The 2025 conference will run online from Wed 12 November to Thu 13 November 2025. You must register to get access to  links.

Registration is via Humanitix here.

All times are Australian Eastern Daylight Savings time. (GMT + 11 hrs)

As usual we will run an extended program including early morning and evening sessions to allow for international speakers.

The program is currently being finalised.

Please note, last minute adjustments to the program may occur.

Wed 12 Nov

0900-1000 Andrew Somerville. Australian Combined Arms Wargame.

Major Andrew Somerville is a professional wargamer and wargame designer from the Australian Army.  He is currently the lead for the reinvigoration of educational wargaming in the Australian Army.

Andrew will discuss designing his latest professional wargame for the Army titled Australian Combined Arms.  Australian Combined Arms is a manual educational wargame focused on contemporary battlegroup level operations developed for use at the Officer Training Wing, Land Warfare Centre.  The presentation will focus on the design process, selected game mechanics, and the design rational.

1000-1100 Timothy Heseltine and Michael Pilling. Requirements for an Ideal War Gaming Tool.

Timothy joined DSTO in 1999 and is a Senior Analyst in the Analytical War gaming Group, Capability Analysis and Design, HADS. Since 2009 he worked on a range of operations analysis and decision support tasks, ranging from strategy to task analysis to Baysean Belief Modelling in the Joint Domain. Between 1999 and 2009, he was a member of the Maritime Operations Division in Sydney, where he worked in the Surface and Air Warfare Analysis Group, the Maritime Operations Analysis Centre at Garden Island and the Headmark (Navy Futures Experimentation) team. He completed a PhD in Physics (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy) from the University of New South Wales in 1996 and received his Honours Degree in Physics from the Australian National University in 1991. He has previously worked as an Associate Lecturer in the School of Physics (UNSW) and a post-doctoral research fellow at the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University.

Michael joined DSTO in 1989 as a Defence Science Cadet in the Software Engineering group of ITD. He gained his Computer Science PhD Enforcing Criticality Constraints in Real-Time Systems from the University of Queensland in 1996 in which he demonstrated that Priority was a construct unfit for programming languages. He has a background in Combinatorics, Software Engineering, Programming Languages including Domain Specific Languages, Distributed Systems, Real-Time Systems and Scheduling Theory, Formal Software Specification and Software Performance Engineering. Since 2018 he worked on a range of operations analysis tasks but mainly in Wargame analysis and Mission Engineering.

This presentation will explore what the requirements for an ideal War Gaming Tool would be, based on reverse engineering these from observations of playing Defence’s JOUST and socialisation of same with the Analytical Wargaming Team.

1100-1200 Break

1200-1300 Catherine Althaus and David Threlfall. Games and gamification projects in the Australian public sector

Catherine Althaus is Professor, School of Business (UNSW Canberra), Founding Director, Academy of Adaptive Leadership at UNSW, Extraordinary Professor (University of Pretoria), ANZSOG Distinguished Fellow, and Honorary Fellow (South Asian Network of Public Administration). A former Queensland public servant and Director, School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, she works at the intersection of practice and scholarship focusing on leadership, policymaking and public administration specialising across Indigenous and non-Indigenous wisdoms and contributions at the global and local levels. Catherine is a University Medallist, Australia Day Medal awardee for services provided through Queensland Treasury, and an award-winning academic, executive coach, adviser and facilitator.

David Threlfall is a writer, researcher and policy practitioner. He works currently as Manager of Policy & Strategy at Mind Australia, a large national mental health charity, where he has responsibility for government relations, policy, advocacy and strategy. David’s academic work focuses on the implications of science and technology for politics, policymaking and public administration. He is finishing a PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and holds an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge as well as a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Diploma of Languages from the University of Melbourne. David’s published work includes the seventh edition of The Australian Policy Handbook, and journal articles on technology and politics in the Australian Journal of Public Administration and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Knowledge about games and gamification projects in the Australian public sector is limited beyond the initiated few. This is despite a growing trend of the use of (video)games, and design elements and thinking from them, into public sector work.

Catherine Althaus and David Threlfall recently surveyed this trend in Australia, in a journal article in the Australian Journal of Public Administration titled “Games and gamification projects in the Australian public sector”.

The history of gaming for public sector purposes starts with wargaming—and Defence seems to remain the area of government with both the broadest and deepest uptake today. Catherine and David hope their paper, and this conference session, provide a means to start learning more, and start promoting lesson sharing across government in this growing space.

