Ares (magazine)

• 1. Introduction

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  Ares was a science fiction and fantasy wargame magazine launched in 1980 by Simulations Publications, Inc., known as SPI. Its first issue landed with a bundled game called WorldKiller, and critics noticed immediately. Jerry Epperson, writing in The Space Gamer No. 28, called the magazine a disappointment and WorldKiller "nothing but the worst from the games." Greg Costikyan, a game designer writing in Fantastic, went further: "WorldKiller is a dog." For a magazine that arrived promising something bold at the intersection of science fiction and tabletop wargaming, the debut was rocky. What made a seasoned wargame publisher decide to stake out this territory? Who got control of Ares midway through its life, and what became of it?

• 2. SPI's Science Fiction Gamble

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  Through the 1970s, SPI had built its reputation on military history wargames. The pivot toward science fiction came from watching competitors succeed. In 1977, Metagaming Concepts published a science fiction microgame called OGRE, and it proved enormously popular. Task Force Games, Operational Studies Group, and Chaosium all started developing their own microgames in response. SPI did not simply follow suit. Rather than publishing standalone microgames alone, they created an entire magazine to house the format. Ares launched in 1980 as a bi-monthly publication, designed to complement SPI's existing military wargame magazine, Strategy and Tactics. Every issue came bundled with a complete game: a foldout stiff paper map, a set of die-cut counters, and a rulebook. The model mirrored exactly what had made Strategy and Tactics a known quantity in wargaming circles.

• 3. TSR Takes Over

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  SPI published eleven issues of Ares and had a twelfth ready for print when the company was suddenly taken over by TSR in 1982. TSR released that prepared Issue 12, which included a game called Star Traders, designed for use with SPI's roleplaying game Universe. Game historian Shannon Appelcline later described it as the last support that game system would ever receive. TSR then reduced Ares from a bi-monthly publication to a quarterly one. After Issue 17, they stopped printing it as a standalone magazine altogether. Appelcline's observation captures the shift plainly: as TSR turned further away from SPI's origins, the publication lost its independent identity.

• 4. Life Inside Dragon Magazine

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  Starting with Issue 84 of Dragon, TSR's house magazine, a section called Ares began appearing inside its pages. Where the original magazine had focused on SPI's own science fiction games and Universe, the new section served a different purpose. It provided support for TSR's own science fiction lines: Gamma World, Marvel Super Heroes, and Star Frontiers. The Ares section ran from Dragon Issue 84, published in April 1984, through Issue 111, published in July 1986. At that point it was discontinued. Appelcline noted that TSR "did very little with SPI's roleplaying games," and the fate of the Ares section bears that out. The name survived TSR's takeover, but the editorial continuity with SPI's original vision did not.

• 5. A Mixed Critical Reception

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  Critics reviewing the original magazine found a publication that looked professional but struggled to define itself. Writing in Issue 26 of Phoenix, Hamish Wilson praised the first issue as "well put together" but concluded that Ares "lacks form, shape and direction," saying it had "crept out into the open with some fiction, some fact and some game" rather than staking out a confident identity. Costikyan's critique in Fantastic pointed specifically at the bundled game, arguing that SPI should have made a strong first impression with a high-quality game and had failed to do so. The Space Gamer's Epperson echoed the sentiment, separating the written content from the games and finding the balance uneven. Perfidious Albion reviewed the magazine across multiple issues, including its May 1980 debut and its December 1980 and January 1981 issues, suggesting the publication held enough interest to warrant continued attention even from skeptical quarters.

• 6. Revival Decades Later

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  Michael Anderson of One Small Step Games launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2014 to revive the Ares name as a new magazine. The campaign succeeded in February 2014. The second issue of the relaunched magazine came out in December 2015, the third in September 2016, and the fourth in January 2017. The revival returned to the general idea of the original: a publication serving wargame and science fiction enthusiasts, carrying the Ares identity forward more than three decades after SPI first put it on newsstands.