Simulation & Gaming (October 2012)

A new issue of Simulation & Gaming 43, 5 (October 2012) is now available online:

Articles

Unreliable Information in Infantry Situation Awareness: Improvement Through Game-Based Training

• Eric T. Chancey and James P. Bliss

Gaming Research in Policy and Organization: An Assessment From the Netherlands

• Leon de Caluwé, Jac Geurts, and Wouter Jan Kleinlugtenbelt

Goals, Success Factors, and Barriers for Simulation-Based Learning: A Qualitative Interview Study in Health Care

• Peter Dieckmann, Susanne Molin Friis, Anne Lippert, and Doris Østergaard

The Coaching Cycle: A Coaching-by-Gaming Approach in Serious Games

• Anna-Sofia Alklind Taylor, Per Backlund, and Lars Niklasson

Ready-to-use simulations

BUILDING TIES IN A STRATIFIED SOCIETY: A Social Networking Simulation Game

• An Ansoms and Sara Geenen

RABBIT-VENTURE

• Cecile N. Gerwel and Shamim Bodhanya

 

CFP: Engagement, Simulation/Gaming and Learning

Nicola Whitton  (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Alex Moseley  (University of Leicester) will be editing a special issue of Simulation & Gaming devoted to “Engagement, Simulation/Gaming and Learning.” The deadline for article proposals is 31 October 2012 (details below, click to enlarge).

Forthcoming Simulation & Gaming articles on peacebuilding

Several more articles from the forthcoming special issue of Simulation & Gaming on peacebuilding have now been made available in advance by SAGE, including our own short introduction to the collection:

Rex Brynen and Gary Milante, “Peacebuilding With Games and Simulations.”

Simulations and games can offer valuable insight into the management of conflict and the achievement of peace. This special symposium issue of Simulation & Gaming examines several such approaches, used in both educational settings and to prepare practitioners to deal with the concrete challenges of peacebuilding. In the introduction, the authors offer some brief thoughts on the how and why of simulations and games-based approaches, scenario choices (abstract, fictional, and real world), intended audiences, and design approaches. They also address the question of how games might (or might not) contribute to policy making in this field.

Tucker B. Harding and Mark A. Whitlock, “Leveraging Web-Based Environments for Mass Atrocity Prevention.”

A growing literature exploring large-scale, identity-based political violence, including mass killing and genocide, debates the plausibility of, and prospects for, early warning and prevention. An extension of the debate involves the prospects for creating educational experiences that result in more sophisticated analytical products that enhance preventive policy action. This article details an attempt to bridge the theory to practice gap. It describes the role of a simulation COUNTRY X within the educational contexts of both a graduate course in prevention of mass killing and genocide at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and a practitioner training workshop designed for regional conflict early warning analysts in Africa. The authors review educational theory describing problem-based learning and apply it to a web-based educational simulation. Using a recent training of professional conflict early warning analysts as their case study, they explore several assumptions regarding the utility of simulated environments as educational tools in moving from theory to practice. Use of the simulation resulted in active and engaged participation by learners, increased capacity for well-reasoned perspective taking, and improved analytical confidence in complex scenarios.

Richard B. Powers and Kat Kirkpatrick, “Playing With Conflict: Teaching Conflict Resolution Through Simulations and Games.”

Playing With Conflict is a weekend course for graduate students in Portland State University’s Conflict Resolution program and undergraduates in all majors. Students participate in simulations, games, and experiential exercises to learn and practice conflict resolution skills. Graduate students create a guided role-play of a conflict. In addition to an oral debriefing, students wrote a debriefing report following the Description, Interpretation, Evaluation (DIE) model of debriefing. The written debriefing report gave all students an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and evaluate their experience in depth. The use of two facilitators allows one to facilitate while the other observes and rests, makes 2 points of view available for the debriefing, and offers a model for resolving minor disagreements between them. Trust among students increased across the weekend as evidenced by an increase in cooperative choices and estimates of the likelihood that others would cooperate in the TAKE-A-CHANCE game, a version of PRISONER’S DILEMMA. Most reported having fun while they learned about themselves, interpersonal conflict, and some large-scale social conflicts.

Julian Schofield, “Modeling Choices in Nuclear Warfighting: Two Classroom Simulations on Escalation and Retaliation.”

Two classroom simulations—SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION and MULTIPOLAR ASIAN SIMULATION—are used to teach and test various aspects of the Borden versus Brodie debate on the Schelling versus Lanchester approach to nuclear conflict modeling and resolution. The author applies a Schelling test to segregate high from low empathic students, and assigns them to hard case positions in three simulations to test whether high empathy students can engage in tactic bargaining and whether low empathetic students are necessarily as escalation prone. He has a bipolar nuclear simulation that is an easy case for the Brodie set of assumptions about nuclear war, avoidance, and Schelling-esque tacit bargaining. He expects the system structure and high empathy leader selection to contain escalation, despite the temptation of relying on accelerated Single Integrated Operational Plan solutions and the counterincentive of diminished tacit bargaining through decapitation attacks. The second simulation is a multipolar nuclear simulation set in the near future of Asia, and emulates the Borden-esque logic of nuclear war as artillery exchanges, with a Lanchester square law logic encouraging rapid escalation, coupled with a selection for the most autistic leadership. The author expects rapid nuclear escalation under these structural and decision-making conditions. His conclusions are anecdotal, but seem to indicate, from student feedback during class discussions, that the failure to model fear may be a factor in undermining successful tacit bargaining by players, suggesting that Borden rather than Brodie better conceptualized nuclear conflict. Therefore, peace is about restraining war initiation, as there are great pressures for escalation once war is initiated.

These and other forthcoming articles can be found here.

Bartels, McCown, and Wilkie on Designing Peace and Conflict Exercises

While the special issue of Simulation & Gaming on simulations and peacebuilding (coedited by Gary and myself) has not yet been published, some of the articles have started to appear via SAGE Journal’s “Online First” ahead-of-print service. The first to so so is by Elizabeth Bartels, Margaret McCown, and Timothy Wilkie on “Designing Peace and Conflict Exercises: Level of Analysis, Scenario, and Role Specification.”

Attentiveness to and transparency about the methodological implications of the level of analysis selected for peace and conflict exercises constitute essential elements of good game design. The article explores the impact of level of analysis choices in the context of two key portions of exercises, scenario construction and role specification. It weighs the consequences of these choices in terms of the differing conclusions one can draw from exercises and potential pitfalls of careless choices. Finally, it argues that level of analysis considerations in game design parallels specific debates within segments of the social science literature, connections that are also explored in this article for their relevance to game design.

You’ll need a personal or institutional subscription to access the full article. Other items from the special issue will be appearing in the coming weeks and months.

Simulation & Gaming (August 2012)

The August 2012  issue of Simulation & Gaming (43, 4) is now available online.

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Articles

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Simulating REAL LIVES: Promoting Global Empathy and Interest in Learning Through Simulation Games

• Christine M. Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, and Chad Raphael

Comparing Objective Measures and Perceptions of Cognitive Learning in an ERP Simulation Game: A Research Note

• Timothy Paul Cronan, Pierre-Majorique Léger, Jacques Robert, Gilbert Babin, and Patrick Charland

The Validity and Effectiveness of a Business Game Beta Test

• Steven C. Gold and Joseph Wolfe

Ritualistic Games, Boundary Control, and Information Uncertainty

• J. Tuomas Harviainen

Similarity of Social Information Processes in Games and Rituals: Magical Interfaces

• J. Tuomas Harviainen and Andreas Lieberoth

Toward a Model for Intercultural Communication in Simulations

• Bradley E. Wiggins

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Association News & Notes

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Association News & Notes

• Songsri Soranastaporn

simulations miscellany: the 100,000 visitors edition!

We’re pleased to report that PAXsims reached its 100,000th visitor today. Of course, that’s not a huge number in the world of the interwebs—indeed, a blog by a nine year-old Scottish girl about her school lunches has over 6.8 million hits now—but we’re quite pleased with it nonetheless. We would like to think all of our contributors, commentators, and regular readers who have made it such a pleasure to work on this project. Onwards to the next 100,000!

We’re also pleased to report that a special issue of Simulation & Gaming devoted to “simulations and games to build peace” is now working its way through the production process at SAGE. In addition to an introductory article by us, it will feature contributions by  Elizabeth Bartels, Margaret McCown, and Timothy Wilkie on level of analysis, scenario and role specification in peace and conflict exercises; Richard Powers and Kat Kirkpatrick on teaching conflict resolution through simulations and games; Julian Schofield on classroom modelling of nuclear war fighting; Tucker B. Harding and Mark A. Whitlock on  leveraging web-based environments for mass atrocity prevention; Roger Mason and Eric Patterson on wargaming peace operations; Sean F. McMahon and Chris Miller  on simulating the Camp David negotiations; and Peter Landwehr, Marc Spraragen, Balki Ranganathan, Kathleen M. Carley, and Michael Zyda on integrating games, social simulations, and data in the “Sudan Game.”

Finally, in other recent simulation news:

• The second annual Serious Play conference will take place 21-23 August 2012 at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington.
• In his “Best Defense” column at Foreign Policy magazine, Tom Ricks has been discussing possible cuts and constraints at the National Defense University. Among the alarming news (in this case, reported by an anonymous NDU staff member) is this: “The research, gaming, and publications arms of the university — a major part of the big-think, future concepts and policy business here — will be cut to somewhere between half and a third of their original sizes.” This would indeed be both short-sighted and a tragedy—the Center for Applied Strategic Learning is a true centre of excellence in the policy gaming field, and has been immensely important in building a broader gaming community that reaches outside the military to include interagency folks, academics, commercial game designers, and others.
• Over at Defense News/Training & Simulation Journal, Michael Peck reports that military budget cuts will increasingly force the US Army  to rely more heavily on simpler, lower-end simulation exercises.
• The video game company Valve has hired an economist to study in-game virtual economies. He has a blog too.
• A reminder, once again, that the Connections 2012 interdisciplinary wargaming conference will be held on August 23-26 at NDU in Washington DC. If you haven’t done so, register soon.

Simulation & Gaming (June 2012)

The latest issue of Simulation & Gaming 43, 3 (June 2012) is now available online (although to read beyond the abstracts in most cases you will need a subscription). The issue focuses on “research methodology in gaming.”

Guest Editorial

Research Methodology in Gaming: An Overview

• Frans Mäyrä, Jussi Holopainen, and Mikael Jakobsson

Symposium Articles

Social Constructionism and Ludology: Implications for the Study of Games

• Markus Montola

Social Interaction in Games: Measuring Physiological Linkage and Social Presence

• Inger Ekman, Guillaume Chanel, Simo Järvelä, J.Matias Kivikangas, Mikko Salminen, and Niklas Ravaja

Studying the Elusive Experience in Pervasive Games

• Jaakko Stenros, Annika Waern, and Markus Montola

Natural Language Processing in Game Studies Research: An Overview

• José P. Zagal, Noriko Tomuro, and Andriy Shepitsen

Players as Coresearchers: Expert Player Perspective as an Aid to Understanding Games

• Kristine Jørgensen

Design for Research Results: Experimental Prototyping and Play Testing

• Mirjam P. Eladhari and Elina M. I. Ollila

Rethinking Playing Research: DJ HERO and Methodological Observations in the Mix

• Tero Karppi and Olli Sotamaa

Simulation & Gaming (April 2012)

The latest issue of Simulation & Gaming 43, 2 (April 2012) has just been published:

Articles

• Formalizing Game-play
  • Tomas By
• Innovation Diffusion: Assessment of Strategies Within the DIFFUSION SIMULATION GAME
  • Jacob Enfield, Rodney D. Myers, Miguel Lara, and Theodore W. Frick
• Employee Impressions of a Manager: Computerized Simulation Predictions
  • Clare A. Francis
• Life Span as the Measure of Performance and Learning in a Business Gaming Simulation
  • Precha Thavikulwat 

Autobiographies

• How Simulation/Gaming Transformed My Life
  • Henry Ellington
• Simulare Necesse Est
  • Paul Meerts

Book review

• Book review: Stretching Video Games
  • Pierre Corbeil

Simulations & Gaming (February 2012)

Simulations & Gaming 43, 1 (February 2012) is now available online:

• The founding of modern simulation/gaming: S&G and ISAGA four decades on
  • David Crookall
    
• ISAGA at 40: Looking Back, Looking Forward— With a Little Help from S&G
  • Jonnie Hill and Ma. Mercedes Rodrigo
• A Description Grid to Support the Design of Learning Role-Play Games
  • Christelle Mariais, Florence Michau, and Jean-Philippe Pernin
    
• Repurposing an Old Game for an International World
  • Gert Jan Hofstede and Elizabeth J. Tipton Murff
    
• Teacher Perceptions of Games in Singapore Schools
  • Elizabeth Koh, Yeo Gee Kin, Bimlesh Wadhwa, and John Lim
    
• Learning About the Unit Cell and Crystal Lattice With Computerized Simulations and Games: A Pilot Study
  • Sutha Luealamai and Bhinyo Panijpan
    
• Gaming Rail Cargo Management: Exploring and Validating Alternative Modes of Organization
  • Sebastiaan A. Meijer, Igor S. Mayer, Jelle van Luipen, and Natasha Weitenberg
    
• Simulating the Dynamics of Subsistence Fishing Communities: REEFGAME as a Learning and Data-Gathering Computer-Assisted Role-Play Game
  • Deborah Cleland, Anne Dray, Pascal Perez, Annabelle Cruz-Trinidad, and Rollan
    
• Gaming the Game: A Study of the Gamer Mode in Educational Wargaming
  • Anders Frank
    
• Leadership in Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments
  • Timothy C. Lisk, Ugur T. Kaplancali, and Ronald E. Riggio

Simulation & Gaming: December 2011

The latest issue of Simulation & Gaming 42, 6 (December 2011) focuses on the theme of simulation in international studies, and has a great deal in it that will likely be of interest to PAXsims readers. Unfortunately you’ll need an individual or institutional subscription if you want to read beyond the abstracts.