1300-1400 Break

1400-1500 Emma Deering and Ewen Gillespie

Emma is a second year student, studying a Bachelor of Law and International Security at the ANU. After being involved as a delegate at the 2024 Australian Crisis Simulation Summit, she went on to act in the role of Head Crisis Writer for the 2025 Regional Simulation. 

Ewan is a recent graduate from the ANU having studied a Bachelor’s of Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He was involved in the ACSS for two years, having been a delegate in 2024 and the Head Crisis Writer for the Domestic Simulation in 2025. 

This talk will highlight Ewan and Emma’s work at the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit, from the initial design and planning stage to the official summit. They’ll discuss how they came up with their respective concepts, research processes, and how the software they used allowed them to create a hyper-realistic simulation to help prepare the next generation of Australia’s security leaders. 

1500-1600 Adrian Webb. Gamifying Government, A Retrospect so far…

Adrian studied and worked at the AIE in Canberra before joining the APS for Defence in 2011. Since then, he has spent time within the simulation, serious games and intelligence space, allowing him to focus on promoting how video games technologies and practices can be better utilised within the public service. As the former manager of virtual worlds, he helped government departments understand the latest developments and trends, to become a leading advocate within government for innovations via games and associated technologies like XR. He actively promotes to the public how federal government departments are using these mediums, through panels such as Gamifying Government, which just completed its eighth iteration. Now working as the Assistant Director for Strategic Games and Exercises, Adrian continues promoting games usage in any format, as platforms for exploration, engagement, learning and realisation within the APS. He is keen to talk to industry about different pathways to explore government engagements, and utilising their talents to deliver better outcomes for various departments. At Connections, he aims to talk to anyone that will listen about how games and government can work together to deliver benefits for all involved, especially you the public!

Over the past 8 years, The gamifying government panel at PAX AUS has been hosting various federal government departments, showcasing to the public how innovative the APS can be and their use of emerging tech and games within the respective areas. This Panel is one of the largest locally based panels at PAX, and promotes using games within government to better engage, educate and learn internally with staff and externally with the public. Departments such as the ABC, Dept, of Industry, Aust War Memorial, CSIRO, NSFA, ASADA, Aus Mint, Defence, Border Force, Dept of Ag and services Aus (to name but a few). This talk will be a summary of the past 8 years of panels so far, from a moderators perspective, talking about Departments use of games in various manners (digital, analogue, tools), Why we decided PAX AUS was the best place for this panel, some examples of more unique dept. usages over the years, and stories from members attending the panel.

1600-1700 Lachlan Parker. Joint Experimentation Directorate.

Lachlan is a game designer and member of the Joint Experimentation Directorate – Wargame delivery team. Lachlan has a demonstrated skill for designing and executing innovative games to achieve analytical outcomes. Lachlan designs board games outside of Defence, the narratives of which has been shortlisted in national creative writing and design competitions. Lachlan’s defence career began as an Australian Infantry soldier in both a reserve and full time capacity. His breadth of experiences, from soldiering to public policy development, has proven invaluable in the generation of simple tools to address complex problems.

1700-1800 Break

1800-1900 Elçin Ada Sayın

Ada is a law graduate from the University of Strasbourg, France with an avid interest in defence. She has coordinated the Women in Command Project, funded by US Embassy Ankara, NATO Public Diplomacy Division and supported by NATO Chief Scientist’s Office with KizBasina (Just-a-Girl) NGO. The Hybrid Threat Rising game was created under Ada’s lead. She became the Project
Manager following the Alpha Release of the game. The Hybrid Threat Rising game became Türkiye’s first game dealing with hybrid threats, the first game to be developed to train women leaders and the first game to be designed and led by a woman. The game also obtained the International Serious Play Awards’ Golden Medal and won the MS&T Awards of 2022. Following the final design, she led the design for the Humanity in Crisis Module. She also won the Women in Defence UK – Women in STEM award in 2022. Ada acted as a Design Team Lead for the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) Crisis Working Group to design a TableTop Exercise working with world’s leading social media tech companies and worked directly with representatives from Meta, YouTube, Tech Against Terrorism, FBI and many more for the years of 2022 and 2023.

She now leads the Leader Women Community formed of women between the ages 18-30 who want to pursue a career in defence, bringing them together with industry experts, organising workshops and orientation activities. She became the co-lead of Fight Club International’s Türkiye Chapter (Fight Club Türkiye) and a member researcher to the NATO STO’s SAS-172 Research Task Group on
Multi-Domain Operations Wargame.

Lastly, she became the youngest ever Task Group chair and the only woman chair from Türkiye with the NATO STO SAS-208 on Inclusion of Generation Z+ to Defence Organizations.

