Simulation & Gaming (April 2013)

The latest issue of Simulation & Gaming 44, 2-3 (April 2013) has now been published. The issue is devoted to the subject of climate change:

Articles

• Climate Change Gaming on Board and Screen: A Review
  • Diana Reckien and Klaus Eisenack
• Game, Not Fight: Change Climate Change!
  • Gilbert Ahamer
• A Simulation of International Climate Regime Formation
  • Derek L. Kauneckis and Matthew R. Auer
• A Climate Change Board Game for Interdisciplinary Communication and Education
  • Klaus Eisenack
• GREENIFY: A Real-World Action Game for Climate Change Education
  • Joey J. Lee, Pinar Ceyhan, William Jordan-Cooley, and Woonhee Sung
• A Perspective-Based Simulation Game to Explore Future Pathways of a Water-Society System Under Climate Change
  • Pieter Valkering, Rutger van der Brugge, Astrid Offermans, Marjolijn Haasnoot, and Heleen Vreugdenhil
• Land Policies for Climate Change Adaptation in West Africa: A Multilevel Companion Modeling Approach
  • Patrick d’Aquino and Alassane Bah
• If Local Weather Was Our Only Indicator: Modeling Length of Time to Majority Belief in Climate Change
  • Robert F. Szafran, Jerry L. Williams, and Jeffery E. Roth
• Integrating Climate Change Mechanics Into a Common Pool Resource Game
  • Thomas J. Fennewald and Brent Kievit-Kylar

Tributes

• Positive Wisdom for Climate Change Awareness: John Crookall-Greening
  • Christopher Crookall-Fallon
• Warrior for Climate Science and Awareness: Stephen Schneider
  • Sarah Jo Chadwick, Carrie Armel, Terry Root, and David Crookall

Editorial

• Climate Change and Simulation/Gaming: Learning for Survival
  • David Crookall

Foreword

• Climate Change and Four Goals for Operational Gaming
  • Dennis Meadows

Prolegomenon

• Climate Urgency
  • James E. Hansen

Guest Editorial

• Climate Change and Simulation/Gaming
  • Klaus Eisenack and Diana Reckien

Newsletter

• Immersive Technology Strategies
  • David Wortley

Connections UK 2013 (Day 2 report)

Day 2 of the Connections UK conference started today on a sad note with news of the death of veteran wargame author Donald Featherstone.  John Curry (History of Wargaming Project) and Phil Barker (Wargames Research Group) shared their memories of Featherstone, who was in many ways the father of the modern hobby of miniature wargaming. As noted recently on PAXsims, my own entry into the hobby (and later the professional gaming field) was very much spurred by Donald Featherstone books borrowed from the local library.

The first full panel of the day addressed “the fuzzy edges of wargaming,” that is how games might explore non-kinetic conflict dynamics. I presented an overview of my own experience of gaming peace operations, negotiations, and development in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Colin Marston discussed the Peace Support Operations Model, and the use of PSOM in Afghanistan to explore campaign plans and challenges. At the other end of the spectrum, Tom Mouat made an excellent presentation on the use of matrix games to explore conflict (or other issues). Finally, David Hockaday summarized the work of the Emergency Capacity Building Project in building disaster-response capacity in local governments and NGOs.

The next panel addressed the common faults of wargaming in the military. Graham Longley-Brown argued that 90% of military wargaming was done badly. He identified several recurrent problems: ambiguous or differing definitions of key terms and concepts; failure to make appropriate distinctions (for example, between training and education requirements); poor design (including the lack of an appropriate design team with game-design expertise, or weak design process); and weaknesses in delivery. He also pointed the need to meet the “military credibility test.” Andrew Sharpe discussed the general value of gaming, then moved on to a series of very witty and insightful observations on the institutional and cultural challenges to selling wargaming in the military. One of the most important take-aways was the need to promote wargaming by “enlightment and stealth” rather than with a sort of boundless enthusiasm that might be off-putting to senior officers. (He also managed to slip in a Warhammer snotlings reference that, as a former Orcs and Goblins player, was particularly appealing.) Another presenter talked about his own experience as a UK infantry battalion commander, expressing the view that military wargaming was too infrequent and often poorly done.

After lunch, Phil Sabin launched a discussion of the stigma and skepticism wargaming attracts. He suggested that there was a bias against games, a fear of appearing childish, as well as a a reticence among wargamers to discuss their interest in war. The fact that many government wargames are classified effectively removes them from academic or public consideration. The image of wargaming as being “fun” means it is taken less seriously. Recreational games are usually driven by entertainment considerations at some cost in historical accuracy. The use of dice to represent random events (or, more accurately, variables outside the game model) can undermine the credibility of wargames. Manual games are also difficult to repeat many times in order to develop a full understanding of the range of possible outcomes. Wargames (even professional ones) often have weak analytical foundations and questionable assumptions. All of this, he suggested, contributed to a pervasive scholarly skepticism.

My own sense is that, to some degree, this skepticism is discipline-specific to some degree—as I have noted before, I certainly don’t sense much resistance from political scientists to gaming as an instructional tool, although wargaming as a research methodology might be a slightly more difficult sell. I also think we need to work harder at reaching out beyond the current (male, middle aged) demographic of professional wargamers (most of whom who first developed their expertise playing miniature wargames and boardgames as  hobbyists) to a broader community. Although it is hardly the fault of the organizers, I couldn’t help but notice that the Connections UK audience, much like the Connections US audiences, was 95% male with a median age of 45-50. In particular we need to engage students—who, after all, are future academics and practitioners.

The final session of the day was a wide-ranging hot-wash of the conference, addressing everything from content and format to future locations. Matt Caffrey, the driving force behind two decades of Connections conferences in the US, offered some constructive advice on future UK and European efforts.  Personally I think the organizers did an excellent job, and I found the two days very useful indeed. I hope that KCL continues to host future Connections UK conferences, that ongoing efforts are made to broaden the range of participants, and that some way is found to bring more graduate and senior undergraduate students into the meetings.

The slides and audio from the various Connections UK presentations will soon be posted to the conference website—when they are, we’ll announce it here  have now been posted to the conference website.

Connections UK 2013 (Day 1 report)

The Connections UK conference started today, with approximately seventy participants from a half-dozen or so countries. After an institutional introduction by King’s College London Principal Sir Rick Trainor, Graham Longley-Brown outlined the purposes of the conference. Like the original US Connections, Connections UK is aimed at professional wargamers but with significant input and participation from recreational gamers and commercial game designers.  While much of the conference focuses on manual (rather than computer) wargames, this was largely to enable a focus on underlying essentials—the conference itself is intended to be agnostic on manual vs digital games. Conference corganizer Phil Sabin noted that while the formal presentations would be made public, the subsequent discussions would be non-attributable under Chatham House rules.

The first panel of the day examined using games for educational purposes. Phil Sabin argued that wargames are not simply a “safe vicarious reflection” of war, but also were useful in their emphasis on “systematic interactive modeling” of conflict processes, while allowing us to explore counterfactuals and alternative outcomes through a process of active learning. He then discussed creating appropriate games, the challenges of involvement and accessibility, and finally offered a case study of his classroom use of games in teaching about air combat tactics. COL Uwe Heilmann (German armed forces) also discussed the value of teaching through games. His rich presentation highlight a great many strengths of gaming, and then looked at how games were used to develop command competence.

Among the points made in subsequent discussion was the importance of human dynamics within games, often above and beyond the dynamics that are hard-wired into the written rules or computer coding. There also seemed to be agreement that heterogeneous groups of players tended to produce better learning outcomes.

The next major session looked at using wargames for military purposes. Brian Train talked about his work using games to develop skills and maintaining ongoing networks for  the US government’s Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program. The Global Ecco website includes a multimedia magazine, a video archives, and a portal for playing abstract strategy games. Abstract strategy games (like Brian’s guerilla checkers, or classic chess) are emphasized because of their role in developing planning and cognitive skills. Graham Longley-Brown and Jeremy Smith offered an overview of the Rapid Campaign Assessment Tool (RCAT), a manual wargame for rapidly examining military campaign plans. Jim Wallman (Past Perspectives) looked at “wargaming wicked problems.” His “Crisis in Binni” game, originally designed for educational purposes, was adapted for use with senior military staff. Finally, Mike Larner (DSTL) provided an overview of wargaming at the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, largely in the context of operations analysis.

A number of interesting issues arose during the subsequent discussion. One was the challenge of integrating cultural factors into games without either mirror-imaging (that is, assuming everyone thinks like “us”) and stereotyping (viewing ethnicity or religion or national origin as an absolute predictor of behaviour). Cultural effects are quite subtle, and vary not only with ethnic/religious/national identity, but also with class, occupation, age, and other factors. Another, which I raised, was how best to integrate subject matter expertise into game design, process, and adjudication—especially when the predictive records of many SMEs is uneven at best. Part of the answer has to do with the management of subject matter expertise. As one panelist suggested, drawing upon the views of multiple experts (and providing an opportunity for views to be debated and refined) can be useful.

In the afternoon two hours were devoted to game demonstrations (with additional time for gaming after dinner). I had an opportunity to demonstrate the Carana HADR game.

The keynote address on the first day was given by Peter Perla. In it he explored his own particular trajectory as a wargamer, starting with children’s games as well as television and books about WWII. He then examined the early history of kriegsspiel, and the apparent tensions between realism and playability. He asked why it was that so many people find wargames challenging. He suggested the problem might be one of “schemas,” that is a misfit between people’s experience and the structure of the rules. Players need to understand how game mechanics relate to the things they are interested in or learning. In short, the problem is not complexity in the game, but rather the (in)ability of the players to see their reality in the game.

All-in-all, and excellent first day to the UK’s first Connections conference.