
PAXsims is devoted to peace, conflict, humanitarian, and development simulations and serious games for education, training, and policy analysis.
If you wish to be notified when new material is posted here, simply use the RSS feed or “email subscription” features below.
Relevant comments are welcomed.
PAXsims operates on a non-profit basis. You can donate to support our activities via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PAXsims
Recent Posts
- Sepinsky: Rigorous wargames vs effective wargaming
- Connections: on the power of empathy
- IDA endorses the Derby House Principles on diversity and inclusion in professional wargaming
- But we don’t treat women or minorities any different here!
- Wong and Heath: Is the (US) Department of Defense making enough progress in wargaming?
- Army University wargaming tournament, 15 March
- Simulation and gaming publications, January-February 2021
- Simulation and gaming miscellany, 14 February 2021
- Liberating Mosul (solo edition)
- Wargaming in the era of telework
Top Posts
- Sepinsky: Rigorous wargames vs effective wargaming
- Play with us however you roll: combat wheelchair rules for D&D 5e
- Sepinsky: Wargaming as an analytic tool
- Connections: on the power of empathy
- AFTERSHOCK
- Derby House Principles
- Cold War Soviet Military Planning Factors and Nomograms for Gaming
- About PAXsims
- Connections North
- How to raise a wargamer
Categories
- call for papers
- conferences
- courses
- crowd-sourcing
- forthcoming games and simulations
- gaming vignettes
- job opportunities/positions vacant
- latest links
- methodology
- not-so-serious
- reader survey
- request for proposals
- simulation and game reports
- simulation and game reviews
- simulation and gaming debacles
- simulation and gaming history
- simulation and gaming ideas
- simulation and gaming journals
- simulation and gaming materials
- simulation and gaming miscellany
- simulation and gaming news
- simulation and gaming publications
- simulation and gaming software
- Soviet
Archives
Active Learning in Political Science
- Hello again 23/02/2021
- Winter of Discontent 22/02/2021
Ludic Futurism
- The Uses of Simple Games 19/02/2021
- Wargames and experiential learning 13/02/2021
Wargaming Connections
- Dragoons Assembly 2020 convention 30/06/2020
- Wargaming Podcasts (redux) 27/03/2020
PAXsims editors on Twitter
My TweetsConnections conferences
Journals & Periodicals
- Battles Magazine
- C3i Magazine
- Eludamos: Journal of Computer Game Culture
- GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies
- Games and Culture
- International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations
- International Journal of Role-Playing
- Sciences du jeu
- Simulation & Gaming
- The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation
- Training & Simulation Journal
- Virtual Training & Simulation News
Web Resources: fragile and conflict-affected countries
- Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation
- Current Intelligence
- International Alert
- International Peace Institute
- OECD DAC—Development Effectiveness in Fragile States
- PRIO (International Peace Research Institute)
- Small Wars Journal
- UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
- UN Peacekeeping Resource Hub
- UNDP—Crisis Prevention and Recovery
- US Army—Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute
- World Bank—Conflict and Development blog
- World Bank—Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries
- World Bank—World Development Report 2011
Web Resources: games and simulation
- Active Learning in Political Science
- Barnard College—Reacting to the Past
- Best Delegate
- Beyond Intractability—Exercises and Simulations
- BoardGameGeek
- ChangeGamer
- Class Wargames
- Columbia American History Online—classroom simulations
- Community Organizing Toolkit—game
- Connections Australia
- ConSimWorld
- CRISP: Crisis Simulation for Peace
- CUNY Games Network
- Darfur is Dying—game
- Economics Network—classroom experiments and games
- Emergency Capacity Building project — simulation resources
- EuroWarGames
- Fletcher School/Tufts University—SIMULEX
- Game Design Concepts
- Game Theory .net
- Gameful
- Games & Social Networks in Education
- Games for Change
- Games for Educators
- GeoGame
- Giant Battling Robots
- Global Justice Game
- Grog News
- Guns, Dice, Butter
- History of Wargaming Project
- Ian Bogost
- ICT for Peacebuilding
- International Game Developers Association
- Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
- Kings College London—Conflict Simulation
- Little Wars
- Ludic Futurism
- Ludology
- McGill Model UN
