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Why Professional and Commercial Wargames are so Different

Professional wargames are quite different than commercial cousins, and not for the reasons you might think. Professional wargames are more complex and difficult to use. The data in professional wargames is more frequently defective and professional games cost far more to create. This sad state of affairs is not the result of some nefarious conspiracy, but simply what happens when large military organizations build wargames. Consider some of the details;

-Most professional wargames have to satisfy a lot of users or, rather, user organizations. There are a lot of people the game developers cannot say no to. This is because the expense of professional wargames, you cannot built one for each specialty. Rather than just build a wargame that helps the infantry do their work, you also have to cover what the signal, logistics, electronic warfare, transportation and, well, you get the idea, need. Building in what everyone needs makes the games more complex and often causes compromises which, well, compromise the integrity of the game. 

-The databases used for most games contain a lot of classified, and incorrect, information. Warriors need ammunition to do their job, wargamers need data. The military recognizes this and much time, money and effort is lavished on building wargame databases. But most of this work is classified secret, which typically means it's not easy to get a lot of people to double check the data. Few people with good knowledge of the data have the necessary security clearance. So errors that get into the database, tend to stay there. Moreover, the programmers and other people who put the database together initially, soon depart for other projects. After than, no one is eager to open up the database to change anything, lest they screw things up. There's also a tendency to accord a database more respect than is deserved. The feeling is that if something is in the database, it must be right. Don't you ever believe this. I've put together a lot of wargame databases and, believe me, people can, and will, put all sorts of odd stuff in a database. Bad data, or stuff that isn't updated regularly, eventually kills a game. In many cases, the users don't even notice what the bad data is doing to their results. The larger and more complex games are a mystery to the users because documentation of how the software works internally is often lacking, as is anyone sufficiently familiar with the source code to go looking for suspected problems. 

-Black Box Syndrome. With a few exceptions, most wargames today, and in the past, are run on computers. The users have no easy way to check how the software is running the war. If the wargame comes up with reasonable (although possibly still erroneous) results, no one makes a stink. The exception to this attitude is in vehicle simulation simulators, especially flight simulators. In the case of these systems, vehicle operators, especially pilots, will conduct a spirited protest if they feel the flight simulator is misrepresenting reality. Operational and strategic level simulators have too wide a range of possible outcomes for a user to be certain that the wargame is in error. Lacking definitive proof, users will eventually come to mistrust the wargame without being able to prove what's wrong and fix it. This is the fate of most professional wargames. Some, like Janus, overcome the problem by being easily configurable (by professional wargame standards). There are many variants of Jamus in use, each configured to a different users requirements. There is even a commercial version of Janus, Brigade Combat Team.

-User Interface:  What the user saw, and ease of use, were never high priorities for professional wargames. This is odd, as much military equipment is designed for ease of use. However, the far superior interfaces of commercial wargames have had an impact. Unfortunately, the developers of professional wargames cannot easily hire experienced interface designers, especially those with commercial wargame experience. In fact, current procurement regulations make it very difficult to bring in people from the commercial side, and commercial wargame developers are reluctant to work for the government. All those audits and the abundant red tape scare them off. And the few who have tried it tell tales of woe that do not encourage others to follow.  

-Validation. Software engineers have long understood the need for validating their products. Without this double checking, new software might not do what was intended. Professional wargames are different. Many are predictive, or attempting to simulate unpredictable combat situations. However, in peacetime, there is no real war to keep the wargames honest, but there are numerous politicians, generals and policy makers who want a specific outcome from wargames. Put bluntly, the results are often decided on before the wargames come into play. Many professional wargames are quite accurate, as occasionally the users will do some validation work to demonstrate this (using a recent battle). But, in general, validation is not a high priority and is avoided as much as possible. Within the professional wargames community, there have been quiet debates over this issue for decades. So far, validation has not caught on. So be careful if you bring it up. 

-Methodology. Professional and current commercial wargames shared the same techniques until the end of World War II. At that point, most professional wargames began to use a more technical approach, attempting to quantify everything and deal with the resulting avalanche of algorithms and calculations by using computers. It took several decades before computers were powerful enough to provide reasonable coverage of the enormous number of things taking place on the battlefield. At that point, the 1970s, several high ranking officials in the Pentagon wondered if these simulations of modern combat could, say, replicate well documented battles from World War II. The dismal results of these tests had two effects. One was to remind everyone how dangerous validation could be. But it was also realized that somewhere along the line history had been purged from professional wargames and maybe it would be a good idea to refer to the past when trying to predict the future. Commercial wargames were doing this with embarrassing regularity. The operations research/quantify everything approach still holds sway, but there is more readiness to learn from historical models as well. But you will find that there is still a sharp divide between the quantify and historical schools. This has the effect of further slowing down the design of current professional wargames to accommodate these debates.

-Lack of professionals. Despite all the work done on professional wargames in the past fifty years, there were few professional wargame designers. The reason was manifold. There were few wargames produced for the military, so those putting them together didn't get a lot of practice. Moreover, many of the games were classified, so only a small number of users became familiar with the inner workings of the games. Before World War II, wargames were all manual. Anyone using them could not avoid becoming familiar with the inner workings of the games. More people in the know about the game mechanics provided a large pool of knowledgeable critics. This disappeared once the games were computerized. Each wargame development project had military people in charge, or at least somewhere in the large teams that brought these games to life. But there was no military specialty for wargames and the officers involved spent a few years at it and then moved on to something else that had nothing with wargames. At the end of the century, the US Army created a job category for wargames, but found that there was no existing professional training courses for wargamers. Some were invented, and other related courses (computer and operations research) were tweaked and renamed. There is still a shortage of military people in professional wargame development projects, and that situation will remain for the foreseeable future.