Why immersion — and not realism — is critical for wargaming

Despite centuries of experience designing and playing war games, there is still very little rigorous research on how to evaluate what makes a good game. What’s the design goal? How much should (or even can) a game reflect reality? Are tighter or looser rules more likely to lead to productive learning? Is having fun important? That lack of rigorous analysis has historically stymied the wargaming profession, but a new generation of researchers want to push the field forward.

Today, with both Danny Crichton and Laurence Pevsner on vacation, we bring back our independent Riskgaming designer Ian Curtiss to host David Banks. David is senior lecturer in wargaming at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where his research focuses on the empirical evaluation of war games and how the craft can evolve in the years ahead. He is also the academic director of the King’s Wargaming Network.

Ian and David discuss the antecedents of wargaming, firming up the foundations of the field, why realism isn’t as useful a metric as engagement, why balancing play and realism is so challenging, how to consider internal validity in games and why its important not just to evaluate a game as a whole, but also its constituent parts.

Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko