Dr. Ellie Bartels, the co-director of RAND’s Center for Gaming, joins Andrew for a conversation on war game design. Ellie and Andrew break down their approaches to building and running games. What are the basic elements of a wargame? What kinds of choices do game architects have to make? And what are the implications of these choices?

Key Points

When first building a wargame designers should hone in on the type of wargame that they need: whether it should be pedagogical, experiential, or analytical, what key themes or questions should it explore, and what is sought from the players in the game.
Different styles of wargames yield different types of insights, so wargame design is derived from intended outcomes. If a game is meant to explore a problem set then it can be designed to be less structured, often leaning towards a seminar style game. Games that are meant to test hypotheses will be more structured and analytically rigorous.
Wargames come in many different forms. They can be board game based, take place one line, or exist mainly on a powerpoint. The medium of gameplay is less important than the overall structure and world-building of the game itself.
As wargaming undergoes a renaissance, Ellie walks us through three areas of promise: (1) discussions on fundamental research design and what good versus bad wargame design looks like; (2) examinations of, and evolutions in, how to better measure human decision making; and (3) the arrival of new technological tools, like generative AI, that can enables wargame designers to scale wargame design, potentially making it better, cheaper, and and faster.

Ellie’s Recommendations for Engaging with Wargames

The Connections Wargaming Conference
Ellie Bartel’s “Building Better Games for Policy Analysis,” RAND (2020)
Robert Burks, Jeff Appleget, and Fred Cameron’s The Craft of Wargaming: A Detailed Planning Guide for Defense Planners and Analysts

A reading list to accompany this podcast series can be found at: https://brsl.berkeley.edu/podcasts/