“In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards” - Carl von Clausewitz (1827)

Wargames are a method of understanding and exploring warfare without actual combat. They have been adopted by the military as a means of exploring strategy and tactics and their effects for centuries. Chess is an example of a game that could be considered a wargame. The first war games to take advantage of the computer were Space War (1962) created by Steve (Slug) Russell in the MIT computing labs, and ATLAS an American military war game created at the same time. Commercially the wargame influenced the popular game dungeons and dragons. The game Dungeons and Dragons replaced real settings and weapons of war with fantasy elements such as swords and sorcerers. The computer game version of dungeons and dragons first appeared in 1987 and is an important advance in the technology used to represent the wargame digitally because of its ability to accurately represent the vast rulebook of the paper version of the game.

The wargame does not necessarily have to be a complex piece of software. To play the paper version of a wargame the requirements are simply a board that represents a map, or the terrain that the game is to be played over; counters that represent the military units and dice. Along with a set of rules each person adopts a side and the game can begin. This can be represented on a computer using simple bitmaps and a method of storing the positions of the bitmap counters at any one point in the game so that should it be necessary a game can be closed down and players can come back to it. Communication using email adds the ability to play the game over a distributed area.

The importance of a wargame in an academic context is not how well the game plays but how well it can be used to teach both simple, and complicated theories of conflict, to allow one to gain a sense of dilemmas involved in warfare. A simple game can be as effective as a more complex one.

Other wargames that exist include flight simulators that can be used to help give students tactical experience of air fighting. While students may not be training to be pilots the flight simulator can be used to help provide an understanding of the pilots thinking. The student could have access to memoirs, battle footage, films and documentaries, but this visual representation is limited due to it not being from the pilots’ point of view in the cockpit and providing the ability to look at the multiple views available. Even footage from war can be limited due to bias of the cameraman, or just the ability to take in multiple views.

The computer game can provide part of a solution to allowing students to gain a pilots perspective. Taking a computer game of the shelf that allows the open source modification of its programming allows the tailoring of the software to our particular needs. The game can be changed to model accurate hardware conflicts between enemy aircraft, it can be changed to model accurate handling and it can be modified to model accurate behaviour from the computer controlled enemy craft. The computer game is still limited in many ways, for example no physical feedback is given to the user about handling, and monitor resolution is limited so the full depth of vision cannot be accurately represented, also the physics of plane targeting cannot be completely modelled.

Although the computer game is limited, technology in simulations used to train pilots is improving. A number of technologies and approaches are employed in the field of Flight Simulators for example, the use of a real cockpit and flight controls; haptic feedback is used to recreate the feeling of flying a real aircraft, computer generated sky, runway, and background is presented to the user on the view screens, and augmented reality is employed to provide additional controls in the same way that would be used in real aircraft such as the Eurofighter on the cockpit window. This technology will be explored in more detail when we come to look at virtual reality. The importance of this technology in conflict simulation beyond university is that we can teach pilots in as real an environment as possible, without endangering their lives, the fundamental skills involved in warfare. This however points out a major failing in such representations of warfare.

In the board wargames and the flight simulators there is no simulation for loss of life. It is an advantage that the learner can be taken away from the reality of war to learn the technical details and tactics of flying, or battle strategy, but human behaviour is a major factor in war. How does one react to loss, how does one react in a dangerous and hectic environment. How would one make a decision about another life in the spare of the moment? These are all important questions and factors that cannot be modelled in simulations. A person’s behaviour on a simulation can only be modelled to a certain extent.

Academically the focus of the wargame is to teach students an understanding of war and the dilemmas involved. Conflict Simulation academically goes beyond playing wargames, but also asks students to model an actual conflict. The modelling and simulation of conflicts allows questions to be asked, and answered that might not be so simple to do writing an essay about the subject:

“This requires students to go back to historical battles and research the history, geography and orders of battle in the engagement concerned, studying existing simulations of the same or related engagements, and choosing simulation mechanisms which come together to create a realistic but playable representation of the actual events. Students must develop a deep analytical understanding of the dynamics underlying the real battle or campaign. They must address issues such as logistics, force-to-space ratios and intelligence, and must make judgements as to how close-run the actual battle was, how different tactical or strategic choices might have affected the actual outcome, and what pressures led the actual commanders to make the decisions that they did”¹. The concept of studying conflict in such a way is to understand history by gaining a proper grasp of the alternative involved.

