Nick Pett, a senior civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence, gave an outstanding talk recently on how to be an ally to the LGBT community.
I want you to watch it. And I want you to apply his sentiments to women and BAME/BIPOC and disabled wargamers as well.
To paraphrase his excellent example of what being an ally means:
It can’t all be about straight white non-disabled men asking marginalised people “What can I do to make your life better? And if you could just talk me through your trauma in order to educate me that would be really helpful thanks.”
It’s beholden on me to make it my work to develop my allyship so that it’s not about expecting the people experiencing discrimination to talk about it and explain it and help me—there’s stacks out there that I can look at and listen to and absorb without it adding to the load of marginalised people.
I think a lot of people talking about allyship would love to sell something that feels really cosy and overwhelmingly positive, that you’ve just got to slap a badge on and stick something in your signature block, and every year post something on social media about Pride happening or Black History Month, and never actively do anything that is any of the -isms. And I’m not selling that, because it’s rubbish. I think allyship is and should be hard work. And you have to think carefully about how much you can call yourself an ally, particularly if nobody marginalised in wargaming would agree with you.
If you’re going to claim allyship you need to be working at it every day: I didn’t come out of the womb understanding what it’s like to be a woman or LGBT or BAME/BIPOC or disabled. I’ve spent a long time trying to learn. I’m reading books about their history and their presence and that’s the kind of thing that I commit to doing because if I’m going to try and represent people I need to understand them and their lives. You should know and understand that the vast vast majority of what is out there that you will come across casually without any effort at all is cis-gendered heterosexual white and non-disabled and is casually if not deliberately phobic and discriminatory in a variety of different ways.
If you as a marginalised wargamer are to be confident in my allyship then you ought to be able to see it everywhere I go. You should be able to see me and hear me and know my allyship wherever I am. You will know my allyship because I wear it on me somewhere all the time—and I don’t think these are empty symbols unless the behaviour that comes behind undermines them. I want people to be able to see that women, LGBT, BAME/BIPOC, and disability communities are something that I love and support and want to protect and celebrate.
Signing up to the Derby House Principles means:
Representation: striving for parity of women and minorities in your wargames and at your wargames, events, conferences, panels, socials, working groups, etc. And not just in admin and junior roles.
Opportunities: mentoring, encouraging, and opening doors for women and minority wargamers. Celebrating their achievements and actively seeking out their contributions.
Support: fighting for women and minority wargamers’ rights to equality; pushing back whenever you see women and minority wargamers not being treated with respect; not standing for words and actions that demean women and minority wargamers. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Here’s your starter for ten of things you can watch to help you be a better Derby House Principles ally:
Hannah Gadsby on drawing the line between good and bad:
“If we’re going to send a human being to space, we should send the one most qualified.” Mercury 13 tells the remarkable true story of the women who fought for their place in the stars.
Join Peter Perla and Ed McGrady as they discuss AI and cyber games, and how the USAF game showed they almost had enough stuff, but not quite enough, to take on the Chinese. Right before they released their budget. Tune in to hear their take on the wargaming news of the day. https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JIldrBu5RwaSJl_srXAyTg
Comments Off on Award-winning PAXsims editors
Posted by Rex Brynen on 28/06/2021
I am pleased to report that two PAXsims editors were recently recognized for their contributions to professional wargaming.
Sally Davis (Dstl) has received a A* Analysis Function Award from the UK Ministry of Defence for her work on diversity and inclusion. The nomination noted Dstl’s endorsement of the Derby House Principles, her work on the diversity card deck, and many other activities. It went on to note:
Sally’s work on the Derby House Principles epitomises our ambition to be an inclusive employer where diversity of thought is valued and celebrated and enables us to tackle the most complex S&T challenges; where everyone feels they belong and comfortable bringing their whole self to work. These principles are more than just words, they provide a guide for tangible actions for building our teams, cultivating our leaders and creating a community that supports everyone in it. Sally is a role model and her personal commitment and drive to helping Dstl meet its D&I ambitions is inspiring.
Tom received the recognition for his outstanding contribution to military simulation, education and training and was presented with the award by Kiera Bentley, the Mayor of Faringdon, where he lives. He has over 30 years’ experience in the defence modelling and simulation sector. His interests include military simulation and training, manual wargaming, cyber defence and artificial intelligence.Tom has led and contributed to numerous UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) activities and projects. In 2007 he received the Chief of Defence Materiel’s Commendation for his work in the procurement of simulation systems, and in 2013 received the UK MoD Chief Scientific Adviser’s Team Commendation for contributions to defence modelling and simulation education. He is a regular speaker at the DSET conference, contributing to numerous presentations and panels.
DSET conference organiser, Tess Butler said: “We are genuinely happy to provide this award for Tom’s lifetime of dedication, knowledge and innovation in military simulation, modelling and wargaming. Tom has always been at the heart of our community, and is someone that continues to go above and beyond to support, provide advice and share his knowledge with students, colleagues and the wider industry. We hope that this award, our very first, goes a small way in providing the recognition that Tom so deserves
Two very well-deserved awards—congratulations Sally and Tom!
