46Cultural Wargaming: Understanding Cross-Cultural Communications Using Wargames
Jim Wallman
A cultural wargame is a conflict simulation that places the social, demographic, and cultural aspects of the participants in a conflict at the center stage of a game. This is in contrast to games where the focus might be on hardware, logistics, maneuver, or kinetic combat.
A cultural wargame might use a range of different game structures, including some that look very like conventional operational military games. The key difference is one of focus. So, in a typical cultural wargame, players are briefed with their background and objectives that reflect their culture. These might reflect organizational infighting (“Your primary objective is to achieve promotion”), social factors (“Whatever happens, you must ensure that the Nervii tribe do not gain more honor or status than your tribe”), or personal factors (“You need to make money out of this conflict”). These are all distinct from the “pure” problem-solving found in many wargames, in which the task is to optimize operational outcomes or most efficiently maximize the effective use of resources. This distinction is useful when designing games that replicate “wicked problems” or issues where military operations are conducted in a complex human terrain.
Many cultural wargames are designed in the form of seminar games (e.g., “Barwick Green”—see later in this chapter), but the principles have also been applied to large multiplayer map games (e.g., “Crisis in Binni,” “Sengoku,” “Crisis in Britannia”) and games using game boards and counters (e.g., “Henchmen”).
A cultural wargame works by deliberately placing the participants in the position of an unfamiliar culture, with rules and procedures and objectives that reflect that culture specifically and then expose them to a scenario that places strains on their assumptions and challenges them to respond culturally to the crisis. This has educational and developmental outcomes. So, the cultural wargame can be characterized thus:
It exposes hidden assumptions in players, and in exposing those assumptions challenges preconceptions.
It has distinct roles and perspectives.
It includes cooperative as well as competitive interaction.
Nonkinetic nonviolent objectives and outcomes are typical; human terrain and soft factors tend to dominate.
The “rules” are variable and closed—in this context, “closed” means not available to the players but instead operated by the facilitation or control team.
The game is very likely to include a high premium on societal factors.
Organizational Cultures
I have spent many years developing wargames for diverse audiences.1 These have ranged from designs for school educational settings all the way through to games for leadership development of senior two-star leaders in the diplomatic, military, and defense fields. In between these two extremes have been games for military training establishments, the UK Ministry of Defense, museums, corporations, and charities—and of course, for recreational wargamers. Many of those games have used the technique of cultural wargaming, especially with the more senior players.
One of the opportunities created by working with such a variety of audiences is to be able to compare a wide range of organizational cultures and attitudes to wargaming. Within the defense sector, for example, there is considerable interest in reflecting human terrain and soft factors, in particular looking at how, in a future war context, military forces can engage with civilian populations and governments, given that the shape of conflict in the twenty-first century is increasingly being conducted within such complex human terrain.
One of the most common insights from facilitating wargames for organizations in the commercial and the third (i.e., charity) sectors is that they are often most concerned with issues related to organizational functionality and communication. These are not always obvious at the outset, but it comes up again and again in the debriefing and gathering insights stage of games.
There have been three main strands of organizational interest that the cultural wargaming technique has been useful in addressing:
Team development, in particular addressing intercommunication and how to approach hidden agendas. A cultural wargame can expose the effect of those personal agendas on a situation without it being explicitly about the players’ real jobs. With careful debrief and facilitation, the game can give an opportunity for constructive insights.
Personal development. In the context of developing personal leadership and negotiation styles, cultural wargames can create an environment where the participants reflect on their patterns and style—and ask themselves, “Why did I do that?” This is possible in a conventional wargame as well, but in a cultural wargame there is a greater emphasis on intercommunication, and so there are usually greater opportunities for useful and reflective interactions.
Understanding different cultures. By framing the game materials and in particular personal briefings for each player, some understanding of a different culture, or even the effects of a clash of cultures, can develop. Of course, this might also be achieved by reading material on different cultures, but in the case of a cultural wargame, by interacting within the game environment, the emerging gameplay gives the players an opportunity for “learning by doing,” in greater depth and this will help to embed that understanding.
In developing a cultural wargame, we look at the key questions that explore motivation and decision making within the game. As the game unfolds, we find that in the majority of cases a player’s actions were based on either a set of assumptions that were untested, or on some underlying assumptions about the other players, their attitudes, or their behaviors. And in interrogating these assumptions we find that they are very often culturally influenced. Every society has its rules, taboos, norms, and conventions. In the wider context, an organization is a microcosm of society as a whole. However, it isn’t always fully representative of that wider culture and can easily become a specific, self-selected, subset—in some ways even blind to alternatives or different perspectives.
