Software priorities for classroom roleplay

Skip Cole of Sea Change Simulations is currently running an online poll that asks “What are the features of the software we need to get teachers to run role plays in their classrooms?“ So far, the top four answers (based on more than 400 replies from educators) are: Simple enough overview tutorial that newbies can understand [...]

simulations miscellany, 27 May 2012

I’ve been a bit slow posting in recent weeks, in part because I was away hanging around in Alabama bars while trying to overthrow the corrupt and dictatorial regime of “Florabama.” Under the wise leadership of opposition leader David Ortega—and with a little help from our friends—I’m pleased to say that we succeeded. As might [...]

Government Executive on games in the government

As mentioned earlier, I’m busy at the moment running the annual “Brynania” civil war simulation for 100+ undergraduate and graduate students at McGill University. We’re just about to start Day Four, and already we’ve had faltering ceasefire negotiations, a short-lived government military offensive, attacks on humanitarian operations, terrorism, refugee flows, labour unrest, mass arrests, missing [...]

Blog-based wargaming?

In addition to a shout-out to a very good piece by Peter Perla and Ed McGrady on Why Wargaming Works from the Summer 2011 issue of Naval War College Review, the Information Dissemination maritime strategy/strategic communications blog currently features an interesting discussion of using a blog as the basis for an online wargame/crowd-sourcing exercise. There are already [...]

Yarrrr, MMOWGLI Turn 2

This past week, the Naval Postgraduate School ran a prelaunch playtest of Turn 2 of the MMOWGLI crowd-sourcing platform. Building on the earlier Turn 1 anti-piracy scenario, this time they advanced the clock to 2014 when a “Yemeni-Somali Union” had emerged to sponsor piracy in the area. But now, in 2014, the situation has changed. [...]

MMOWGLI update

Don Brutzman at the Naval Postgraduate School has provided an update on the phased roll-out of the crowd-sourcing/simulation platform, via the mmowgli game blog: The MMOWGLI team is hard at work preparing for the next moves in the game. Game Move 1 was successful, thanks to everyone who played! There were many interesting results, and they [...]

Resources for simulated pirate-hunters

With a MMOWGLI crowd-sourcing/simulation platform playtest currently underway, I thought I would provide a quick list of resources on Somali piracy and counter-piracy operations as a resource for participants. Wikipedia, Piracy in Somalia useful overview, includes details of all successful attacks since 2005 Wikipedia, Politics of Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG) Puntland Somaliland International Crisis Group, Somalia [...]