The computerized version of Guy Debord’s 1978 game Kriegspiel (Game of War) by RSG is available for download and can be played, although in beta version.
Debord designed the game as a “Clausewitz simulator”, to represent the totality of factors involved in war maneuvers, that Debord called “the dialectics of all conflict”. Inspired by the military theory of Carl von Clausewitz and the European campaigns of Napoleon, Debord’s game is a chess-variant played by two opposing players on a game board of 500 squares arranged in rows of 20 by 25 squares.

Debord, forerunner as usual, decided in 1977 to give up film (”The cinema seems to me to be over”) to create a game, finally produced on cardboard with wood tiles in 1987.
Precious bibliography on the subject, from the RSG website:

Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord, Le Jeu de la Guerre: Relevé des positions successives de toutes les forces au cours d’une partie (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith as A Game of War (London: Atlas Press, 2007).
Guy Debord, Correspondance, volume V: janvier 1973 - décembre 1978 (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005). Contains letters written by Debord during the period of creation and production of the game.
Guy Debord, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (Paris: Gallimard, 1999). Transcript of the film (his last) Debord created in the same year as the game. The film features images of the game.
Guy Debord, Panégyrique, tome premier (Paris: Gallimard, 1993). Debord’s pseudo-autobiography contains pictures and other references to the game and themes of war.
Andrew Hussey, The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (Jonathan Cape : London 2001).
Vincent Kaufmann, Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
Tom McDonough, “Guy Debord, or The Revolutionary Without a Halo,” October 115 (Winter 2006): 39-45.
Keith Sanborn, “Postcards from the Berezina” in Napoleon, How to Make War (New York: Ediciones La Calavera, 1998).
Anthony Vidler, “Terres Inconnues: Cartographies of a Landscape to Be Invented,” October 115 (Winter 2006): 13-30.
McKenzie Wark, 50 Years of Recuperation: The Situationist International 1957-2007 (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008). Includes a closing section on the game.
Stefan Zweifel, et al., eds., In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni–The Situationist International (1957-1972) (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2006). This catalog contains one of the rare color photographs of the original 1978 game board.


this is a screenshot of the digital version, good work.
About RSG and their project: “We explore the contradiction between Debord, a symbol of radical politics and art in 1960s France, and the Napoleonic war game he created. In Debord’s own words the game was the only thing in his entire body of work that had any value. Was it nostalgia, or a vision of things to come?”
Founded in 2000, RSG is a collective of programmers and artists working on experimental software products.

Technorati Tags: educational, games