“GOOD GAMES” Challenges for the War-Gaming Community

In 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization issued a technical report laying out a “Code of Best Practice” for command and control assessment. Although specifically aimed at command and control, this document offers a framework for thinking about the changing nature of war gaming. In the opinion of numerous practitioners and observers, war gaming has reached a turning point: the changing basis of international security at the dawn of the twenty-first century makes gaming an especially valuable tool, but a fundamental reformation of gaming is required for it to achieve its potential. The Code of Best Practice, as a unifying and overarching framework, allows us to take stock of the present state of war gaming, to highlight the primary challenges that the war-gaming community faces, and to propose steps to improve every aspect of war gaming. It makes four central points. First, as shown in figure 1, the framework of a good war game should be broadly based on the principles of sound operational analysis. Thus the cornerstone of any game must be a clear and unambiguous formulation of the problem to be addressed—the reason the game is to be played. A game’s sponsors need to articulate very clearly the real issues of interest so that designers may develop (for the sponsors’ approval) a conceptual framework within which these issues can be suitably analyzed. Second, as the Nato document instructs, the game’s designers should identify and address organizational and cultural issues that emerge from the conceptual framework. What assumptions are to be accepted, for example, about the values, behavior, and decision processes of the various players? Dr. Starr is Director of Plans at the MITRE Corporation in McLean, Virginia. An earlier version of this paper was prepared for delivery at a war-gaming conference at the Naval War College in March 2000.