Gaming a new Korean war

Over at Kotaku, Michael Peck suggests Even Our Best Video Games Can’t Predict What Kim Jong-Un Would Do To Win a New Korean War. It is curious that there are far more  games on a Soviet invasion of West Germany that never happened than a Communist assault on South Korea that actually did. It is even [...]

Review: Sabin, Simulating War

Review of: Philip Sabin, Simulating War: Studying Conflict Through Simulation Games (London: Continuum, 2012). 363pp. USD$34.95 hc. Professor Philip Sabin is a highly regarded military historian, well-known for his MA course on conflict simulation at King’s College London. His 2009 book Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World was an innovative examination of warfare in [...]

Songs of Cyberia (the sounds of simulation)

I’ve spent much of the weekend gearing up for the annual Brynania civil war simulation at McGill University, which will be held this year from March 28 until April 4. Since I launched it in 1997, the fictional universe of Equatorial Cyberspace (“Cyberia”) has come to be furnished with all sort of student-generated cultural backdrop—including [...]

The Afghan Provincial Reconstruction game

Today a group of volunteer students from my POLI 450 (Peacebuilding) course at McGill University helped me playtest the Afghan Provincial Reconstruction game produced by LEC Management. The game was designed by Roger Mason (LECMgt) and Joe Miranda, with input from Eric Patterson at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown [...]

Peacekeeping the Game

Peacekeeping the Game is  a relatively simple 3-4 player boardgame developed by Michael Goon (Yeshiva University) that explores the challenge of long-term peace building in fragile and conflict-affected countries: Political science students face the difficult challenge of understanding the obstacles to resolving intrastate conflict. Often, instructors will use negotiation-based role-playing simulations to model arduous discussions between [...]

“Reacting to the Past” 2012 Institute

Barnard College has announced details for its 2012 “Reacting to the Past” Institute, which will be held in New York on 7-10 June 2012: Registration is now open for the 12th Annual “Reacting to the Past” Institute at Barnard College. We look forward to reconnecting with colleagues and to welcoming new faculty and administrators to [...]

Gaming urban counterinsurgency in Iraq: Fardh al-Qanoon update

Over at his Smart War Blog, graduate student Robert Hossal recently released the draft map, counter set and rules for his simulation of 2007 Baghdad Security Plan—all part of his class assignment  in Professor Philip Sabin’s well-known course on conflict simulation at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His progress on the project is well worth following for the [...]

Peacekeeping missions and the protection of (simulated) civilians

The Policy, Evaluation and Training Division of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations has recently produced a six part training module on the protection of civilians and the prevention of/response to conflict-related sexual violence. The first five modules address key themes, while the sixth module consists of a dozen scenario-based exercises which examine the sorts of [...]

Serious gaming the challenges of humanitarian preparedness

Pablo Suarez (associate director of programmes at the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre) was kind enough to drop us a note highlighting some of the work that they have been doing over the past few years using serious games to highlight and address the humanitarian consequences of climate change and extreme weather events. Some of this work has been [...]

Simulating the Green Revolution

Engineers without Borders (Canada) has put together a very thoughtful educational roleplaying game about the positive and negative effects of the “green revolution,” based on an earlier online version first developed by Ricardo Salvador at Iowa State University. Designed to be played by up to 30 participants over an hour, farming households must choose between varieties [...]

Free “Occupy Wall Street” simulation

Sea Change Simulations is offering a free ”Occupy Wall Street” simulation (using the USIP Open Simulation Platform) to the first five qualified course instructors who contact them: Put your students into the muddy shoes of an OWS member, or the polished wingtips of a Banker, or those President Obama, or any one of the other various [...]

Zombies and simulating disaster response

In recent years we’ve seen a creeping infiltration of decaying abominations shambling into the academic and professional classrooms of the world, in search of fresh brains to prey upon. I’m not speaking of tenured professors, of course, but rather those ravenous creatures of the undead: zombies. In social sciences, for example, Daniel Drezner has used the [...]

History through games

Over at his blog Peasant Muse, Jeremy Antley ponders the challenges of designing a university course on “history through gaming”: What results do I wish to achieve?  I want students to be able to critically evaluate a board game, or any game derivative, looking at not only its outward theme and graphics/material pieces but also [...]

report from Fjordland I

Fortunately, Raleigh (and Fjordland in the South) has oil and lithium, so people care… First round in Fjordland (see statement of mission objective, below)… Everyone was given background materials before the event (electronically) and hard copies on the first academic day of the course (yesterday).  This was a 30 page write-up describing the scenario, with [...]

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 [...]