Perspectives on Other Cultures
My wargame designs for educational and recreational audiences have, over many years, expanded on this theme: looking at familiar subjects and historical periods through the lens of another culture or civilization. I quickly discovered that these approaches and methods are, and have been, eminently transferable to the “serious” world of professional wargaming. To give some examples of what I mean:
A game on the Vietnam War entirely from the Vietnamese perspective. This game turns around ideas of how the cultural norms in Western culture, in particular how “the other” is viewed. In this game, the interactions between the various nationalist, rural, and regional groups and the South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese governments are played out, looking in particular at political, economic, and social objectives. The involvement of the United States and its allies is treated as an uncontrollable external factor that intervenes semirandomly, often with tremendous force.
A game on the 1941 invasion of Malaya from the Japanese perspective. This campaign was, and still is, regarded as a terrible disaster for the British Empire, often seen to have been overmatched by a ruthless and efficient enemy skilled in jungle warfare. Turning this story around shows the confusion, lack of capabilities, and genuine uncertainty on the Japanese side, as well as their assessment of how a colonial power might resist. From this perspective one can examine crucial differences in understanding and attitude and see how outcomes are less certain when viewed from the “other side of the hill.”
A game set in the world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but from the orcs’ perspective. In the books, the orcs are an unspeakably evil species, in effect an untermenschen, and have absolutely no redeeming features. But what would it be like to represent these ultimate outcasts? What are their motivations, objectives, and society like? This game tests assumptions in a challenging way and looks at how behavior and communication are thoroughly defined by preconditions and cultural assumptions (in this case, that “orc” is equal to evil).
This “countercultural” gaming exposes players to some key experiences and can, on a good day, not only fundamentally challenge their understanding of the scenario but also create some profound reflections on the nature of their own culture.
Spoken and Unspoken Assumptions
In a cultural wargame we use the scenario to expose assumptions. These are grouped into four types and then reflected in the game structure and team/player briefings at one level or other.
Spoken assumptions. These are the obvious: given hierarchies, professional skills, organizational habits, and rituals that underpin how we work. This is typically modeled in the visible game structure and understood by all.
Implicit assumptions. These involve what you think you know about the other. These are reflected in player-specific team briefings and in some cases form a key part of the background to the game and for the players. Playing the game can be a vehicle for gaining insights into players’ own implicit assumptions.
Unspoken assumptions. Language, rules, and acceptable behavior are all present but deliberately not always made explicitly clear because it is assumed that “everybody knows.” This is a fertile area for development through the game medium because different players or teams of players will be given (or bring with them) a set of “everybody knows” unspoken assumptions.
Hidden assumptions. These are assumptions you don’t know you are making. These have the potential to make all of the above useless; they are possibly the most interesting type of cultural assumption and one that is amenable to being brought out as an outcome from the game. Good facilitation and postgame debrief will help players reflect on and identify those hidden assumptions—and in the context of developing team communications, this is often the most valued takeaway from the game. Carefully setting game briefings and objectives create opportunities for these hidden assumptions to enter the emerging gameplay.
Built into every wargame, every scenario, and (I would argue) every participant are both spoken and unspoken cultural assumptions. Military audiences have readily identifiable spoken assumptions: their hierarchies, professional skills, organizational habits, and rituals; these are generally known to all parties and can be easily accessed. On the other hand, the unspoken assumptions are both more interesting and more likely to cause friction. Unpacking these unspoken assumptions is a challenge, but it can be managed by the imaginative use of a wargame in the right setting, and in a cultural wargame this is an explicit outcome or insight from a given game. Additionally, one may want to expose participants to cross-cultural communication from the operational environment: things such as working with allies, engaging the political environment at the village level, or interacting with the more general human terrain in the game.
“Barwick Green: An Everyday Tale of Country Folk”
This is a game and scenario that I have run as a non-theater-specific example. It is deliberately rather fantastic in order to illustrate the point.
Game Structure
This is a map-based seminar game. It is facilitated by “Game Control,” one or two entities who represent all the external factors and create, in the minds of the players, the game environment by adding to descriptions in the briefings, introducing key events (following a set of event guidelines), and ruling on the outcomes of interactions or players’ actions. Gameplay takes place with a large reference map of the village and its environment, and ideally with some breakout space for private discussion between the main players.
Scenario
At some undetermined time in an alternative present day, England is undergoing a bitter quasi-civil war. Outside the big cities the rural villages are run by traditionalists who hold on to ancient rituals and beliefs (such as belief in the Church of England, listening to or watching the BBC, drinking tea, and eating fish and chips), and these are often infiltrated by the violent extremists from the Albion First Movement and the National Freedom Front. UN forces have been deployed on peacekeeping in the County of Borsetshire, with troops patrolling the various villages. The game focuses on the tiny fictional village of Barwick Green.
Player roles:
Local wealthy landowners.
Local tenant farmers.
