On the second floor of the stately King’s College London building on the Strand, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden are sitting around a table studying a map of Ukraine. They are here to negotiate the future of the country, but they all have ulterior objectives too. Germany wants to ensure the safe transit of refugees; the US wants Russia to cease its disinformation campaign; France wants trade; and Russia needs dozens of sanctions to be lifted. But nobody is giving anything away. It’s tense as hell and the clock is ticking.
This is not real, of course, it’s just a game – but it’s a game with serious intentions. Today, the heads of state are being played by four people attending an event organised by the university’s department of war studies. Several students who have taken an MA module entitled Designing Wargames for Education & Analysis are showing games they have created to a select crowd of wargaming professionals, members of the military and representatives of a few big corporations.
Wargaming is essentially the competitive simulation of conflict, usually on some sort of map board with a variety of playing pieces. Chess can be understood as a heavily abstracted version, but there are detailed, complex games based on everything from the unification of Japan (Sekigahara) to apocalyptic sci-fi combat (Warhammer 40,000). Wargames have also been used extensively by military forces for about 200 years in order to plan real-life campaigns and role-play possible outcomes. The UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) has a dedicated Defence Wargaming Centre near Portsmouth, while the US Marine Corps is currently building a Wargaming and Analysis Center at its base in Quantico, Virginia.
One of those attending is an expert from the MoD who assures me the Ukraine invasion has been heavily war-gamed by both Nato and Russian military planners. Indeed, a report published by the Royal United Services Institute in February claimed that Russian forces ran wargames preceding the invasion in order to plan an attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure using assets within the country.
The Ukraine game here today is called War and Change and it’s being demoed by co-designer Sacha Nacouzi, currently studying for an MA in international security. The main aim for the western countries is to get Russia out of Ukraine, but each country also has to secure its own interests in the region. Meanwhile the player representing Russia must seek to end sanctions, reopen trade routes and get back on the Swift financial system. The action is separated into a series of 10 five-minute rounds, in which players negotiate, swap asset cards and work out mini deals. It’s more like a fantasy role-playing game, especially as Nacouzi encourages players to mimic the personalities and policies of the leaders they are portraying.
When I take part, I get stuck with Donald Trump, who is voted back in to power early in the game. I decide this means I should seek to grab the most valuable Ukrainian territories back from Russia so that I can look like a tough guy, while also reopening US airspace to Russian craft and unfreezing the assets of oligarchs so I can suck up to my pal Putin.
“The game is designed to provide a holistic overview of issues considered in territorial negotiations,” says Nacouzi, who created it with fellow students Pelle Padmos, Josh Lebowtiz and Lilla Douchahe. “This includes the strategic placements of regions, borders, trade agreements, agrifood exports, economic sanctions, gas and oil.” Her hope is that players come away with a better understanding of the assets countries have at their disposal and the kinds of liabilities they face in complex negotiations.
On a table beside War and Change, another group is playing Guns N’ Money, a game about weapons procurement. Nearby there’s Shooting Daedalus, about the tactics of modern urban combat.
What is interesting about these games is that the students don’t come from the professional wargame sector, so they’re unencumbered by conventional thinking and design rules. “It’s precisely because the students don’t have a professional background that they have a way of thinking of questions or ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise see,” says the event’s organiser, David Banks, a wargaming lecturer and academic director of the Wargaming Network at King’s College London. “One of the designers of the game about urban warfare was an architect – he’s really interested in the use of space. The diversity of life experiences on this course really helps. They don’t fall back on things they’ve learned or played.”
The next game I play illustrates this pretty clearly. Called Don’t Fear the Reaper Drone, it’s a simulation of drone warfare involving two players, one taking part as a drone pilot, the other as their commanding officer. In each round a possible target is identified on the board, which represents a satellite image, and the CO gives the pilot the command to strike. The pilot needs to follow that order or play an action card to question the directive. Each square on the board has a number relating to how many civilians may be killed if an attack goes ahead. Some of the actions are “signature strikes”, where the drone spots someone who looks like, or is behaving like, a known enemy target but their identity is not confirmed. The outcome of each strike is decided by the roll of the dice and if things go wrong, the pilot could be responsible for civilian casualties. When this happens, the player loses moral points, and they need to draw cards that show photographs of their victims. Repeated failures lead to increasing mental health difficulties and eventually incapacitating depression.
It is uncommon for wargames to model psychological outcomes, and I ask the game’s lead designer, Edward McEvoy, if there has been interest from those attending. “Yes,” he says. “Some of the experts we’ve spoken to today think that games that explore the human aspects of war and conflict could give new perspectives that may change certain policies. Perhaps they’ll even lead to less conflict.”
Wargames aren’t employed only by the military. Corporations use them to explore business decisions; government policymakers use them to simulate major events, including pandemics; and they have a role in disaster relief. “The UNHCR has made efforts in various cities to help with the influx of Ukrainian refugees and provide relief to civic centres and to other spaces housing many people and aid workers,” says Lily Boland, co-designer of Don’t Fear the Reaper Drone. “Wargaming and/or simulating some of these crucial aspects of refugee aid work would certainly help organisations like the UN and local institutions to prepare for these scenarios in advance.”
What the situation in Ukraine has shown the world is that the outcomes of military action are becoming less predictable. Russia’s command and control strategy has been found wanting, while Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s innovative and playful use of social media has increased awareness and support for his country in a way that would have been tough to forecast. As Banks puts it, “I’m a huge believer in using historical case studies as much as possible, but a lot of the problems we’re facing in the 21st century are not ones that we have any ready guides for.”
As the world becomes ever more unpredictable and prone to disruptive global events, perhaps new strategies and solutions will be discovered in games like these.