Scribd
Upload
30 views3 pages

Agile Gaming

Agile wargames take small, focused bites of a large problem rather than attempting to simulate the entire problem at once. They sacrifice some fidelity for playability, allowing games to be completed in a few hours with only a few key decisions instead of requiring large amounts of time, space, and players. This makes them well-suited to the busy schedules of military leaders and concept developers who need insights quickly.

Uploaded by

dageda6902 uk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
30 views3 pages

Agile Gaming

Agile wargames take small, focused bites of a large problem rather than attempting to simulate the entire problem at once. They sacrifice some fidelity for playability, allowing games to be completed in a few hours with only a few key decisions instead of requiring large amounts of time, space, and players. This makes them well-suited to the busy schedules of military leaders and concept developers who need insights quickly.

Uploaded by

dageda6902 uk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Assessing Agile Gaming: War is Hard, Wargames Don’t Have to Be

July 12, 2021


Philip S. Bolger-Cortez is a Wargame Director with the LeMay Center for Doctrine
Development and Education at the Air University whose previous job was in Agile
Gaming at Headquarters Air Force (HAF) A5. Alexandria Brill is an Agile Gamer with
HAF A5. Divergent Opinions’ content does not contain information of an official
nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any
organization, or any group.

Title: Assessing Agile Gaming: War is Hard, Wargames Don’t Have to Be

Author and / or Article Point of View: The authors are professional wargamers and
Agile Gaming practitioners.

Summary: With Department of Defense leaders so busy, they can rarely participate
in large-scale wargames. Agile Wargames approach a large problem by taking small
bites rather than swallowing the whole elephant. While a large-scale and highly
detailed wargame may be viewed as perfection, perfection can be the enemy of good
enough. A tightly focused Agile Wargame that actually takes place, is superior to
a large-scale wargame that can never fit into a schedule.

Text: The most valuable commodity for any military commander is time. On any given
day, a typical flag officer has a wall-to-wall schedule packed with meetings,
decisions, more meetings, inspections, presentations, yet more meetings, and
precious little time for anything that isn’t scheduled weeks or months in advance.
Getting a full day of a general’s time is a Herculean task. Getting a full week is
impossible without a signature from a higher ranking general or a congressional
mandate. Getting the same amount of time out of field grade officers is not much
easier.

Officers still want, and need, wargames. Discussions around large games run by the
Air Force[1] have driven discussions in the defense community, in Congress, and at
Headquarters Air Force[2][3].

Wargames are an essential step for military leaders to ensure confidence in plans,
decisions, and concepts. Stakeholders, sponsors, and players agree that wargames
can answer certain questions or problem sets. Yet, the average player’s demanding
schedule remains an obstacle for participation.

Large wargames can account for the needs of many stakeholders and organizations. In
a large game, hundreds of moving pieces compete for attention from many players. In
an agile game, the focus is narrower—much of the war is abstracted out into a
series of mechanics designed to show how the broader war impacts a narrow slice,
without needing to focus on these other parts. Players often face only three to
four decisions in a turn, such as where to place resources, what to use for
operations, or who should conduct an action. The result is a lower fidelity game—
but one easy to play, in only a few hours[4]. Similar fidelity games in the
commercial space include Axis & Allies[5], World at War ’85[6], and Thunderbolt
Apache Leader[7].

For concept writers looking to develop immature concepts, low fidelity games are
helpful. The low time demand and ease of learning means the game can be played
multiple times. This increase in repetition of iterative low fidelity games
feeding higher fidelity games in an event series has previously been identified as
useful by wargaming grandmaster Matt Caffrey in his work On Wargaming[8].
It is the aim of agile games to use time wisely and concisely without sacrificing
objectives and outputs. The goal of agile games is to approach any problem by
taking small bites rather than swallowing the whole elephant, ideally leading to
further concept refinement through either more detailed games, modeling and
simulation, or concept writers using game insights to further their writing.

Agile gaming answers questions that are pressing or urgent—not completely, but just
enough to set the decision makers in the right direction. Agile gaming requires
being comfortable with sacrificing total fidelity to focus on a more playable,
approachable game—for many nascent defense concepts, a 70% solution in three hours
may be more useful than a 95% solution in a week of gameplay. Compare the
commercial games Afrika Korps and Campaign for North Africa—the former is not
perfectly realistic, but it is easily teachable and playable in a few hours,
compared to the latter, which while more realistic, requires an excessive amount of
table space, players, and time[9][10].

In the agile gaming methodology, a series of three or four iterations of the same
game or topic may be necessary, with one difference between them. These multiple
iterations could allow the gaming team to conduct difference-in-difference
analyses. For example, an agile game might give players slightly more resources
between iterations would allow for conversation and insights about how priorities
change, or how resource allocation decisions are made under certain budgetary
conditions[11].

To keep games quick and intuitive, agile gaming leverages gaming mechanics from the
world of commercial recreational board gaming. The commercial gaming world is both
broad and deep—thousands of designers have come up with game mechanics for
everything from how to assemble a hamburger[12] to how to outfit an F/A-18
Hornet[13] to how to manufacture a car under the Kanban Just In Time manufacturing
system[14]. Leveraging knowledge of these mechanics can shape the effectiveness of
an agile game, showing how to translate complex systems to easily learnable game
mechanics.

With games varying in topic, complexity, and required expertise, the ideal agile
gaming team will be a small footprint, modular team able to operate independently
or with additions from external agencies. A small team allows for quick turns for
gaming, while the modularity ensures that the team consults subject matter experts
to ensure sufficient fidelity.

Agile gaming is not a perfect solution, more than any other approach to wargaming
is—but agile gaming is a way to conduct rapid, iterative games. While agile gaming
will not provide conclusive answers to national security problems, it can refine
concepts and provide insights on how the US will conduct warfare today and
tomorrow, as well as provide valuable stage setting for more detailed wargames.

Endnotes:

[1] Both authors adjudicated a Title 10 USAF game last year

[2] Insinna, V. (2012, April 12). A US Air Force war game shows what the service
needs to hold off — or win against — China in 2030. Retrieved from Defense News:
https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2021/04/12/a-us-air-force-war-game-shows-
what-the-service-needs-to-hold-off-or-win-against-china-in-2030

[3] Trevethick, J. (2021, April 12). Today’s F-35As Not Worth Including In High-End
War Games According To Air Force General. Retrieved from The Drive:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40142/air-force-general-says-current-
generation-f-35as-not-worth-including-in-high-end-wargames
[4] Of the more than 15 games the Foxes conducted in 2020, the mean time of a game
was below three hours

[5] Harris, L. (1981). Axis & Allies. USA: Milton Bradley.

[6] Tracton, K. (2019). World at War ’85: Storming the Gap. USA: Lock ‘n Load
Publishing.

[7] Verssen, D. (2012). Thunderbolt Apache Leader. USA: Dan Verssen Games (DVG)

[8] Caffrey, M. (2019). On Wargaming. Newport, RI: Naval War College Press. Pg. 318

[9] Roberts, C. (1964). Afrika Korps. USA: Avalon Hill, Inc.

[10] Berg, R. (1979) Campaign for North Africa. USA: Simulations Publications, Inc.

[11] Observed by the authors in multiple agile games at HAF A5.

[12] Parkes, M. (2016). Burger Up. Australia: Greenbrier Games.

[13] Verssen, D. (2010). Hornet Leader: Carrier Air Operations. USA: Dan Verssen
Games (DVG).

[14] Lacerda, V. (2014). Kanban Driver’s Edition. Stronghold Games.

You might also like