The Question of the Hour: Are Wargames Ethical?

Since I’m relatively new to the wargaming space, I haven’t come close to settling this question. But it seems like it’s worth trying, so bear with me if some of my responses to the recent People Make Games video “The Games Behind Your Government’s Next War” are not well reasoned. My mind immediately went to my own design ethos, so I’ll start there.

Insurgent: Algeria is a degree removed from the simulation-style games Quinns is discussing in the video; I designed the game this way on purpose to make it more accessible, but also because I wasn’t sure how I felt about simulating violence in a more tangible way. The goal of that game is to tell the story of the conflict, not to teach militaries how to conduct counter/insurgencies.

When discussed through that lens, I think even games with more complex, realist mechanisms are “useful” (a loaded term, I know) for both hobby and professional audiences, but not because they can tell a commander what to do in any given circumstance. The idea of wargames as laboratories is concerning to me because it purports to answer that question in an effective, military-industrial-complex-sustaining kind of way.

However, as Ed McGrady points out in his response, “wargaming is not war”. There are all sorts of things we could do as a society to end war, and I don’t think ending/limiting/changing wargaming is in the top ten. So it’s certainly a matter of scale.

I am unabashedly on board with wargaming issues like climate change, elections, immigration, health care and more. Following this line of thinking, at a certain point wargaming becomes a synonym for modeling, so what’s the difference?

To me, it’s that games can be random and chaotic and messy, which are much more life-like terms than models can understand (even the smart ones out there today). I want to eventually make games about these sociopolitical topics for the same reasons I made Insurgent: to give people new avenues to engage with them in a social setting.

One last note: it’s highly concerning that the current funnels into professional wargaming are not diverse whatsoever. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that getting different perspectives and identities in the room, especially when dealing with such critical global issues, is essential.

I obviously have a lot more listening and thinking to do on this subject, but I wanted to at least put some of my thoughts out here to record them, and hopefully get a conversation going.

So I pose Quinns’ questions to you: are wargames ethical? Are they effective? In what ways is it in a national or global interest to wargame better? Interested to hear your thoughts.

Matt