Short discussions on the following topics to be held online at Connections US (must be registered for Connections US) Wednesday and Thursday. Discussions run in parallel for one hour.
Wednesday 23 June 1300–1400 US EDT
Host
Question
Description
Chuck Turnitsa
1. How can Simulation Systems assist with traditional (or not) Wargaming?
Many organizations that are currently engaging in the push for wargaming, are intrigued by the idea of using simulation systems (mostly from the LVC world) to assist in facilitating a wargame. This may or may have limits on its usefulness, but there can certainly be some overlap – as both wargaming and combat simulation are both based on combat modeling. However the devil is in the details, and discussion of how and where simulation is useful for wargaming needs to happen.
Ed McGrady
3. What are the skills that professional game designers need?
Lets discuss all of the different challenges we have faced as professional game designers, and what has prepared us to be successful in that position. Do game designers need to be analysts? Should they be story tellers? Good a facilitation or just plain good at improve? What skills derive from a sordid past in board game design, and what skills come from role playing? At its core wargaming exists at this weird intersection of military analysis, history, gaming, role playing, storytelling, and acting. What skills do you value, and what should we be doing differently to cultivate these skills in ourselves and others?
Hiroyasu Akutsu
4. How can wargaming be used to generate ideas for (military) technological innovation?
In this new era of AI or new and emerging technologies, there may be many efforts of wargaming to contribute to technological innovation in our defense and security communities, but opportunities to share those efforts and exchange views seem to be sparse especially in open-source spaces. I have seen only a few open-source examples and have actually built on one of them to develop our own very basic and simple gaming exercise. It is not necessarily the importance of this question per se, but the importance of opportunity to discuss how professional wargamers have addressed it that I wish to emphasize. I hope this Lab will provide such an opportunity.
Matt Caffrey
5. What new developments in wargaming and new findings in wargaming’s history should be included in the second edition of the book “On Wargaming”?
I’m writing a second edition of “On Wargaming”. Please help me identify both important developments in our field and additional history that came to light after I finished work on the first edition (or I missed). I particularly want to improve my coverage of popular wargaming world wide, post Soviet wargaming in Russia and recent developments in NATO wargaming.
Samantha Taylor
6. What should a strategic level war game on Space include?
Many war games especially those for space focus on getting items into space and developing new technology to further explore space. Few focus on the strategic and diplomatic areas of space considering how space is continuing to evolve what should a strategic level focused space war game focus on and how should it challenge its players to understand Space strategy, diplomacy, and other important aspects related to space policy.
Tim Moench
7. How to introduce academic rigor to wargaming?
Without a thorough understanding of the rich wargaming literature available, it is easy to be dismissive of the academic rigor present. A comprehensive wargaming literature review will be presented to help one appreciate what is already available and areas for further research.
Tomonori Yoshizaki
8. What lessons have you learned from red teaming for wargaming?
There are many different approaches to red teaming in wargaming that depend on organization, country, interest, objective, etc. It would be useful to share and learn from one another about best and worst practices in red teaming for wargaming.
Thursday 24 June 1300–1400 US EDT
Host
Question
Description
Alex M Hoffendahl
9. How can we use wargaming and simulation to identify the intentions behind, and calculate the likelihood of, each of the adversary’s feasible courses of action (COAs)?
The doctrinal planning process calls for gaming several alternative friendly COAs against several enemy COAs. The reality is that without simulation support planners hand wargame a single professionally preferred friendly COA against a single selected enemy COA (examining a few branches and sequels) in order to identify and cure weaknesses in one’s own COA. Mission planning would be significantly improved if we could use wargaming and simulation to identify the full range of feasible enemy COAs, deduce the intention behind each, and calculate the likelihood distribution of the enemy’s potential COAs
Ed McGrady
11. How do we aggregate for quick, sensible, games?
The problem of aggregation, of rolling up combat results into higher-echelon units, is a perennial and inevitable problem in game design. Data on fire and casualty rates are available, but often not for the circumstances we care about. Computer simulations can give detailed results for complex situations, but they are often too much for a game with time pressures. So, the question remains, how, and when, do we roll up combat results to the brigade, division, and corps levels in modern combat. The issues go beyond 3:1 and include things like how to incorporate precision fires against enemy C3, airpower, ISR, and other factors on large formation combat results. Those who have a computer simulation background are welcome to participate, as many issues we need to discuss are also issues in simulation. However the simple solution of substituting computer sims for the combat results table is not what we are looking for. Rather, we are asking: how do we incorporate all of this complexity and data into a realistic, and usable, set of mechanics for professional games?
Hiroyasu Akutsu
12. What lessons have you learned from scenario development for wargaming?
Exchanging best and worst practices in scenario-writing would help especially the younger generations of wargaming professionals.
