Theory=Model=Game

Neil Ferguson‘s mis-adventures in gaming are highlighted on Richard Mehlinger’s blog on HASTAC in a a post which reinforces the dangers of non-gamers getting swept up by the gee-whiz of digital games. I’ve always been wary of digital games for teaching, which is why I’ve always used old fashion non-digital game play and design in my history courses.

Mehlinger recounts Ferguson’s involvement with Muzzy Lane’s Making History game, a game which deal with the origins and course of WWII. I’ve played the demo, and disliked it – on the military side, it has too much going on for non-gamers, while the diplomacy model is, as Mehlinger points out, very simplistic. (but give it a go – it is worth looking at)  In fact, it is no better than old classics like Jim Dunngian’s Origins of WWII. Ferguson’s dalliance with Making HIstory shows the classic problem of having a non-gamer use a digital game as a tool to explore alternative history – the game rules are a bot of a black box, concealed behind pretty graphics which hide a very limited model of international relations. It is all to easy for a non-gamer to buy into the visuals, fail to investigate the underlying model, and assume that they are learning something useful from a model which has no real depth.

Right now, my MA Students in International Relations are working on game designs for their Understanding International Conflict course. The first half of the course was an introduction to International Relations theory. In the second half, I started with the proposition that Theory=Model=Game, namely that if a theory of IR is a model of reality, then a game is also a model of reality. On that basis, I challenged them to produce a game proposal for a game which would be informed by at least one IR theory, and which would investigate how far such a game allows us to investigate how IR theories work in real world IR problems.  Many of the games are using current problems in the MENA area as their focus, but there are some which range away from that, including one on the Gallipoli Campaign in WWI which looks promising.

In setting up the assignment, I showed the students a range of games in the IR field, from Diplomacy, through Origins of WWII and Days of Decision to modern classics like Twilight Struggle and Labyrinth. There are a range of traditional boardgames out there in which the model of IR underlying the games is exposed in the rules, not buried in a digital black box, and which allow us to help students develop both an understanding of International Relations theory and practice, and which may help to turn out graduates who may design games with a better underlying model of diplomacy than is on offer in games like Making History.