Scharver et al. (2004) describes how gaming and simulation techniques such as those described above could be bought together in real life to provide a mechanism for improving surgical methods. Using a mixture of the simulative environment and haptic feedback, techniques that previously made use of CAD (computer aided design) and CAM (computer aided modelling) can be replaced using virtual representations.

The modelling of cranial implants requires great accuracy, labour, material and money. Using CAD and CAM reduced costs previously, but the improvement of VR and haptic techniques allows a representation of the patients unique implant design to be projected onto the modelling material and using special control devices the sculptor can model the material around the virtual template. This allows a greater level of accuracy to be bought into the modelling process.

Currently the technique to mould cranial implants is still in development due to the difficulty of merging the 3D representation and actual objects. Also the virtual reality controls are not conducive to traditional sculpting techniques. In the future however such combination of techniques could become more common. An example more analogous to the simulation and gaming techniques used to teach conflict simulation is also in the medial field:

Delingette and Ayache (2005), provide an example of medical simulation where highly realistic simulation techniques are used to help surgeons train in innovative procedures to help reduce their learning curve before attempting such methods on real patients. The procedures discussed are performed using special instruments inserted through small incisions along with a camera that transmits the image within the abdomen to a high-resolution monitor. Special skills and keen hand-eye coordination are required by the surgeon before attempting such a procedure, but because of the nature of the set up it can be represented in a computer simulation to allow the surgeon to practice the appropriate skills before performing the procedure on a patient.

The use of simulation and gaming in education has attracted the attention of others. Robertson and Good (2005) describe the use of gaming to help improve the literacy of adolescents between the ages 12-15 and show that learning can occur in a game-play environment. The result of their study showed that allowing young people to create computer games they will ultimately want to play not only offers key educational benefits but also builds self-esteem and teamwork skills.

The project was created to help literacy development through a non-textual medium. Robertson and Good ran a game maker workshop that promised to teach the participants the necessary skills to design and build their own computer game using a ready existing game editor for the game Neverwinter Nights. The study showed that through creating computer games children can develop basic storytelling skills such as creating coherent plots, motivated characters and convincing dialogue. On top of this they could learn skills specific to computer games such as creating emotional context through sounds, music and lighting techniques.

Although it was the first study of its kind Robertson and Good found it to be a success finding in the students an overall motivational effect of completing the task this way, students being engrossed in creating their interactive storylines and characters, and a bolstering of self-esteem and enthusiasm. A student that found they didn’t like writing stories at school showed noticeable signs of enthusiasm and was encouraged to continue designing games and possibly take it further in education terms.

Simulation and Gaming techniques beyond those of wargames can be of great academic importance and if used correctly can be used to teach a large range of topics and ideas in an interactive and interesting fashion. Also should the line between the virtual and the real in environments such as the new Eurofighter plane or even surgical environments continue to be blurred, the skills discovered in the safety of simulations could be found as transferable to the real world, which would be advantageous to the learner, and everyone else involved.

References

Delingette, H. Ayache, N. Hepatic Surgery Simulation. Communications of the ACM, 48(2), February 2004, pp31-36

http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/6-3-gene.htm - accessed June 12th 2005

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/wsg/consim.html - accessed June 12th 2005

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/clausewitz/works/on-war/ - accessed June 12th 2005

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538865p1.html?fromint=1 - accessed June 12th 2005

Robertson, J. Good, J. Story Creation in Virtual Game Worlds. Communications of the ACM, 48(1), January 2005, pp61-65

Rosenbloom, A. Interactive Immersion in 3D Computer Graphics. Communications of the ACM, 47(8), August 2004, pp28-31

Scharver, C. Evenhouse, R. Johnson, A. Leigh, J. Designing Cranial Implants in a Haptic Augmented Reality Environment. Communications of the ACM, 47(8), September 2004, pp32-38

1. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/wsg/consim.html ↩