Matt Caffrey
13. How can the national Connections conferences and the international community of wargamers overall work together more effectively?
A side effect of the global pandemic has been an increase in awareness that there is an international wargaming community. We have participated in each other’s online conferences. In the coming post pandemic world it is important to preserve and expand our communications and work together for the betterment of all.
Pijus Krūminas
14. How can wargames use social science models for educational purposes?
When using wargames in classes on social sciences (e.g. political science), they have the potential to illustrate specific theoretical models that are being taught. However, such models may seem closed or solved (e.g. game theoretic). This creates a challenge, since games are more flexible in their outcomes and generally more open. Bridging this gap would facilitate the use of games in the classroom, expanding their applicability.
Tim Moench
15. How to gamify the onboarding of wargame control members?
Too often, control team (White Team) participants are thrown into positions they neither have trained for nor have experience doing so. While there are several parts to control, I want to examine one particular segment, the analysis team. I believe the gamification of the onboarding process for analysis can better prepare them for their duties in a shorter amount of time. This process may have application to other control segments such as adjudication.
Tim Smith
16. What are the best Pedagogical designs for PME courses supported by wargame labs & practical applications?
This Game Lab will explore and identify methods for combining readings, briefings, data sets, structured analytic templates (SATs) and facilitated team brainstorming in support of wargaming in order to provide the best possible PME. Methods and experience from other educational areas that use gaming to teach are also especially important.
Are you interested in conflict simulation and serious games? Well, here is your opportunity to join PAXsims as a research associate for 2021-22.
*To be clear you won’t actually become rich, since no one at PAXsims actually gets paid.
**We can’t really make you famous either—all we can offer is whatever satisfaction derives from helping us find material for the website (and possibly writing the occasional piece yourself).
However, we would certainly value your assistance!
To apply, email us by June 30 with a copy of your resume/CV, plus details of your background in conflict simulation and serious gaming. As a strong supporter of the Derby House Principles we particularly welcome applications from historically underrepresented groups.
Speaking this week at the Defence Education, Simulation and Training (DSET) conference in Bristol, Maj Scott Roach from the Canadian Joint Warfare Centre’s Joint Wargaming Experimentation & Simulation group told delegates that Canada is about to launch its first wargaming course.
‘We’re a relatively new group that has been in existence for nearly two years and we’re now ready to launch what we refer to as our Wargaming 101 course,’ explained Roach.
Focusing on the operational and strategic levels, the Ottawa-based Joint Wargaming Experimentation & Simulation group has established itself as one of the premier wargaming organisations in NATO and it has formed strategic partnerships with the USMC and USAF, for example.
‘We’ve looked at a number of tools (constructive training systems) over the past couple of years but as we provide joint wargaming services we’ve found that the majority of these tools just focus on air, land or sea domains, and this is a challenge,’ explained Roach.
Most of the group’s work has been conducted for the Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), the Joint Operations Planning Group (JOPG) and the Canadian Forces College. The latter provides training for senior Canadian military leaders.
One exception was Operation Laser and Vector that modelled the DND response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
CJOC and JOPG exercises have featured operations in the Arctic and Baltic regions.
‘We are planning a pilot course to run this fall,’ said Roach, ‘with two courses set to run in 2022. Although yet to be finalised, the course will feature distance learning before attending a residential module.’
Plans are also being made to run a second course for developers and wargame designers.
You can also hear Scott speak about wargaming at the CJWC in this panel discussion at February’s Connections North 2021 conference (7:50-25:50).
Games for Change has announced the finalists for the G4C 2021 Awards. Don’t click the image above to see them, however—instead, you will find descriptions and links to the games at the G4C awards page .
Several of these will be of particular interest to PAxsims readers because they deal with issues of conflict and peacebuilding. These include:
Through the Darkest of Times (Steam)
Berlin 1933. “Adolf Hitler is chancellor!” We all know the consequences this message bore. Unspeakable horrors and suffering would sweep across the world. Few would stand and fight the monstrosity that was the German Reich. Will you? Lead an underground resistance group Through the Darkest of Times.
Suzerain (Steam)
As President Rayne, lead Sordland into ruin or repair during your first term in this text-based role-playing game. Navigate a political drama driven by conversations with your cabinet members and other significant figures. Beware or embrace corruption; shirk or uphold ideals. How will you lead?
Harmony Square (browser)
Harmony Square is a game about fake news. The game’s setting is the idyllic Harmony Square, a small neighborhood mildly obsessed with democracy. You, the player, are hired as Chief Disinformation Officer. Over the course of 4 short levels, your job is to disturb the square’s peace and quiet by fomenting internal divisions and pitting its residents against each other.
Radio General (Steam)
Radio General is a unique strategy game where you interact with your units over the radio using speech recognition. Test your mettle and relive famous battles as a WW2 general.
The Simulation and Wargaming Standing Study Group of SISO invite you to join them for a talk and discussion by Jon Compton
TITLE: Analytical Architecture that Includes Wargaming for Decision Makers
SPEAKER: Jon Compton
ABSTRACT: Wargames are conducted for purposes of education and training, concept exploration or development, or sometimes done to raise awareness about certain issues or concepts. Within OSD, however, the style of wargame required is referred to as Analytical Wargaming, and is nested with other analytical or Operations Research techniques to generate contextualized knowledge and recommendations for leadership. Jon will present and discuss the process he has used to design, run and analyze analytic wargames in support of senior decision makers faced with serious national security related problems.
Meeting ID: 889 2919 6057 Passcode: Wargaming One tap mobile +16465588656,,88929196057#,,,,*716224941# US (New York) +13017158592,,88929196057#,,,,*716224941# US (Washington DC) Dial by your location +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) Meeting ID: 889 2919 6057 Passcode: 716224941
SPEAKER BIO: Jon Compton began his professional career in heavy construction at age 15. By age 25 he was operations director at a structural precast heavy construction firm, and was responsible for the manufacture and construction of such projects as the J. Paul Getty Center Parking Garage, the Bridge Over Verdugo Wash, and the Kaiser Permanente Parking Garage, all in Southern California. During this period he also earned two bachelor’s degrees, one in music composition, the other in communications. In 1995 Compton retired from the construction industry and pursued IT. Beginning as an HTML developer in 1996, by 2001 he was the senior project manager for Realtor.com’s internal business systems in Thousand Oaks, CA. Shortly after 9/11 2001, Compton left IT and returned to school, earning a master’s degree in international relations and a Ph.D. in World Politics and Formal Mathematical Methods (as well as completing all Ph.D. level coursework in Economics). In 2009, Dr. Compton moved to the Washington DC area and joined Booz Allen Hamilton’s Modeling, Simulation, Wargaming, and Analysis shop under Mark Herman. During that tenure, Compton wrote numerous proprietary white papers on subjects ranging from non-state actor violence to creating a new theoretical framework for modeling warfare. He also designed and developed wargames for various clients, to include AFRL, NDU, ONA, and OSD. Compton was a Booz Allen contractor in OSD/CAPE/SAC from 2012 until Spring of 2016 when he joined CAPE as a civilian employee. Dr. Compton has numerous commercial wargame publications as designer, developer, and producer. He has also been editor of the commercial print publications Fire and Movement Magazine and CounterFact Magazine, and has also served as associate editor of the academic journal International Interactions. In addition to his professional life, Dr. Compton has led an active life in music, having studied with such composers as Philip Glass and George Crumb, and having composed numerous pieces for various instruments as well as one symphony.
PAXsims is pleased to present some recent items on conflict simulation and serious (and not-so-serious) gaming that may be of interest to our readers. Aaron Danis and David Redpath suggested items for this latest edition.
The American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and War on the Rocks have created a Defense Futures Simulator:
The Defense Futures Simulator will allow users to see how various defense strategies and choices would alter the Defense Department budget. A sophisticated data science algorithm will enable users to first decide whether they want to adjust the current strategy. For example, some users may focus on great-power competition, while others may prioritize counter-insurgency and counterterrorism. They will then be able to select a certain budget level or choose to work with an unconstrained budget. Once these inputs are finalized, the simulator will use the algorithm to reflect how the user’s strategic preferences and budget constraints might change the US military’s size, composition, and capabilities.
The Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center is planned to open in summer 2023. The site is next to the Marine Corps University where mid-career and senior office and enlisted Marines attend.
That proximity means that planners can bring in Marines who are coming from the fleet to participate in planning or experiments and to provide feedback.
The center gives planners a way to run through everything from equipment strengths and weaknesses to entire campaign plans using existing capabilities and tactics or mid- to long-term anticipating capabilities.
…
Brig. Gen. Benjamin Watson, Marine Corps Warfighting Lab commander, told Marine Corps Times in an email statement that as the Corps works on concept development, experiments and exercises in the fleet both the positive and negative feedback will be sent to the wargaming center.
“Young Marines will see the benefit of expanded channels for feedback,” Watson said. “In the end, this will allow the Marine Corps to iteratively learn and continuously improve our organizational and capability investment decisions, ensuring that our plans and investments don’t just look good on paper, but are underpinned by rigorous wargaming and analysis.”
The U.S. Air Force repelled a Chinese invasion of Taiwan during a massive war game last fall by relying on drones acting as a sensing grid, an advanced sixth-generation fighter jet able to penetrate the most contested environments, cargo planes dropping pallets of guided munitions and other novel technologies yet unseen on the modern battlefield.
But the service’s success was ultimately pyrrhic. After much loss of life and equipment, the U.S. military was able to prevent a total takeover of Taiwan by confining Chinese forces to a single area.
Furthermore, the air force that fought in the simulated conflict isn’t one that exists today, nor is it one the service is seemingly on a path to realize. While legacy planes like the B-52 bomber and newer ones like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter played a role, many key technologies featured during the exercise are not in production or even planned for development by the service.
