"Ender's Game" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Orson Scott Card.
It first appeared in the August 1977 issue of Analog magazine and was later expanded into the 1985 novel Ender's Game.
Once familiar with the simulator, they fight a series of what Maezr tells them are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy.
The novel supplies a detailed background for Ender and the interstellar conflict with the buggers (in later novels referred to as Formics); the novelette supplies virtually no background whatsoever; the terms "Earth" and "human" do not occur at all, and the enemy remains nameless and faceless.
In addition, several characters are changed: the antagonist Bonzo Madrid replaces Pol Slattery as the commander who loses to Ender during an unfair battle.