Truth be-known I’m something of a statistic and economics geek. I’ve always had a nasty addiction to any and almost all games having a solid foundation in real world business logic or have a fundamental mathematical structure.

Over the years my addictions have bounced from hardcore business simulations such as Capitalism and Industry Giant to single industry sector games like A-Train and Railroad tycoon and onto more light hearted games like Startopia and Theme Hospital.

But in my Venn diagram where I have business simulation games in one corner and in the other, my closeted love of wrestling.  The middle ground where these two worlds collide is Extreme Warfare Revenge.

To describe EWR as a wrestling game, despite in principle being correct, is totally misinterpreting the whole game.  It would be like calling Championship Manager a simple football game.  The Extreme Warfare series like Championship Manager has a lengthy heritage – Well as long as you are going to get for Freeware anyway.

The whole Extreme Warfare series is the creation of a British programmer Adam Ryland.  Ryland’s original concept for the game back in the early 90’s was a simple collectable card game, however the complex world of wresting was too complicated to recreate through simple card-game mechanics.

At this point the game transfers into the world of rudimentary computer languages.  From its simplistic first outing on QBasic where the game only had limited criteria where match variables could be tweaked to calculate fight outcomes, the “game” was a simple simulator.

As the game iterated and evolved, QBasic and Turbo Pascal were left behind in favour of Visual Basic. Through the nine releases Ryland made in Turbo Pascal the game had started to take on the appearance of early Championship Manager games.  Basic menus laid out in a rectangular grid formation disguised a depth and complexity that even early release of Champ Man couldn’t match.

However it wasn’t until early 2000’s when the game moved from Turbo Pascal to the more familiar windows appearance of Visual Basic that the game gained mass appeal (within the wrestling fan base anyway).  No longer were you limited to the (as then) two major American wrestling federations of WWF and WCW or the underground counter culture federation ECW.  In EWR you now have the ability to manage at any level of the wrestling circus, from backyard federations right up to the global sports entertainment Goliath that is the WWE.  But like management/ business simulation game your ultimate goal is to be number one.

Once you select a federation to manage or starting from scratch you are 100% in charge.  Human resources, public relations, financial management and let’s not forget the actual wrestling side of the business – event creation & booking, storylines, talent development and ego massaging all rest on your shoulders.

The minute details that the game goes into are truly staggering.  It’s a fully realised wrestling ecosystem with a learning curve that rivals even the most hardcore of business simulations.

Objectively looking at the actual game of EWR everything seems very simplistic.  You hire wrestlers to fight at events and sell tickets and merchandise to make money.  Simple yes? Well no its not quite that simple.

Hiring anyone who can actually wrestle is expensive and the returns are only a fraction of the initial capital outlay.  So your dreams of building a wrestling empire from the foundations up will be cast with the wrestlers that can be best described as the dregs, outcasts and rookies of the world.  But to be fair chances are slim that anyone starting to play EWR today will opt to start at the bottom rung of the ladder in the wrestling world.

So you want to start at the top.  You have chosen to replace Vince McMahon as the evil overlord of WWE.  What’s your first move? Do you job John Cena to every single wrestler on the roster? Or do you return to the adult themed ‘Attitude’ era?

Well jobbing John Cena would be business suicide.  Don’t let a bad wrestler get in the way of promoting wrestling.  If Hulk Hogan has taught us anything, he has taught us that charisma will get you higher up the pay tree than actual wrestling ability. Plus as much as every wrestling fan wants a return to ‘Attitude’ wrestling the sponsors will be leaving in their droves and to be a successful business first and foremost you need to make money.  So to make money you need a good product that people want to pay to watch and pay you to be associated with.

Having a good product isn’t just based on having good wrestlers, you almost need to utilise those wrestlers in entertaining storylines and feuds.  Just concentrating on crafting a singles feud you need to therefore you want to match-up wrestlers with complementary skills and abilities.  Ideally a feud will conserve a face and a heel (good and bad guy respectively), though not essential, who fill face-off against each other in varying scenarios.  Obviously you can have the fight each other in the ring; but this is wrestling and it’s not all about fighting.  There are interviews, in ring angled, back stage antics, match interferences and lets not forget the obligatory car hit and run.  Every interaction between the two feuding wrestlers is used to provoke heat (Wrestling term for crowd reaction/ response).  Theoretically you can have a feud play-out with only the feud resolution being held in the ring.

Visually EWR looks horrendous.  Whether it’s the gaudy colour scheme, the massive wall of command buttons or the overreliance on seemingly endless lists behind every button.  But putting the visual vulgarities aside this game has an undeniable hook.  The satisfaction of bringing together two wrestlers and running them through a successful feud cycle is a simple yet fulfilling delight.  However the game isn’t for everyone.  The endless repetition of game functions is off putting to anyone who likes a clean cultivated experience. But the necessary ‘inside’ wrestling knowledge is extremely prohibitive to anyone with anything other than a firm grasp of wrestling history, cliques and what actually makes a good feud.

It must be said that Adam Ryland has since gone on to make many more wrestling and mixed martial arts business simulation games that have a larger and more realistically modelled representation of that event promoting world.  But with the complexity and professional polish the game has gained it has lost some of that early appeal.

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