Still, the outcome was a marked improvement to similar war games held over the last two years, which ended in catastrophic losses. The Air Force’s performance this fall offers a clearer vision of what mix of aircraft, drones, networks and other weapons systems it will need in the next decade if it hopes to beat China in a potential war. Some of those items could influence fiscal 2023 budget deliberations.
Join our global community of developers, educators, students, and researchers virtually to ignite our imaginations about how games and immersive media can help us realize the potential of the years ahead and address our collective challenges: achieving equity and social justice, ensuring a thriving planet, and regaining a sense of security.
Three days of live-streamed talks, panels, and special announcements from the G4C and XR for Change communities
A series of round table discussions geared toward professional knowledge-sharing
An interactive virtual Expo featuring games, XR experiences, sponsors, and G4C programs.
The XR Immersive Arcade highlighting the newest emerging XR experiences for social impact
The Games for Change Awards Ceremony and G4C Awards Showcase celebrating the 2021 G4C Awards finalists!
Discord permits text, voice, and video communication. I deliberately chose not to use its videoconferencing capability and none of the students used it either. We communicated with each other solely through text messages. I believe this enhanced rather than degraded the experience in comparison to Webex — no black boxes instead of faces, and no interrupted video or audio because of low-bandwidth internet connections. A user interface that facilitates text communication also means Discord is suitable for running a simulation like Gerkhania asynchronously rather synchronously, something that isn’t realistic with video-based platforms.
My use of Discord also meant that students automatically had a complete record of the simulation’s events that they could reference for the final exam. I did not have to take any additional steps, like create and share a recording, for the class to have a history of what had transpired.
In early March, three students in Professor Aaron Danis’ Counterterrorism and the Democracies course at the Institute for World Politics (IWP 669) recreated the initial rise of the now largely-defunct Peruvian insurgent and terrorist group Sendero Luminoso, using a digital version of Brian Train’s wargame Shining Path. An account of their experience can be found here.
The Winter 2021 newletter of the US Naval Postgraduate School’s Naval Warfare Studies Institute Wargaming Center was published last month, with updates on recent wargames and related activities.
The Reacting to the Past consortium is planning a “Summer of Reacting,” with Part 1 to be held in June.
The board and administration of the Reacting Consortium have decided to offer a variety of games over the course of thesummer, allowing faculty around the country (and the world) the opportunity to play multiple games, and to experiencethe Reacting pedagogy online. Our hope is that by providing a broad array of games and methods for using them, facultywill be able to plan more effectively and confidently for the coming academic year, no matter the circumstances.
This summer includes three conference periods: Summer of Reacting – Part I (June) Game Development Conference (early July) Summer of Reacting – Part II (late July – mid August)
The Reacting Consortium is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging. These values inform ourwork to foster an accessible community, our approach to game development, and our determination to contend with “bigideas.” Thanks to our Fundraising Committee and the generosity of our community, we have reserved a few fundedspots in the Summer of Reacting for instructors who are teaching at minority serving institutions (HBCUs, TribalColleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, etc).
You’ll find more on this and their other activities at their website.
Sadly, wargame designer John Tiller passed away on April 26. You’ll find a short obituary at PCGamesN.
Join us FREE via Zoom for the Imaginetic Game Club! Play or observe as we test, discuss, and play through various games with a serious bent. Get ideas from like-minded players and budding designers, all for FREE!
May 19th 7pm (EDT, UTC-4): Undocumented: The Journey to the American Dream Designers: Erick Pelayo Aubert, Victoria Aponte, Elizabeth Varkovetski,Stefanie Game
follows the journey of a migrant from Latin America as they cross through Mexico to the US border. Along their travels, they encounter real-life scenarios such as altercations, police checks, and robbery, all while trying to mitigate the risks of boarding trains and supporting their dependents. While the journey is long, and the path is winding, the American Dream lies just beyond the fence. Will they make it and find success across the border? Or will they get trapped in an ever circulating motion of deportation and secondary attempts? Grab your backpack, it’s time to go.
Join us May 19th 7pm (EDT, UTC-4) for the public reveal of Undocumented. Meet the student-creators as you navigate the hazards as a migrant in this game born in Rex Brynen’s Conflict Simulation course. Will you have what it takes to make your dreams come true?
The year is 1775. The American colonies are outraged over new taxes imposed upon them by Great Britain. They begin to stockpile arms and organize militia. On April 19th, militia members ambush a column of 700 British Redcoats ordered to seize stockpiled arms. 273 British soldiers are killed or wounded before they reach safety in Boston. The American Revolution has begun!
Player slots are limited and assigned on a first-come first served basis, so sign up quickly before player slots are filled.
Imaginetic Game Club is a FREE game showcase where like-minded serious games players, designers, developers, and interested parties can come together, play a game, discuss serious games, and have some fun.
