Follow Me Tactical Decision Game

[Rex Brynen]

When I ran Decisive Action exercises at CGSC the students would always complain that one aspect or another wasn't "realistic" and I would tell them "No crap Sherlock it's a freakin game". My COL showed us a slide with the following quote:

All models are wrong; some models are useful.
-- generally attributed to the statistician George Box

We get pushback in regards to realism all the time. For what we are doing close enough is good enough. My question to those officers would be did you learn something useful? It's really up to the instructor to manage those expectations up front. A lot of pushback comes from "professional" modeling and sims types who have a hard time wrapping their minds around abstractions. Anyone who has played a boardgame will understand abstractions. If you look at the big sims I'd say that all of them model at the individual entity level or close to it. JWARS, WARSIM, JCATS, BBS, JANUS, etc are all entity level.

One of the things I've been wondering about lately is whether advances in computational power, AI, and interface have diminished this made this problem, or made it greater.

On the one hand, we can make both the game interface and the opponent AI much more sophisticated than ever before. Driven by the multi-billion dollar commercial gaming industry, this continues to develop by leaps and bounds.

On the other hand, when simulations look like simulations (as with any board game), users can also more easily recognize--and potentially consider and debate--the assumptions that are built into the game design. That's less likely to occur, I think, as the sophistication of a computer game increases.

Whether this matter depends to some extent on what we're modelling. If it is straight force-on-force, the physics and Pks and so forth have been well understood by the OR folks for years. When we get into social dynamics—so essential to most COIN/stabilization scenarios—its all rather more indeterminate. In those cases, I think there's a real danger of increasingly sophisticated simulations passing off as "fact" what is essentially not very well understood.

This is an argument that one sometimes hears in the physical and design sciences--that for all its remarkable contributions, for example, CAD has also come at a cost in the quality of architectural production. (For those who are interested in the critique, see Sherry Turkle's Simulation and its Discontents). As we develop increasingly sophisticated COIN simulations, and try to capture the complex political behaviour of actors with derived rules or algorithms, there any risk of the same sort of problems?

I don't have a firm position on the issue, but i do think its an interesting set of questions...

[Redleg7]

One of the things I've been wondering about lately is whether advances in computational power, AI, and interface have diminished this made this problem, or made it greater.

On the one hand, we can make both the game interface and the opponent AI much more sophisticated than ever before. Driven by the multi-billion dollar commercial gaming industry, this continues to develop by leaps and bounds.

On the other hand, when simulations look like simulations (as with any board game), users can also more easily recognize--and potentially consider and debate--the assumptions that are built into the game design. That's less likely to occur, I think, as the sophistication of a computer game increases.

Whether this matter depends to some extent on what we're modelling. If it is straight force-on-force, the physics and Pks and so forth have been well understood by the OR folks for years. When we get into social dynamics—so essential to most COIN/stabilization scenarios—its all rather more indeterminate. In those cases, I think there's a real danger of increasingly sophisticated simulations passing off as "fact" what is essentially not very well understood.


I don't have a firm position on the issue, but i do think its an interesting set of questions...

In regards to COIN we have a variety of references, histories, to use as a baseline. The game itself would have to be flexible enough to "tweak" as we apply current lessons learned. And finally it's up to the instructor or proponents of the model to provide any disclaimers in regards to the modeling.

I think a smaller game with narrower learning objectives is very doable.

[Rex Brynen]

In regards to COIN we have a variety of references, histories, to use as a baseline. The game itself would have to be flexible enough to "tweak" as we apply current lessons learned. And finally it's up to the instructor or proponents of the model to provide any disclaimers in regards to the modeling.

I think a smaller game with narrower learning objectives is very doable.

I think what could be interesting would be to randomize some of the baseline social relationships, so that a player/student would be encouraged to ask the right questions, rather than blindly copy historical approaches that were themselves highly contextually dependent.

Take, for example, the relationship between unemployment levels and support for insurgency. In some conflicts the relationship is positive (unemployment creates grievances and makes it easier for insurgents to hire guns), in some cases there is no relationship at all, and in a few cases the relationship is actually negative (employment generates resources which are funnelled to the insurgents). Similarly, tribes and tribal leaders are very important in some places--and not in others.

