Wargamer: Why did you two get into computer gaming and why have you made a career of it?

Joel Billings: I grew up playing board wargames and was exposed and worked with computers while in college in the late 70’s. I thought putting wargames on computers was a natural thing to do and circumstances just happened to work out that after graduating college in 1979 I was able to start SSI as the Apple II market was just beginning to take off.

Gary Grigsby: Wargaming became a hobby when I was in college in the early 70s. I acquired many of the AH and SPI titles before the first home computers became available.  Most of my gaming was solitaire and it was tough to play out anything other than the shortest and simplest simulations. When I bought my first computer (TRS-80) in 1979 I immediately taught myself BASIC and started working on “computer assistants” for wargames. These were intended to add fog of war and playability tactical naval surface combat and carrier combat simulations. Over the next three years I graduated to the Apple computer and continued to develop and expand various ideas for computer gaming. When I first contacted Joel at SSI in early 1982, I had nearly completed a crude working version of Guadalcanal Campaign on the Apple computer. Luckily* for me, SSI needed new products and Joel agreed to help develop and publish GC. For a year I worked for the DoD by day and SSI by night, completing three SSI titles before quitting my civil service job becoming a full time programmer/game designer.

*- My contacting Joel was a purely chance encounter.  I purchased the SSI game “Torpedo Fire” and called the SSI hotline to ask a question.  Joel happened to be covering the phones that day.

WG: You both were involved with SSI before selling it in 1994. Are there any changes in the corporate climate between SSI and 2by3?

JB: Yes, several. First, 2by3 only consists of 3 employees and we have a virtual office (thanks to the internet). Because of the internet we can work with people all around the world. Over the years we’ve found many fans of our games that have day jobs that enjoy working on our wargames in the evening. With ftp sites and Skype, it’s amazing what we can do now. We also have testers all over the world linked via the internet. SSI was a publisher, so in addition to R&D staff, we had an entire publishing operations with sales, marketing, production, customer service, etc. As a developer, at 2by3 we’re focused on making the games, which is the part of the business that I enjoy the most.

GG: There was no corporate climate at SSI when I started working with them in 1982. It was the perfect environment for me to start my new design collaborations. As the company grew, my interactions with the company’s culture changed a lot. During my 16 year relationship with SSI, the companies focus shifted from wargames to fantasy role playing games and back to wargames. In 2000, Joel, Keith and I teamed up to form 2 by 3 Games.  2 by 3 Games is a corporation in name only, there is no “corporate climate” in the way we do things.

WG: “2by3” is an interesting title for your company. Why did you choose it?

JB: My wife came up with that name. I told her we were going to do WWII games and that there were 3 of us, so she said how about 2by3 (WWII by three guys). I liked it because it also can be thought to be 2x3=6, which is the number of sides in a hexagon, and most of our games are hex based.

WG: I’ll date us all by stating that Gary started having games published the same year I started playing computer games: 1982. The industry has changed since then. What trends have you seen and which do you like and dislike?

GG:  In 1982, working “part-time” I was able to complete 3 game titles. Working on the Apple II, there was only so much game you could fit under the hood. Things were even tighter on the Commodore 64 and the Atari 800. New projects would require only 6-8 months to develop and cloned projects 3-4 months. I think I finished 17 games in the first 7 years. When PCs took over in the 1990s, bigger games became possible. Greater RAM allowed for a more detailed data base and more/better sound and graphics. Every aspect of computer wargaming “grew” to fit the new capabilities. The expectations of people purchasing computer games have grown along with it. We are now working on games we could not have imagined in 1982. The computer systems seem almost infinite in their capacity to handle data, sound, graphics, 3D-animation that looks like the real thing and space for infinite (not necessarily smart) AI code. Sadly, the time required to finish a game has exploded. War in the East required 4 years to complete and almost never got off the ground. 

WG: Although Gary is linked with “monster” games, his thirty-three published games include tactical (Steel Panthers) and simpler strategic games (World at War, War Between the States). What prompts you to choose different scales and levels of complexity?

JB: It’s always been up to Gary. He creates games on subjects he’s interested in. Sometimes he’ll have a few ideas and we’ll go through the pros and cons of how hard the game might be to do or how likely it is to sell, but fundamentally Gary has to have a spark of inspiration for him to work on a topic. He always focused on WWII, so it was a surprise when he said he was interested in doing a Civil War game. Turns out he had been reading books on the Civil War that had interested him so he wanted to try doing a game on the subject. Although WBTS was not a financial success for us, I think it’s one of his best designs he’s come up with. Unfortunately, it came out shortly after two other full CW games were published, and being last out didn’t help. Often Gary will find a new book on an old subject and it will spark his interest in doing a game.