She has also co-founded the women-led startup Radius Defence Wargame Domains Ltd. pioneering use of innovation to make wargaming and military training accessible, working with NATO. She is currently serving as a Board Member for two of the biggest wargaming communities: Fight Club International and Women’s Wargaming Network.

This presentation introduces an AI-supported wargaming framework designed to simulate and analyze civil–military coordination in hybrid crisis environments. Drawing on NATO’s SAS-172 research and recent experiments made through Radius Defence under the NATO ACT Innovation Continuum 2025, it explores how artificial intelligence can enhance understanding of trust, coordination, and decision-making dynamics between military and civilian actors during complex operations. Through lessons from Afghanistan and the Türkiye–Syria earthquake, materialized through the IC25 SHINE Event in October 2025, the session highlights how wargaming can serve as both an analytical and educational tool to strengthen NATO’s preparedness and interoperability in future crises. 

1900-2000 Evan D’Alessandro. Modular Approaches to Pol-Mil Taiwan Wargames.

Evan D’Alessandro is a PhD student at King’s College London studying the production and effects of immersion in professional wargaming. He also works as a freelance professional wargamer having designed games for elements of NATO, the UK Defense Academy, research groups at King’s College London, and others.

This talk will look at an open source Taiwan crisis/war wargame to discuss methods for allowing the same game to run from free to rigid kriegspiel, modular representations of Political, Military, and Diplomatic elements, integration all levels of player experience/knowledge on the topic, methods of “modularizing” a wargame, and the benefits of an open source approach and making games publicly available.

Thu 13 Nov

0900-1000 David Redpath. Matrix Games – what are they good for?

David is a Retired British Army Infantry officer (Royal Regiment of Fusiliers). His last posting was as Chief Instructor at the School of Infantry. Since then he has designed and run training games, exercises and simulations for multinational companies, automotive, aerospace, transportation and health services. He is currently Senior Wargames Designer for the Canadian DND at the Canadian Joint Warfare Centre.

Matrix Games – (the methodology not the company) are sometimes used in wargames to gather and utilise player ‘opinions’ for adjudication that influence outcomes – the only problem with that is the math, and the method, and the outcomes ….

They have become increasingly popular because they seemingly  take less time to prepare than traditional wargame types,  but if handled badly can skew results, and cause the exact opposite of what an analytical wargame should do , which is get a “realistic outcome of players decisions”.

David Redpath will outline the history, perils, and pitfalls of matrix games , and give some examples of why they should be treated with caution in professional games.

1000-1100 Luke Judd. Battle-ready leaders through immersive Analogue Wargaming. 

WO2 Luke Alexander Judd is a Royal Australian Armoured Corps (RAAC) Tank soldier with 20 years’ experience in the Army including time in Armoured units, training organisations, Brigade Headquarters and two overseas deployments to Afghanistan.

He is currently posted to the Royal Military College Duntroon (RMC-D) and is responsible for the conduct of Analogue Wargaming and Digital simulation in support of the training of Army Cadets in how to plan using the Decisive Military Planning Process (DMPP).

Developing Army Officer Cadets are challenged to think fast, plan decisively, and lead with confidence in dynamic training environments. Luke will discuss the use of analogue wargames to create realistic officer training opportunities.

1100-1200 Break

1200-1300 Rob Engen. Wargaming at the Australian War College.

Rob Engen is senior lecturer in war studies, working on contract with the Deakin University team at the Australian War College in Canberra. He is the Deakin team’s director of wargaming.

Rob Engen will present on the wargaming activities, dynamics, and opportunities at the Australian War College over the past twelve months.

1300-1400 Break

1400-1500 Darren Huxley. Wargaming for Professional Military Education.

Darren Huxley is the Director Strategic Games & Exercises within Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence. This role, primarily, undertakes support to seminar and table-top exercises across a variety of policy and coordination issues for the Department. Darren also served for 35 years in the Australian Army.

Darren has just convened the first online course for wargame facilitation for the Australian War College. His presentation is a ‘warts and all’ look at the challenges he and his team encountered in designing and running the pilot program, and his thoughts on how such a course might look in future iterations for Defence and, potentially, a wider Australian government audience.

1500-1600 Cameron Holt. Army Analytical Wargaming

Army’s experimentation is managed by a small team within Army Headquarters: Operations Research & Analysis – Army (ORA-A). A key component of their experimentation involves analytical wargaming to support decision making. This ranges from top down service-level wargames that help understand potential future scenarios, to bottom up wargames at the unit level working out how to incorporate new technologies. Regardless of the wargame level, ORA-A are always seeking opportunities to exploit the data collected to inform iterative refinement of concepts & capabilities through quantitative methods such as modelling & simulation.