detailed battle simulation is The Campaign for North Africa, which could take ten players up to 1,500 hours to complete and, notoriously, requires the Italian player to have sufficient water for Italian forces to prepare pasta. While its 192-page rulebook aims at campaign-level realism, it contains no actual politics or geopolitics.

4. Though similar exercises have found their way into other areas, such as emergency planning (Adey and Anderson 2012).

5. Some boardgames allow for solo play, in which their opponents’ actions are based upon a flow-chart. Nonetheless, they are still physical objects, just absent the typical social interaction. Additionally, there are virtual versions of some boardgames, which allow for direct player-player interactions.  Obviously, however, these lack the material characteristics of their physical analogues.

6. This description is only a simplified overview of a very deep game. Additional rules are described in subsequent sections where appropriate. Variants are not discussed and key game terms (e.g., Influence) are capitalised. A short how-to-play video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = TGVxl732psk.

7. China is and exception and, as discussed below, is a special case in terms of gameplay.

8. Again, China is an exception to this, as discussed below.

9. This distinguishes Twilight Struggle from games like chess, in which nothing is random, and other so-called Euro-games, which heavily limit chance. Though, it does allow for far more planning and chance-mitigation than a game like Risk, which is almost totally determined by dice rolls.

10. The Southeast Asia scoring card is discarded after it is played. Narratively, this suggests that the Vietnam War-era conflict in that region was of fleeting importance, despite its impact on the region itself and America’s domestic politics.

11. Interestingly, GaGa Games in St. Petersburg, Russia, released a Russian version of Twilight Struggle in 2019, just as tensions between the West and Russia have escalated. It would be interesting to see how Russian players react to the game from the other side of the Cold War’s outcome.

12. Matthews and Gupta (2005, 31) included this purposefully through how Influence is placed as an Operation:  Influence can only be placed in States where superpower already has Influence or incontiguous locations, defined by connecting lines visually represented on the game map.