Games, simulations, and micronations

 Last week I put up a post about "Collect It All", a card game derived from a CIA training tool. That's got me thinking about games and simulations more generally, and how and why they might be useful to micronations. However, I'll preface this by saying that micronationalism itself isn't a game. It's not a roleplaying game, it's not "playing pretend". Depending on the micronation, there are some elements of imagination involved, but assuming that we're all just playing games does a disservice to the whole community.

Games as training tools are quite common - as we discussed previously, the card game "Collect It All" is based on a CIA training tool, and this article discusses other CIA-developed games used for training their analysts.

Games can also be useful for training people for situations that might be too difficult or costly to replicate in normal life. For example, Slabovia uses the Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator to train crews in starship operations, in case we can ever afford to buy one.

First, the obvious: military "war games" have been used to teach militaries the basics of tactics and strategy for a long time - the game of chess dates back to the seventh century, although it's been modified somewhat over the years. Tabletop "sand table" exercises are also a staple of teaching battlefield tactics at military academies, and modern "micro armour" (1:285 scale) miniatures can be purchased to replicate these exercises at home. Board games such as Risk or Axis & Allies present an abstracted form of warfare which can help develop more strategic thinking.  Oh, and then there was the time that some wargamers won an actual war.

In Slabovia, we've been discussing holding a "staff college" training day where our Navel (sic) officers would play various such games. At one level, it's an excuse to hold our own private gaming convention, but we won't talk about that. 😉

More recently the military has also used video games as training; the US military was using networked video games (err, training simulators) via something called SIMNET back in the 1970s, well before the Internet was a public resource. As the home PC market expanded, and as the Internet reached more homes, it seems inevitable that "armchair generals" would want to use the electronic medium. For example, the civilian mil-sim video game "Harpoon" is based on a US Navy training system that was itself based on a miniatures-based simulator. 

Another genre of games that can be useful for micronations is "resource management" games where players have to manage limited resources as they try to claim territory. The classic board game here would be Settlers of Catan. Games such as Pandemic can help teach responses to health crises, which dovetails somewhat with my recent talk about emergency planning for micronations.

There's also a game called Diplomacy, where players take the roles of politicians at the turn of the last century (the game starts in 1901), which does feature the making of alliances, but also encourages the breaking of such alliances, so perhaps it might teach the wrong lessons to some folks.

I don't know anything about it, but apparently there's even a video game called "Commander in Chief" (also known as "Geo-Political Simulator"). The Wikipedia entry for the game states that it "allows a player to simulate being a nation's head of government". There were also several sequels to the game, including "Rulers of Nations" and "Masters of the World".

In summary, then, the use of games as training tools is well established, and there are a number of such games that can train micronational leaders on various aspects of leadership and government.

Was chess one of the first wargames?
(Picture from Microsoft Word image library)