- McGill University—Brynania simulation
- Mike Cosgrove—wargame design class
- MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program—simulation materials
- MODSIM World conference
- MORS Wargaming Community of Practice
- MSSV
- MUNmatters
- National Center for Simulation
- National Security Decision-Making game
- Naval Postgraduate School—MOVES Institute
- NDU—Center for Applied Strategic Learning
- No Game Survives…
- North American Simulation and Gaming Association
- Oil Shockwave Simulation
- Pax Warrior
- Pervasive Games: Theory and Design
- Play the Past
- Play Think Learn
- Purple Pawn
- Reality is Broken
- Red Team Journal
- SAGSET
- Serious Games at Work
- Serious Games Network France
- Simulations Interactivity Standards Organization
- Strategikon (French)
- Technoculture, Art, and Games
- Terra Nova (Simulation + Society + Play)
- The Cove: Wargaming
- The Ludologist
- The Open-Ended Machine
- Tiltfactor
- Tom Mouat's wargames page
- Trans-Atlantic Consortium for European Union Studies & Simulations
- United States Institute for Peace—Simulations
- University of Maryland—ICONS Project
- University of Michigan ICS: Arab-Israeli Conflict Simulation
- US Army—Modelling and Simulation
- USC—Institute for Creative Technologies
- Utrecht Institute for Crisis and Conflict Simulation
- Wargame_[space]
- Wargaming Connection
- Web Grognards
- World Bank—EduTech
- World Peace Game Foundation
- Zones of Influence
Web Resources: games and simulation (commercial)
- Booz Allen Hamilton—wargames and exercises
- BreakAway—serious games
- Brian Train-game designs
- Civic Mirror
- ConSimWorld
- Decisive Point
- Fabulsi—online roleplay simulations
- Fiery Dragon Productions
- GamePolitics
- LECMgt
- MCS Group
- MegaGame Makers
- Military Training & Simulation
- Peacemaker Game
- Persuasive Games
- PlanPolitik
- RAND Center for Gaming
- Sea Change Simulations
- Serious Games Interactive
- Statecraft
- Strategy and Tactics Press
- Track4
- Wikistrat blog
Thanks for the excellent comment, Nate–I’ve expanded it into a full blog post above (“The value of simHumility”)
It seems to me that you’ve left out the most important problem with “social simulation”: the relationship between those who construct the simulation and those who are represented within it. You’ve pointed out some of the general problems of simulation: that the abstraction hides complexity, that it can produce a reliance on simulation-based expectations, that it reflects the assumptions of the creator. But this last problem — the assumptions of the creator – is much more serious in the case of “social simulation”, and it can not be mediated by debriefing or pointing out the failures of the simulation.
It’s the problem of the invisible subject, which is what the simulation is intended to make visible all along. It is precisely the problem that simulation never encounters which undermines it, because to do so would be to undermine its very raison d’être. But establishing knowledge always seeks a certain compliance as well, an ordering. Of course, I’m not suggesting we forgo knowledge. The now ubiquitous maxim that knowledge is power is not, in the end, a call to abandon knowledge. But it is a call to examine those assumptions which underpin our knowledge.
I realize that you’re a fan of simulation (I am at your blog, after all). I’m not suggesting that simulation is all bad. But I don’t think there’s any getting around the core component of mastery that any simulation entails. To run the simulation — whether “human-moderated” or not (computer programs are still human-designed) — necessarily requires the position of a master who can set the rules and determine the outcomes. And this is what frightens me.
If we take this sense of mastery and place it into the relationships between those constructing the simulation and those being represented in the simulation, I think we end up relying on the existence of some kind of complete, internally coherent system. Conflict situations, however, usually involve the collapse of this kind of common or public institutional consistency. Lacking that central component of our form of knowledge, will we go about trying to impose it upon the situation, seeking order where we only see disorder, stable coherent actors where there are only porous networks?
And given that simulation is primarily a practice of the wealthy — whether militaries or NGOs — shouldn’t we be more concerned about developing a sense of mastery over the relationships we develop with those we’re trying to help? I guess I’m asking whether simulation risks turning “peace-building” into an objective-driven system of pacification.