Available for general view today: the presentation I made at Connections-Online two weeks ago on “Gaming-neglected Aspects of the Operational Environment”.
Adapted freely from the talk on this I gave at the TRADOC-G2 sponsored one-day event at Georgetown University in November 2024, which few in present company saw.
Hope you find it interesting!
Playlist of all Connections-Online 2025 presentations here:
Back in February I attended the Connections-North conference at CFB Kingston, which was a great if all too short event, and then travelled to Toronto to attend the Simulation Summit, another short event held at the Royal Canadian Military Institute and sponsored by Zeroes and Ones Inc..
My main contribution was helping to facilitate a rapid game design workshop, after which I was interviewed in the aptly named Sword Room for some of my thoughts on games and game design.
This is a short one, cut down from my usual river of prolixity, and I talk about asymmetry in games, my work on urban warfare, and give the origin story of Guerrilla Checkers.
“Bella Ciao” was a 19th century folk song that was later associated with the Italian Resistance movement in World War Two and is still sung in many languages as a song of resistance. It is easy to sing fast or slow, and the tune sticks in your mind.
“Elbows Up” is the hockey-related slogan used by people right now as a mark of resistance and standing up to the threats, large and small, levelled by the United States government against Canada. So I thought I would add to the number of songs being written right now that use the expression, via my own free translation and revision of this Italian anti-fascist anthem… I’m a better game designer than lyricist I’m sure, but I really like the original song.
Lyrics:
Elbows Up (free translation and revision of Bella Ciao)
One fine morning, I woke up early Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! One fine morning, I woke up early To find invaders at my door
Oh freedom fighters, please take me with you Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! Oh freedom fighters, please take me with you I’m not afraid anymore
And if I die, I’ll die among you Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! So bury me upon the hillside, In the shadow of the maple leaves.
Show all the people, the people passing, Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! Show all the people, the people passing, And they’ll say, ‘what beautiful maple leaves.'”
The leaves remember the fallen fighters Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! The leaves remember the fallen fighters Who died for freedom and victory.
I found this old instrumental version of the song on Youtube that will give you the tune, which starts about 15 seconds in.
I found another instrumental version that uses a synthesizer and builds nicely but is a bit longer and repeats once.
SDHist Con Online 2025 Winter Quarters is a one-day online event coming Saturday, February 8.
I’ll be on two panels, early in the morning West Coast Time (which is GMT -8, so not so bad for Eastern friends).
At 1600 GMT (0800 local to me time) I will be on a panel organized by Aaron Danis on portrayals of terrorism and counterterrorism in modern games; overshadowing me like two banyan trees will be Volko Ruhnke and Roger Mason, both friends of the blog.
At 1700 GMT (right afterwards) I will be on a panel organized by Riccardo Massini, where the authors of the various chapters in the new Euro War Games anthology will be talking about their contributions to the book, and other topics that arise. Not everyone could make the date, so as far as I know the following will attend besides me: the three editors (Riccardo Massini, Jan Heinemann, Fred Serval), Andrea Angiolino, Alfio Ferrara, Paul Hodson, Daniela Kuschel, Volko Ruhnke, Ranald Shepherd. Might have surprise guests too like publisher Florent Coupeau.
Like other years, there are loads and loads of other interesting events as well as these panels; here are some I think would be interesting and intend to check out:
The World of Professional Wargaming
Demo of Battlegroup Clash: Baltics
Teach and Play of True Command by Catastrophe Games
Harold interviews Pete Pellegrino of the Naval War College
Interesting but I can’t make it:
A Game About Defenestration in Putin’s Russia
Designer Talk: Littoral Commander
Designing Microgames (put on by Georgetown University Wargaming Society, who ought to know)
Demo of Queen of Spies (WW 2 resistance in Belgium)
Designer talk on Rebels against Rebellion (guerrilla warfare in ACW Tennessee)
You have to buy a ticket to the convention, it’s $10.00 US but there is no charge (and no ticketing) to any of the events within the con.
Tickets go on sale at 2000 GMT (noon local time) on Saturday, 1 February 2025.
Maurice Suckling, Assistant Professor of Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic and author of Paper Time Machines gives a short TED-style talk on game design.
Designers of historical games built machines capable of transporting users into a sense of a different time and place. The five ingredients are a suitable traveler, and four different rhetorical approaches – aesthetic (how things look), procedural (how systems function), discursive (how systems are tied to thematic content), and experiential (how systems and other rhetorical approaches combine to make us feel).
I think I really don’t understand what I am doing, so I am glad he does.. after referencing a short Kafka story “The Top” he concludes:
The point here is this: that if we think of simulation games as a process we must bear in mind that these are processes in action. And if we think of history as a complex series of enmeshed processes we could say that a relatively poor way of attempting to model history would be to write about it, whereas a relatively more fidelitous way to attempt to model history would be to make games about it. Because when players are playing history they’re experiencing processes in action, they are experiencing the spinning of the top when the spinning of the top is the most essential thing about it.
The only things I’m going to say about That Video that has been going around are that I finally got around to seeing it, found it consistently but mildly annoying, you can see me jabbering and gesticulating in the background at 1:38 and 16:40 (guess that’s my Forrest Gump moment), and Rex Brynen posted a set of thoughtful responses to it by wiser heads than mine here.
To commemorate the event, Fred Serval held a panel on this topic with a great selection of people: Richard Barbrook, Joe Dewhurst, Alex Knight, and Yoni Goldstein.
Excellent discussion on games, organizing, and getting organized with and through games.
I was not able to attend any of the other events due to time zone differences and work schedule. But anyone who wasn’t there, can now see and hear what it was like.
Today’s panel of folks on Wargaming Africa went really well!
Unfortunately Chris Davis could not attend to talk about his Ethiopian Civil War game but we had a really good discussion on past examples of contemporary African wargames, and some of the issues around designing and publishing these things. Yann de Villeneuve gave a good account of A Fading Star, his new COIN system game on Somalia 2007-14.
brtrain 
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