A truly effective COIN game would encourage the participant to map the human terrain and be wary of cookie-cutter approaches. However, that is a bit of a departure for game designers--who have tended to work with unchanging physics models in the game engine. Still, it could be quite easily done.

[Redleg7]

I think what could be interesting would be to randomize some of the baseline social relationships, so that a player/student would be encouraged to ask the right questions, rather than blindly copy historical approaches that were themselves highly contextually dependent.

Take, for example, the relationship between unemployment levels and support for insurgency. In some conflicts the relationship is positive (unemployment creates grievances and makes it easier for insurgents to hire guns), in some cases there is no relationship at all, and in a few cases the relationship is actually negative (employment generates resources which are funnelled to the insurgents). Similarly, tribes and tribal leaders are very important in some places--and not in others.

A truly effective COIN game would encourage the participant to map the human terrain and be wary of cookie-cutter approaches. However, that is a bit of a departure for game designers--who have tended to work with unchanging physics models in the game engine. Still, it could be quite easily done.

Something along the lines of a COIN SimCity.

[Rex Brynen]

Something along the lines of a COIN SimCity.

That's what UrbanSim appears to be. I haven't played around with the software, but I would be worried if it somehow universalized (say) Fallujah as the model for all urban COIN everywhere always.

[Steve Blair]

That's what UrbanSim appears to be. I haven't played around with the software, but I would be worried if it somehow universalized (say) Fallujah as the model for all urban COIN everywhere always.

And I'm afraid that's what you might see if you went to an all-computer simulation of COIN...depending of course on how dependent you were on the AI. If you used it like a MUD, for example, I could see the utility. The problems begin as soon as you rely on the simulation to provide the majority of the "actors" and even take on the role of factions.

[Rex Brynen]

And I'm afraid that's what you might see if you went to an all-computer simulation of COIN...depending of course on how dependent you were on the AI. If you used it like a MUD, for example, I could see the utility. The problems begin as soon as you rely on the simulation to provide the majority of the "actors" and even take on the role of factions.

Actually, David Earnest (Old Dominion U) had a really interesting article on MMO- type multiplayer approaches to COIN simulation in the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulations last year.

My own classroom simulation is designed around this idea of a large number of participant interactions. It works well--especially the sense of intersecting agendas and the imperfect information flows that it generates--but it's human moderated, and pretty much takes up 90% of my week when I run it. USIP is designing software to support that type of simulation (the Open Simulation Platform), into which you would then "slot" your scenario and setting. This is all text and basic chat, though--no WoW style maps and immersive VR environment (or, for that matter, Night Elf Mohawk grenades).

[Redleg7]

We did an exercise for our Defense Strategic Studies course we did an exercise that incorporated a lot of roleplaying. We used the event capability in Follow Me to trigger the roleplaying. Prior to the exercise we created the areas and triggers for each event. As the cadets conducted their operations events would "pop" based on a trigger, in most cases the trigger was a blue unit entering a specific area. Follow Me has the capability to show jpg, text, audio, or video events.

For this exercise we opted for simple jpg files. Whenever the event fired a graphic would show describing the event, the cadet would decide whethere or not they needed to take action. If they did then they would move to the designated roleplay area.

On the host machine we are able to monitor the events as they were triggered. Whenever one was triggered we would let the roleplayer know so he/she could get into character. If the cadet moved to the roleplayer area the roleplayer would do their thing.

[Rex Brynen]

That's what UrbanSim appears to be. I haven't played around with the software, but I would be worried if it somehow universalized (say) Fallujah as the model for all urban COIN everywhere always.

Update: I got to play around with UrbanSim at I/ITSEC this week, and it's actually a pretty impressive piece of software from what I could see, especially if embedded in a course properly.

[Redleg7]

Hey guys I've created a new Follow Me website. I plan to add a lot more, if anyone is interested in writing an article for the blog portion please let me know.

Here's the link:

Follow Me

I'm still working on the overall look of the site.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

TJ