Guest Editorial

Simulation in International Studies
Mark A. Boyer

Symposium Articles

NGOs—Cooperation and Competition: An Experimental Gaming Approach
Dirk-Jan Koch

Evolving Beyond Self-Interest? Some Experimental Findings From Simulated International Negotiations
Anat Niv-Solomon, Laura L. Janik, Mark A. Boyer, Natalie Florea Hudson, Brian Urlacher, Scott W. Brown, and Donalyn Maneggia

Multiple Identification Theory: Attitude and Behavior Change in a Simulated International Conflict
Alexander J. Williams and Robert H. Williams

Civil Engineering: Does a Realist World Influence the Onset of Civil Wars?
Richard J. Stoll

Weighted Voting in the United Nations Security Council: A Simulation
Jonathan R. Strand and David P. Rapkin

Estimating Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Simulation
William J. Lahneman and Hugo A. Keesing

Association News & Notes

Association News & Notes
Songsri Soranastaporn

Simulation & Gaming (October 2011)

A new issue of Simulation & Gaming (October 2011) is now available online, devoted to the theme of Design for Engaging Experience and Social Interaction.

Tribute

R. Garry Shirts: Simulation Gaming Exemplar
Richard L. Dukes, Sandra M. Fowler, and Bernie DeKoven

Articles

MONOPOLY and Critical Theory: Gaming in a Class on the Sociology of Deviance
Maria Paino and Jeffrey Chin

Guest Editorial

Design for Engaging Experience and Social Interaction
Casper Harteveld, Eleonore ten Thij, and Marinka Copier

Symposium Articles

Game Engagement Theory and Adult Learning
Nicola Whitton

Beyond Iconic Simulation
Joris Dormans

Electroencephalographic Assessment of Player Experience: A Pilot Study in Affective Ludology
Lennart E. Nacke, Sophie Stellmach, and Craig A. Lindley

User Experience in Digital Games: Differences Between Laboratory and Home
Jari Takatalo, Jukka Häkkinen, Jyrki Kaistinen, and Göte Nyman

Association News & Notes

Association News & Notes
Songsri Soranastaporn

Simulation & Gaming (August 2011)

The latest issue of Simulation& Gaming 42, 4 (August 2011) is now available online. The issue focuses history, teaching history, and simulation/gaming, and  has much that will be of interest to PAXsims readers:

• History and Simulation/Gaming: Living With Two Solitudes
• Pierre Corbeil
• Computerized History Games: Narrative Options
• Kevin Kee
• Simulating History to Understand International Politics
• Kimberly Weir and Michael Baranowski
• Validity of a Simulation Game as a Method for History Teaching
• Pierre Corbeil and Dany Laveault
• Introducing History Into STARPOWER
• Pierre Corbeil
• Modding the History of Science: Values at Play in Modder Discussions of Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION
• Trevor Owens
• SENATE BARON: A Simulation of Politics in the U.S. Senate, 1933-1942
• John E. Moser
• Simulation/Game Review: COMMAND DECISION GAMES. In Armchair General magazine (six games/issues per year).
• Pierre Corbeil
• Association News & Notes

Simulation & Gaming (June 2011)

 

A new issue of Simulation & Gaming 42, 3 (June 2011) is now online. Much of it is devoted to the memory of the late Harold Guetzkow, who passed away in 2008.

• Biography and Discipline: Key Players in Simulation/Gaming
• Toshiko Kikkawa and David Crookall
• Remembering Harold Guetzkow
• Daniel Druckman
•  Harold Guetzkow: A Scholar’s Scholar
• Chadwick F. Alger
• A Scholar and a Simulation Ahead of Their Time: Memories of Harold Guetzkow
• Kenneth Janda
• My Mentored Relationship With Harold Guetzkow
• Richard W. Chadwick
• The Influence of Harold Guetzkow: Scholarship and Values
• Daniel Druckman
• Simulations as Rhetorical and Discursive Exercises: Memories of Guetzkow
• Cleo H. Cherryholmes
• A Mentor’s Mentor: Remembering Harold Guetzkow
• Harry Targ
• Harold Guetzkow’s Legacy
• James N. Druckman
• Working With Harold Guetzkow: Reflections From a Last Link in the Chain
• Kent J. Kille
• Origin and Evolution of Policy Simulation: A Personal Journey
• Richard D. Duke
• The Gamer Who Became Me
• John Lobuts, Jr.
• A First Life With Computerized Business Simulations
• Precha Thavikulwat
• In Search of Effective Methodology for Organizational Learning: A Japanese Experience
• Shigehisa Tsuchiya
• Just Running Around: Some Reminiscences of Early Simulation/Gaming in the United Kingdom
• Morry van Ments