What is Victory?
Devising Victory Conditions is one of the most complex tasks faced by any game designer. This stage is usually the last step of development, well after playtesting has started. You have to see what is possible for both sides, and then shape the victory conditions around the most likely outcome. This process is similar to devising a denouement for a movie plot which, if too arbitrary, leaves the audience dissatisfied. A great game needs great victory conditions.
There is a lot of confusion about the concept of victory among people in general. Because the U.S. won WWII so decisively, with the Axis powers crushed under the weight of American industrial might, people fail to recognize the need for negotiations to end most wars. Many Americans adopt an inflexible attitude toward their enemies and tend to regard any negotiations as a failure of will or even treason. But since the time of the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, and even the American Revolutionary War, peace was only achieved by a brokered deal worked out by diplomats on both sides. Even in 1814, Napoleon has been criticized for failing to accept an offered deal as late as February 16th.
Right now we are witnessing this confusion playing out over the Ukraine War. This war has been grinding on for three years at a cost of 500,000 Russian casualties, about the same as Ukraine has lost—514,318 soldiers by the end of December 2024,[1] along with 41,783 civilian casualties since February 24, 2022.[2] In the last year the Russian army has managed to advance no more than about 25 miles toward the town of Pokrovsk. Without a negotiated settlement the war could be expected to drag on with no end in sight until Ukraine, with about one-quarter the population of Russia, runs out of troops.[3]
So far, with €246 billion in materiel aid from the U.S. and NATO countries, the Ukrainians have done well, but if their ability to feed reserves into the battle is lost, the Ukrainian front line could collapse very suddenly. With the new administration in Washington willing to broker a deal, now is the best moment for achieving peace.
[1] 65,318 killed, 390,000 wounded, 59,000 missing.
[2] OHCHR 31 January 2025.
[3] This stage may soon be reached with increasing reports of press-gangs hauling men off the streets of Kyiv. Radio Free Europe 18 Oct 2024, Daily Mail 12 Dec 2024, The Washington Post 16 Oct 2022, LBC.co.uk 14 Oct 2024.
Victory: Games & Reality
When designing a game we usually wait until the end of development to work out the Victory Conditions. Naturally we need to see what is feasible, what might be too simplistic. We want the Victory Conditions to reflect the actual strategic situation. Here we need to step out of the operational level and see the big picture. We say the French won the historical 1807 campaign because they defeated the Russians at Friedland and pursued them off the map. But what were the Tsar’s goals? He succeeded in making life difficult for Napoleon, and cost him 100,000 men. Was he already looking toward the next campaign?
Webster defines “Victory” as ‘Final and complete supremacy or superiority in battle or war.’ This situation rarely applies anymore; certainly it did not apply in July of 1807. In the ancient world, one big battle decided the war, and usually one army would fail utterly once its line was broken. So the term “Victory” had an objective correlative that was unambiguous.
How many times is “The Fall of the Enemy Capital” trotted out as a Victory Condition? Yet in 1805 and 1806 the fall of Vienna and Berlin did not stop the fighting. We need to question this way of looking at Victory, and to foresee outcomes on the days after the end of the fighting.
Hollywood has a schematic way of approaching endings devoid of real resolutions. In a video game, you shoot the terrorists, they fall down and you score points. In real life, those “terrorists” had a family, and now you have their hatred, more terrorists. Our cardboard troops march through a blank zone—where are the civilians?
I’ve heard it said that all movie endings are artificial; it is also said there can be only one natural ending, but that is still one more ending than real life has to offer. In the “typical” movie, the guy has an immediate goal. For her, that ending is just the start.
Victory conditions are susceptible to the same criticism as movie endings. In real life there are no endings, the camera keeps rolling, something else happens. We “win” the war and take Baghdad, but then what? The screen doesn’t go dark, the people don’t leave the stage. So we have a way of perceiving reality that is seriously distorted by the forms of entertainment that we have learned our habits of mind from.
There is no closure, only a temporary hiatus. [1]