Connections Online 2021 (hereafter CO21) was held 12-14 April, through the mechanisms of Discord and YouTube. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first professional wargame conference designed not as simply a replacement for an in-person conference, but as first and foremost an online event, optimized for that environment. For that reason (and, I admit, because I am proud of what we pulled off), I’d like to tell you what we were trying to accomplish and how we went about doing it.
CO21 was really an experiment to see if a small group of people could put on a professional conference. The origins of this conference went back to May 2020, when it really became clear that we were not going to be doing in-person events any time soon. At that point I envisioned an online, recorded, 3-5 day “single room” (i.e., only one event at a time) conference, modeled after but separate from Connections US. Originally I planned to use a tool like Zoom or Go To Meeting with a direct-to-YouTube livestream, but about the same time I discovered StreamYard, a subscription website designed to do video streaming. Add in Discord to support text communications amongst conference members, including distributing StreamYard links and last second communications to panelists, and I had the technology behind a plan.
With a couple of people (largely Merle Robinson and Stephen Downes-Martin), we scoped out the rest of the format: The core conference would take place from 10am-4pm each day (“London to Los Angeles”), with events starting at 10am, 11am, 1pm, and 3pm. The early morning hour-long sessions would be generally solo talks (e.g., keynotes). The two 2-hour blocks were conceptualized as topical panel discussions of 3-4 presenters (plus a moderator) giving 10-15 minute presentations, followed by moderated discussion and Q&A. The last hour-long session each day would be 2-4 panelists who will comment on and lead a discussion on a set of previously viewed YouTube movies whose URLs have been sent out in advance. (This last format is an experiment, and I was fully prepared to declare after we tried it that “The experiment was a success — we learned to NEVER do that again!”) The conference theme of “distributed wargaming” seemed pretty obvious, as did what I call the 60-40 rule of Connections conferences: the goal is that somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of a Connections conference is about the theme, the rest is other relevant topics. In addition, we could conduct an “extended” events schedule — basically, put out a call for people who wanted to run games or other events outside of our regular hours and who could provide their own IT solutions, which we would had to the schedule.
At that point the day job intervened and, after targeting March or April 2021, the idea was largely put on hold until sometime around December 2020, at which point we re-lit the engines and got to work. As Merle Robinson and I started divvying up the work, Brant Guillory joined us. At this point I was pretty confident: Merle is a fellow Connections US committee veteran used to running large wargame events through the National Security Making Game, and was conducting his own experiments with online events; Brant and the Armchair Dragoons had run multiple game conventions (two online in 2020), and had an excellent handle on the registration side of things; and I knew how to make the technology work and had spent a LOT of time thinking about the operating procedures.
All we had to do at that point was, you know, get moderators and speakers.
In the end, we had three days of core events for 10am to 4pm EDT, plus extended events running two days before and four days after, usually in the evening.
I don’t have time to discus all of the excellent panels our moderators put together, but I do want to go back to the two experimental YouTube panels I mentioned above. The first was on Monday, when Brian Train and Mike Markowitz sat down and discussed their Georgetown University Wargaming Society videos on the practical aspects of wargame design. Brian and Mike are second to none in their field, and the panel basically designed itself.
The Tuesday YouTube panel required a little more work, and exemplifies the hands-off approach I used as conference director. Back in 2020 I had read Simon Parkin’s A Game of Birds and Wolves and Mark William’s Captain Gilbert Roberts R.N.and the Anti-U-Boat School, on the Western Approaches Tactical Unit. While reading the Parkin book I saw a name I recognized — Tom Mouat. So, when it came time to spin up for the conference, I sent Tom a note and asked him if he had the time to put together a panel on WATU; I briefly outlined an idea of a panel consisting of him, Simon Parkin, and maybe a YouTuber who had done something on WATU. I also asked Nick Bradbeer (the only other British wargamer I had met at a Connections conference) if he could back Tom up, since I knew Tom had been deployed and might be too busy.
So, an important thing to keep in mind — at this point I really didn’t know much about WATU, other than it was a wargame success story. That’s okay, because it wasn’t my panel — it was Tom’s panel, and I was specifically asking Tom to use his contacts to take charge and make it shine, as I was trying to organize the conference and didn’t want to be in the business of organizing each panel, too. I told Tom what I told all of the panel moderators — “here’s an overview of what I was thinking, but you are fully authorized to do whatever you want to do to make the panel as good as it could be.” It took about a week or so, but Tom got back to me, telling me that Sally Davis had largely reconstructucted the game rules and had actually run it sometime previously, and that some of the players might be available as well. Truth be told, I had forgotten the event and totally missed that Sally had run it, but it seemed like a no-brainer to me. (PAXsims has a lot more about WATU than I realized. I missed a lot and need to get caught up.) From the conversation during and after the panel, it’s clear Sally has thoroughly researched WATU and the Wrens who worked there, and I hope she publishes on the subject.
Overall, here are my takeaways:
The “StreamYard to YouTube” model worked amazingly well. Training sessions with panelists in advance is a must.