WG: Most of your games are about World War II and that war continues to dominate the wargame niche. A generation has passed since the beginning of computer wargames. Why is World War II still so dominant a theme and will it remain so?

JB: I was just saying today that I was amazed it’s been over 65 years since WWII. Growing up with many relatives that fought in WWII, it was always of interest. I think this is true for many in the board wargaming generation (those of us that grew up in the 60s and 70s). These are the core audience that we cater too. Of course there is the fact that WWII was the largest war ever, and included all kinds of different combat. It also had great heroes and villains. There’s just so much to cover.

WG: Looking at War in the East, the counters are 2-D. Other designers have converter to 3-D for the same level of game. Why do you adhere to 2-D?

JB: I never liked 3-D counters for hexagon wargames. Our audience wants information on their counters, not pretty pictures. They’re used to board wargames and its conventions.

WG: Jim Wirth did the OOBs for War in the East and I imagine you two and Pavel Zagzin handled other historical elements. What were your sources? Did the opening of the Soviet archives provide a major boost in material?

JB: Jim and Gary handled most of the original pass over the data in the game. They use many sources, both books and internet sources. When Pavel came onboard there was a whole new set of sources that he brought to the project, including many sources in Russian. I do think we gained a lot by the opening of the Soviet archives. The information Pavel has access to, mostly on the internet, allowed us to up the accuracy of both our maps and our unit data. It helped tremendously to have someone that can read Russian and communicate to us in English. There were several other people that came in during development that helped out. Trey Marshall did a lot of the data scrubbing and worked on the scenarios, and it seemed like in our test group we had someone with interest and expertise in just about every country involved in the game. They would share their sources and information and the data would continually improve.

WG: War in Russia had eight scenarios while War in the East has fourteen. What prompted you to have more scenarios?

JB: We always wanted to have more scenarios, but it was really a matter of finding people with the time to create the scenarios. We got lucky that Walt Kunz came on and created the Road to scenarios. These provide a great intro to the game, and prep players for the campaign. We think the WitE system is great for smaller battles and mini-campaigns, so it’s really a matter of getting people that could use our under documented editor and test time to balance the scenarios (we hope to document the editor more in the coming months). We already have several new scenarios in testing and expect that many more will be released in the future. In addition to the official scenarios, we expect over time that a modder community will work on their own scenarios.

WG: With the highest difficulty level, can the German player take Moscow in 1941 in War in the East if he concentrates his efforts on that? If he does take Moscow, is that an automatic victory or must he take other objectives?

JB: Moscow is not an automatic victory, and taking it in 41 might be easier than holding it through the winter. I don’t know if it can be taken on the higher difficulty levels. I know our best player has been able to do it against other players and against the Challenging level AI, but I doubt he could do it at the Impossible level.

WG: When you come home from work, what games, if any, do you play to relax and just have fun?

JB: I don’t play many other games these days. I’ve filled what little spare gaming time I have playing some of our smaller scenarios. I used to enjoy playing Sid Meier’s Gettysburg for fun, but I’ve only played that once or twice in the past few years as War in the East was all consuming.

GG: For me, in many ways, designing games has ruined the playing of games. The part of my brain that wants “control how the game works” will not shut up and allow me to just play and enjoy the game.  There have been a few exceptions over the past few years. Microprose had several titles that I played extensively. Silent Service, Stealth Fighter, Red Storm Rising in the late 80s and early 90s. In the late 90s I played SSIs Silent Hunter and Sid Meier’s Gettysburg. Over the years, my old favorites have stopped working on the latest computers and nothing has come along to take their place.

WG: Looking over your list of games by year, I see no real break and must assume your working on another project. Is it a Western Front strategic monster or something else?

JB: Yes, we’ve begun work on a War in the West game, covering 1943-1945. It will use the same scale and system as WitE. Then we hope to do a War in the South game (or War in North Africa) that will cover 1940-43. Eventually we hope to do a full War in Europe game.

WG: Given the chance, which of your games would you like to revisit and update?

JB: I would love to do another tactical game like Steel Panthers. I have some ideas on what it could be, but I have a feeling that it’s a stretch for us technically. Maybe someday if we have enough help we’ll be able to pull this off. However, for the next 3-5 years we’re pretty much going to be focused on the War in Europe series of games that I described above.