The Largest Simulation Imaginable

I recently read about the Brynania simulation, which explores seven or more months of an ongoing civil war and peace negotiations in a fictional country, run by McGill University. The simulation has been run annually since 1998 through the university’s political science department, and an entire book has been written about this one simulation. There are usually around a hundred players who play for 12 hours a day for a full week. Players take on the roles of government officials, aid organizations, United Nations representatives, civil society activists, neighboring countries, the media, rebel groups and more.

There is a Control Center which is omniscient and resolves player actions based on the feasibility of their request, letting them know what resources it will require, how long it will take, etc. Time works differently in this simulation as well; each hour in real-time is a day in simulation-time, then overnight in real-time the simulation moves forward a month. This length allows for peace negotiations, peacekeeping deployments, formation of a transitional government, refugee repatriation, and more all to occur within a week real-time.

The goal of the simulation is to teach students about the logistical complexity of peacemaking, which Rex Brynen, the designer of the simulation, describes as “fog and friction”. As Control Center, he and his teaching assistants sort through literally ten thousand emails between students in the simulation.

Brynen has created other simulations and classroom games that I’m now excited to look into. He also qualifies that the simulation is only educationally useful when students debrief and understand its inherent limitations, which I agree is important. I initially read about it in a book called Simulations and Student Learning which, luckily enough, is part of the Google Books sample which you can find here.

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Thanks for reading. I took an impromptu “fall break” from this newsletter, but I’ll be back in your inbox next week, hopefully with another Game of the Month (PS — the high score for Sets has increased significantly in the past couple weeks. If you haven’t yet, I’d recommend trying it out).

Happy gaming,

Matt