Discord is a little quirky, but will do, and we’ve got a better handle on what it should look like next time. More Discord help resources are needed, and we need to rethink how we organize the Discord server.
The two YouTube panels seemed to work well, but I think I need to be more proactive about getting URLs out in advance before I declare the format to be a success.
The key to making this work is writing everything down in advance. Before I created the first session in StreamYard, I had planned out all of the core events — titles, panelists, descriptions, et cetera, in a Word document, organized from the last event to the first, so that when I created an event I could take the YouTube URL and paste it into the description for the previous event. Information was grouped (and in some cases, duplicated), such that the document became the go-to reference document for cutting and pasting into Discord as well.
Finally, this was essentially a proof of concept, a beta test to demonstrate that a small number of people (three core players for setup, plus a couple of people during the conference, all doing this part time) could organize and execute a professional, online (with video and chat), recorded wargaming conference for a couple of hundred dollars. That beta test was a success.
I look forward to seeing other reviews of the conference — feedback encouraged! — and I am really looking forward to doing it again next year.
Thank you again to our moderators and panelists, and to my colleagues who made it happen.
Update: it’s been brought to my attention that this post has been interpreted as a criticism of Connections Online. That was not my intention. I apologise for upset resulting from my lack of clarity, and would like to draw everyone’s attention to the better-than-average stats for speaker representation at Connections Online, and the wider D&I efforts made by members of the organising team. I meant only to take the subject of WATU as a jumping-off point for a broader conversation about how all of us in wargaming have a part to play in improving representation.
Another Connections event comes around…and the initial vision of the panel I’m asked to speak at is to have a bunch of straight white men explain how women won the war and the importance of diversity.
Really ??
Absolutely enormous props to Tom Mouat for refusing the chair the manel, and replacing the proposed men—all of whom got their ‘expertise’ from regurgitating Paul Strong’s paper and my PAXsims articles—with women who have actual subject matter expertise. [Watch the Connections Online WATU panel here]
Why is it so hard? Why are wargaming leaders still reacting with surprise when someone points out the abject lack of diversity in their plans, and sitting back helplessly waiting for women and minorities and heroic allies like Tom to come and diversity! for them instead of taking personal responsibility?
I love that people are talking about WATU. I love that men are talking about what women and lesbian and refugee and Indian and Muslim and Sikh and Hindu and disabled wargamers achieved with WATU. But guys: you absolutely have to stop congratulating yourselves on how awesome WATU was in place of doing anything to address the diversity problems in wargaming today.
It’s as simple as: straight white men, you have to step back and yield the floor.
If you support diversity and inclusion in wargaming you have to recognise that means you personally—as an over-represented straight white male—have to give up some of your time in the spotlight and make space for women and minorities to take the floor.
It’s not about someone else will take the hit so there’s diversity but I still get to speak 100% of the time I want to, it’s realising that when you personally hold forth on a subject, you personally are silencing a woman or minority wargamer by hogging the space—and you personally have to honestly consider:
Have I said enough already? Can I yield the floor to let someone else speak and not die (psychologically, professionally, literally—since we’re talking about scarcity and threat-focused mindsets.)
Does she/he/they know more about this subject than I do?Don’t be a Mansplainer, don’t presume to know more about a subject because you once held a book about it, don’t assume women and minority wargamers are less-qualified, less-experienced, or only here to do the secretarial work.
Does she/he/they have a different perspective to the same-old-same-old that straight white men have been focusing on since forever? Chances of this are extremely high. Women and minority wargamers experience so much in life that straight white men are oblivious to because it doesn’t happen to straight white men. That’s literally the unknown unknown you need to shut up and listen to, to learn something you didn’t already know.
Is she/he/they perfectly capable of making the exact same point I was going to make, thus scratching my itch that it be aired and making space for other people to contribute? Win win win. Seriously, what is wrong about this? The only reason not to like this scenario is if you’re more interested in who scores the conversational points than the actual furthering of knowledge/understanding/wargaming.
And before you cry “This is silencing men! The outrage!”
Of course that’s not what I’m advocating.
An idealistic rule of thumb: you have two ears, one mouth. If you’re a straight white man you could try yeilding the floor to women and minority wargamers 50% of the time you would otherwise speak. Yeilding just means giving other people who don’t normally get to speak the opportunity to go first—you may find they say everything and more you wanted to hear, you may learn something new.
Bare in mind, cognitive bias is such that when women make up 30% of a group they are perceived to be in the majority, and when they speak 17% of the time they are preceived by men to be dominating the conversation—so I think it’s incredibly safe to say just stopping to think and maybe letting a woman or minority wargamer go first is not going to cause the breakdown of society. You’d have to try excessively over-the-top hard to actually make space for women and minority wargamers to dominate a conversation—ignoring the fact that women are way more conscious of taking up more than fair space in a conversation than men are, and will yield the floor out of politeness before it’s genuinely silencing men.
