Wargaming and the perils of LinkedIn

In the last few years, LinkedIn has emerged as a major professional network for those interested in conflict simulation and other serious games. Indeed, not a day goes by that I don't see something of interest posted by one of my wargaming colleagues. This is hardly surprising: LinkedIn has a cultivated professional ambiance, whereas other social media platforms seem niche (Bluesky), out of fashion (Facebook), or outright toxic (X).

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Wargaming in a resilience context

The UK Resilience Academy has published a new insight paper, Wargaming in a Resilience Context. Authored by Rob Grayston, it argues that resilience exercising should borrow deliberately from military wargaming, adapting tools like matrix games, serious games, and megagames to encourage group discovery, surface problems and contingencies, and build a genuine willingness to challenge plans—all within a safe-to-fail environment rather than a scripted, consequence-free tabletop.

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How to Play a Matrix Game – An Introduction (video)

This short video on how to play a matrix game was developed by members of the wargaming team at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, HI.

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Wargaming Conference AWL 2026 registration open

Registration is now open for the 2nd edition of the AWL Wargaming Conference, to be held 15-17 September 15–17 2026 at the Military University of Land Forces in Wrocław, Poland. The theme of the conference is "Comprehensive Security: Advancing Wargaming in Military and Non-Military Domains." The registration form can be found here.

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CNN Academy UCD humanitarian simulation 2026

This past week, CNN Academy and the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin once again held a week-long journalism simulation, combining social media, press conferences, interviews, field reporting, and OSINT challenges with workshops and masterclasses. The scenario was a version of the humanitarian health simulation we held last year in Abu Dhabi. Some 22 students took part, divided into six competing journalism teams, while a dozen others (drawn from UCD students as well as members of the NGOs 

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Penseyres: Towards a wargaming culture in Switzerland

Nicolas Penseyres has just published a piece on wargaming in Switzerland at Stratos (the Swiss Armed Forces Scientific Review), in which he notes that Switzerland has lost much of its past wargaming tradition. He also makes some suggestions on how to rebuild this. You will find the full article below. From Stratego to StrategyDownload

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Connections UK 2026 tickets now live

Tickets are now live for Connections UK 2026. The conference will take place on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 September 2026 at Brunel University of London, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge. This year’s conference will be a smaller, shorter and more focused event, limited to 100 attendees, while continuing our core purpose: bringing together professional wargame practitioners to share experience, develop practice and advance the art, science and application of wargaming.

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Wargaming à Paris 2026

Last week was a very busy week for professional wargaming. On June 23-25, the Connections US conference was held in Monterey. Those very same days, DSET was underway in the UK. And on June 23-24, Wargaming à Paris was underway at the École Militaire, organized by the Académie de défense de l’École militaire (ACADEM) and the Centre interarmées de concepts, de doctrines et d’expérimentations (CICDE).

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Reasonable Worst Case: An NHS outbreak preparedness and response simulation

Last week I had an opportunity to playtest Reasonable Worst Case, a UK pandemic preparedness and response simulation, in my "complexity seminar" on alternative analytical methods at the Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University. The simulation has been developed by PAXsims research associate Zinzi Sibanda, who is also part of the simulation team at CNN Academy (where she has been working, appropriately enough, on public health simulations).

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Simulation and gaming miscellany, 14 June 2026

PAXsims is pleased to present some recent items on conflict simulation and serious (and not-so-serious) games that may be of interest to our readers. Thanks, as usual, to our supporters on Patreon. The YouTube channel French Wargaming discusses how the French military conducts professional wargames with Maxime Yvelin and Antoine Bourguilleau of the Bureau Jeu de Guerre of the Commandement du combat futur (CCF).

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The Chinese Institution for Command and Control on “wargaming”

Kevin Williamson is a senior ORSA (operations researcher and systems analyst) at Metrea. He provided this material for PAXsims. One of my passions is searching for RED Wargaming literature and products ever since USNI Proceedings wrote about China's "Blue Team". At the time, I was working as a Wargaming SME for Matrix Pro Sims supporting Marine Corps University's wargaming program under Tim Barrick and some of what the article covered struck close to what we had been wargaming. 

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Assises Françaises d’Étude du Wargaming 2026 videos

The video proceedings of the Assises Françaises d'Étude du Wargaming 2026 conference held at Sciences Po Lyon in April, are now available. You can also check out our earlier conference report.

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NYT: Why did Strait of Hormuz wargames go unheeded?

Today's New York Times features an article on why decades of wargames and warnings about Iran's ability to close the Strait of Hormuz went unheeded by the Trump Administration. Four possible points of failure are suggested in the NYT analysis: President Trump may have expected Iran's government to collapse quickly before it could act on the strait, partly based on Netanyahu's assurances that regime change was achievable, and buoyed by the recent capture of Venezuela's Maduro.

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Build Britain’s defence on £750bn (simulator)

Shashank Joshi—the outgoing defence editor and incoming Washington bureau chief for The Economist—has constructed a UK defence expenditure simulator, in which YOU the PLAYER, CHOOSE YOUR OWN defence investment plan ADVENTURE. Give it a try here. The comments the simulation makes your proposal—including who in the services, Whitehall or the Cabinet hates your investment plan and leaks criticism to the press—are worth the price (£0) of playing.