Pub landlord.
Smallholding farmers.
Local notables: the vicar, the chair of the Women’s Institute, a local middle-class busybody, a village policeman, a shopkeeper.
UN peacekeepers.
UN translator/civil advisor.
The villager players (some of them in teams) are all aware of their place in the economy and society of the village. They have personal status, which they are encouraged to guard jealously. They need to work to make some in-game money (the game system has players generating income via the “day job”), although the game’s background of unrest and insurgency has an impact on their income. Taken altogether, these factors create a working environment and set an important part of the context.
Some of the villagers have private sympathies with the extremists. However, there are no village players briefed to be part of the extremist faction at the start of the game. The UN players do not know this, and might make assumptions that the village contains active insurgents—this last bit is important, as the core scenario model is of an otherwise peaceful village placed in an unusual, challenging, and potentially stressful new situation.
Into this peaceful village scenario comes a UN military force. This force does not need to be played, but it can add to the scenario when it is; it can also easily be run by Game Control. Where the game participants are military in real life, then the incoming force must be one utterly unfamiliar to them—say, UN troops from Bangladesh, Nigeria, or Angola, for example. In some cases—for example, if this is being played outside the United Kingdom—the basic cultural assumptions will be unfamiliar. In one game played in the United States, an American player playing one of the villagers had to have it explained that everyone didn’t own a pistol and no civilians have automatic weapons legally in the United Kingdom (although farmers might have a shotgun).
Issues that arise from the peacekeepers might include:
Repeatedly getting people’s names wrong, especially mispronouncing them.
Misunderstanding the role of the Church of England.
Not paying attention to the established social hierarchy.
Ignoring the economic necessities of the village; e.g., some people need to travel to the nearby town to work, farmers need to congregate at market.
An unspoken assumption that all the villagers are untrustworthy or extremists.
Issues around gender and particularly the roles of women as leaders in society.
The villager players get to explore the concerns, objectives, and daily life in a village and test these assumptions against what they think might be the motivations and objectives of the UN forces.
If the UN peacekeepers are played, they will have objectives based in their home culture, including attitudes to women, alcohol, music, and religion and their own social norms. For example, a predominantly Muslim peacekeeping force might have to take particular measures to keep their troops out of the pub. Care is taken with these briefings not to resort to simple cultural stereotyping; however, the UN briefing gives depth and can be educational for players unfamiliar with an alien culture.
Usually, in this sort of game, the villager players quickly become frustrated at their lack of power and how they are marginalized and (unintentionally perhaps) treated with disrespect. In many games like this, some players quickly become militant, as one would expect, though it is also the case that players engage with their roles so that conflict and tension among the villagers is as important as between the villagers and the UN.
Typically “Barwick Green” takes about half a day; there are longer versions that can run for a couple of days, with a more complex scenario and additional injects such as rural council meetings and activities by extremists. These specific crisis points can deepen the game considerably, but the game doesn’t need to be long or especially elaborate for the point to be made; it can achieve some really good outcomes in just a couple of hours.
Outcomes
The outcome and insight debrief of a game such as this is essential, as participants will often reflect on their own communication practices, especially if they are explicitly invited to do so. Open questions such as, “How did you feel your decisions/actions affected the interplay between the villagers and the UN, and how might that have been different?” start meaningful conversations about cultural difference, assumptions, and most important, perceptions of the other.
Typical outcomes and insights from a game like “Barwick Green” include:
Modeling cultural difference. The players are challenged and given the opportunity to draw insights about how they approach cultural difference.
Drawing out participants’ hidden assumptions.
Observing and extracting insights into individual negotiation approaches and options analysis.
Making the familiar unfamiliar, which generates opportunities for explicitly exploring “perspective bias.”
Through games like “Barwick Green,” the cultural wargame, either as a stand-alone game or as a key component of a conventional wargame, has a great deal of utility in reflecting the social and human terrain aspects of a wargame scenario. In its use of different perspectives and its careful development of roles and briefings, it brings out insights that might be much harder to achieve using other techniques.
Figure 46.1 Berwick Green map and counters.
Figure 46.2 Berwick Green map and character cards.
About the Author
Jim Wallman is a professional game designer specializing in manual games for developing insights, strategy, and team development and for education, with more than twenty years of experience in the field. He has designed and delivered map wargames at the political, strategic, and operational level for the UK Defense community; board games for the British Army; more than forty published sets of sand table wargaming rules; and command and decision games covering issues such as equipment development, political crises, strategic planning, and civil disorder. He has worked extensively with the corporate, public educational, and voluntary sectors, in particular designing and implementing games for senior leadership development and analytical wargames for the UK Ministry of Defense. His background and training is primarily in the social science and history fields, with a particular interest in the practical application of positive psychology to game structures.