That feeling you have? Of tensing up slightly at the thought of being silenced, the scarcity and threat-mindset, the need to be heard? The unfairness of it? …women and minority wargamers feel that all the time when straight white men interupt us, talk over us, don’t invite us to be speakers at conferences, have all-male panels discussing obviously women/minority interest subjects, or complain that wargaming should not be about gender or sexual orientation or skin colour or disability. Newsflash for you straight white men: it already is about those things, you just don’t notice it because you’re in the favoured group and don’t experience the being sidelined, ignored, discounted, and told to shut up and act like straight white men or go somewhere else if you don’t like it. Have you ever had to deal with work e-mails responding to your research/paper/presentation that is not engaging with content at all but an attack on your personhood, intelligence, legitimacy, and right to exist in wargaming? Because I have, and other women and minority wargamers get that while straight white men get to Advance Straight To Go and only discuss the merits of their work.
Before you cry “This is woke nonsense, unfairly priviliging minorities!”
Just stop. Stop and think about the ugly ugly thought behind the knee-jerk reaction to efforts to increase women’s and minority representation: that they’re taking our opportunities and giving them to under-qualified, inexperienced people instead. Presuming that women and minority wargamers couldn’t possibly be equally—if not more—qualified and experienced than straight white men.
I have a First in rocket science. Yuna Wong has five degrees. Look at WATU: everybody loves to say WATU was Roberts’ brainchild, his genius—he never rose above Captain, WATU was the highlight of his career. Syed Ahsan, Number One at the Bombay Tactical Table, went on to head the Pakistan Navy and hold senior government positions. It’s the same dynamic as the Tuskegee Airmen: barriers to entry for minority folks select for exceptional participants. Until gender parity and proportionate representation of minority wargamers is universal, across the board, at every wargaming conference and event, and discriminatory behaviour is a thing of the past, there is literally no danger of diversity efforts privilidging underqualified minority wargamers at the expence of mediocre straight white men.
I’m down with this, what can I do?
Use inclusive language: it signals to women and minorities that the space is welcoming. Historically these spaces were not, and the omission of women and minorities are welcome in the invite was deliberate, so it’s not enough to have changed your mindset without changing the language you use too. @ManWhoHasItAll would not be such delicious satire if we didn’t all buy into gendered presumptions about so many things.
If you don’t say “anyone who identifies as a woman” then trans women will not know if you mean they are just as welcome. If you don’t even make the barest minimum effort of “Please get in touch if you have accessibility needs so we can make this work for everyone” then you’re sending a message to disabled wargamers that we’re not even interested in trying when, in fact, you have a legal (and moral) obligation to make reasonable adjustments.
Allow women and minorities the space to step up—hold back the stampeed of men, because men will apply and volunteer and show up even when you explicitly say this is an opportunity for women. Don’t allow men to fill up all the spaces before women and minorities have had the chance to beleive you really mean they’re welcome. It’s not enough to say you accepted submissions regardless of gender etc, you actually have to make an effort to ensure diversity.
Invite women and minority folks directly—don’t assume a general announcement or group e-mail will actually come across as, “Yes, you! Reading this now, I want you!” Approach them directly, personally. If you don’t know who to ask, ask other people to recommend women and minority wargamers you could ask. Six degrees of separation, people.
If you—straight white man—are invited as a speaker or audience member, ask the organisers: how many women and minority speakers do you have? Are they here as experts in their own right, or are you just using them to facilitate men? Refuse to participate in manels. Refuse to participate in all-white panels. Point them at women and minority wargamers you want to hear from instead. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Look at your panel, and your event as a whole: who are your speakers? Are they all men, are they all white, are they all straight/cishet, are they all non-disabled? …do they all look like you, in other words.
Doesn’t seem like a thing to you, because all you see are people like you, and unconsciously that gives your brain a rush of I belong here vibes. For women and minority wargamers it’s sending a message of exclusion. If you’ve ever been the only white person in a room, or the only man in the room, or the only non-disabled person in the room, or the only straight person in the room, you’ll understand it’s not about hostile behaviour or the intention to exclude, but that it feels uncomfortable to you because you stick out like a sore thumb.
You need diversity in your organising committee to get buy-in from diverse speakers and a diverse audience.
It is an absolute delight to join Women’s Wargaming Network gatherings and see 50/50 white and non-white attendees—in large part because Yuna Wong’s visible presence as founder of the network signals to black and asian wargamers this is a place you are welcome and wanted and will be respected. That’s at least half-a-dozen not-white US wargamers you could look to instead of piling all your diversity hopes and dreams into “Yuna! Come fix us, diversity for us!” That’s a whole cohort of smart, capable, diverse wargamers you could actively raise up instead of ignoring in favour of the same old guys.
Straight white men: diversity does not happen by magic. It does not happen by good intentions alone. It happens by conscious and constant effort by you personally. You have so much power to set the tone and influence others by your behaviour—you are already doing it. The question is who do you want to include?
Read more about the Derby House Principles for diveristy and inclusion in professional wargaming here.
PAXsims 