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NASAGA 2026

The 2026 conference of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA) will take place in Rochester, New York on 14-17 October. This year’s conference theme is “Sustaining Human Connection through Play in the Digital Age.” As our lives rely more and more on digital tools, we end up spending a lot more time interacting with our phones, tablets, smartwatches, and computers on our own.

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CXUSA26 reminder

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How Russia wargames

The Saratoga Foundation has published a report by Roger McDermott on How the Russian General Staff Conducts Wargames. Key Insights & Takeaways The Central Structural Paradox: Russian General Staff wargaming integrates command-staff games, strategic exercises, mathematical modeling, and political-military signaling to make war intellectually manageable. However, it operates under a severe institutional constraint: it successfully disciplines tactical and operational assumptions but inherently prevents objective strategic feedback from challenging top-down political authority.

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Gaming for humanitarianism (June 2)

On Tuesday 2 June 2026, the Beyond Compliance Consortium (BCC) is offering an online demonstration and reflective discussion on Gaming for Humanitarianism at the York Festival of Ideas, from 1200-1300 BST. Join Rebecca Sutton (University of Glasgow), Marc Linning (Center for Civilians in Conflict) and Daisy Abbott (The Glasgow School of Art), to learn about and see a demo of the BEYOND training tool, a serious game supporting individuals and organisations who work to address harm and need in war.

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CNN Academy 2026 simulation at Georgia Tech

This past week I've been busy with the CNN Academy bootcamp and simulation, in partnership with Georgia Tech. This brought together student journalists from across the United States (Clark Atlanta University, the University of Florida, the University of Tennessee, Penn State, LSU, the University of Georgia, and Georgia Tech itself) for an intensive five-day programme of simulation, workshops, and masterclasses. This year's program focused on…

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CGSA conference 2026

The Canadian Games Studies Association 2026 conference will be held on June 11-14 at Concordia University in Montreal. [T]his year’s chosen theme is “On Repeat”. Beyond the Montreal “threepeat,”  this theme also references the many ways games, players, and game studies are shaped by returns, loops, cycles, respawns, and replays. We particularly invite submissions that explore repetition in its many resonances: as game mechanics, as experienced by players, as nostalgic returns or reboots, as found in historical and cultural cycles, and in revisiting as scholarly practice, to name just a few possibilities.  The conference programme can be found here, and additional information (and a registration link) can be found here.

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Simulation & Gaming (June 2026)

Simulation & Gaming 57, 3 (June 2026) is now available. Editorial How to Use Games and Simulations to Help Our World Become More Resilient in Times of Crisis Marlies P. Schijven and Toshiko Kikkawa Review Effect of Virtual Patient (VP) Software on Pharmaceutical Education: A Systematic Review Rafaella de Oliveira Santos Silva, Vanessa Alves-Conceição, Sabrina Cerqueira-Santos, Dyego Carlos Souza Anacleto de Araújo, Kérilin Stancine Santos Rocha, Fernanda Oliveira Prado, Mayara de Almeida Lima Ribeiro, Luana Andrade Macêdo and Divaldo Pereira de Lyra, Jr. Research Article Perceived Impact of High-Fidelity Simulation-Based Learning on Engagement and Motivation Among Undergraduate Nursing Students in Qatar Mohammed Adnan Al-Hassan

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WWN forthcoming events

The Women's Wargaming Network has a number of events planned in the coming weeks. Check out the full listing at the WWN website.

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Simulation and gaming miscellany, 9 May 2026

PAXsims is pleased to present some items on conflict simulation and serious (and not-so-serious) gaming that may be of interest to our readers. If you enjoy our content, consider becoming one of our Patreon supporters. All contributions go to supporting the website and related projects. At War on the Rocks, Stephen Bittner argues that Acquisition Reform Needs Its Own Wargame…

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Wargaming à Paris (23-24 June 2026)

The Académie de défense de l'École militaire (ACADEM), in partnership with the Centre Interarmées de Concepts, de Doctrines et d'Expérimentations (CICDE), is hosting the inaugural Wargaming in Paris (WàP) event at the École Militaire, Paris, on 23-24 June 2026. In a strategic landscape defined by the return of great-power competition, wargaming is emerging as an essential tool for analysis, anticipation, and decision-making support.

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Save the date: Wargame Connections Suisse 2026

Wargames Connections Suisse will hold its fourth annual conference on 19-20 September 2026. Wargame Connections Suisse 2026 (WCS26)  Location: Centre Général Guisan, Pully, Switzerland  Dates: Saturday & Sunday, September 19–20, 2026 Greetings fellow strategists, analysts, and decision-makers. As we prepare for the 4th Edition of Wargame Connections, I want to take a moment to define what we are gathering for. This isn't just a conference; it is a crucible for Operational Wargaming.

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POLI 452 (conflict simulation) final exam

The centrepiece of my POLI 452 (conflict simulation) course at McGill University is a group serious game design project worth 30% of the overall grade, but the course draws on a range of other assessments too: three short online quizzes during the term (5% each), a mid-term project update (5%), simulation activity credits (10%, based on participation in games, events, and webinars), a research paper/development diary (10%), and a final exam (25%).

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