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Over the past several decades, most regional and local conflicts have merely been the scenarios prepared in advance in the "kitchens" of great powers. The aforesaid scenarios are practically tested on simulation-based models that are formed as war games, which considerably save resources and improve the strategic and operational-tactical planning process. Information technology has had the decisive impact on the development of war games resulting in the fact that various software packages have been developed, as well as the systems which provide support to commands and HQs in a decision-making process at all command and control levels. The findings showing that resources can be rationally exploited and financial funds considerably saved indicate the efficiency of applying war games in the operational planning process and cause specific simulation-based models to be developed in commands and HQs of modern armed forces. The aim of this paper is to point out the role and importance of war games in the operational planning process. To that end, various models of war games have been analyzed, along with the possibility of applying them in the operational planning process and activities conducted by the commands and HQs of the Serbian Armed Forces. The paper examines the disadvantages of models that have already been applied in the drill of the Serbian Armed Forces units, at the same time indicating the modern models of war games. The topic has been addressed through four items: 1) the term and characteristics of war games; 2) the elements of war games; 3) the structure of war games and 4) the application of war games in the operational planning process. It has been concluded by the research results that war games are an integral and inseparable part of the operational planning process in modern armed forces and that they are implemented as various models for making decisions during the preparation and execution of combat actions and armed conflicts. The collected findings have shown that war games are an integral part of the operational planning process in the Serbian Armed Forces too, as well as that the level they have reached is not satisfactory and should be improved by being more comprehensively implemented in commands and HQs, provided that automated command-information systems have previously been established. Ensuring that the above-mentioned conditions are met at all command and control levels would contribute to introducing a decision-making support system in an organized manner and improving the efficiency of the operational planning process, and thus making timely decisions while conducting missions and tasks of the Serbian Armed Forces.

As in 2019-20, inter-Korean ties remained frozen, other than a rare lawsuit. Revelations that in 2018 Moon Jae-in's government had pondered building the North a nuclear power plant caused a brief furor. Seoul's propaganda balloon ban backfired, prompting widespread criticism--but no thanks from Pyongyang, which was also unimpressed by scaled-down US-ROK war games. North Korea tested its first ballistic missile in nearly a year, amid concerns of a new arms race; some analysts deemed the South culpable, too. Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong fired four verbal volleys, mostly insults. Another undetected defector highlighted failings in ROK border security. MOU Lee In-young was ubiquitous and loquacious, but scattergun in the causes he championed. Moon's government remained reticent, or worse, regarding DPRK human rights abuses. With just a year left in office, and notwithstanding rare criticism of the North by ministers, Moon was expected to double down on engagement despite Pyongyang's lack of reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that digital war games communicate misleading stereotypes about Muslims that prop up patriarchal militarism and Islamophobia in the context of the USled Global War on Terror. The article's first section establishes the relevance of the study of digital war games to feminist games studies, feminist international relations, and post-colonial feminism. The second section contextualizes the contemporary production and consumption of digital war games with regard to the "military-digital-games complex" and real and simulated military violence against Muslims, focusing especially on the US military deployment of digital war games to train soldiers to kill in real wars across Muslim majority countries. The third section probes "mythical Muslim" stereotypes in ten popular digital war games released between 2001 and 2012: Conflict: Desert Storm (2002), Conflict: Desert Storm 2 (2003), SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs (2002), Full Spectrum Warrior (2004), Close Combat: First to Fight (2005), Battlefield 3 (2011), Army of Two (2008), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), Medal of Honor (2010), and Medal of Honor: Warfighter (2012). These games immerse players in patriarchal fantasies of "militarized masculinity" and place a "mythical Muslim" before their weaponized gaze to be virtually killed in the name of US and global security. The conclusion discusses the stakes of the stereotyping and othering of Muslims by digital war games, and highlights some challenges to Islamophobia in the digital games industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction/background: Achieving a market success is not an easy task for companies. To win in the market companies apply numerous strategic, market and competitive intelligence methods including business wargaming which is considered as one of the most advanced methods. Aim of the paper: The main aim of this paper is to investigate the perception of business wargames practices among strategic and competitive intelligence professionals with special emphasis on results of business wargames. Materials and methods: To achieve the aim of the paper the online survey was conducted among the members of a leading global professional association “Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals”. The survey was sent to 12566 emails from SCIP database. The responses were collected anonymously via Survey Monkey in April-May 2017. As a result 227 responses were collected. Results and conclusions: The results of the study suggest that according to respondents business wargaming allows to achieve results on each of the proposed 5 levels of results representing the cause-effect chain of translating business wargaming effects into business benefits, i.e. insights, recommendations, implementation, competitive situation, measurable benefits. Moreover, the respondents indicate that the business wargaming can be considered a relatively attractive analytical method in terms of its effectiveness. The costs of business wargaming are rated as slightly lower or significantly lower than the benefits. Business wargaming is also assessed as better than any other method of generating insight. The research suggests that the more difficult the conditions for competition, the more commonly the business wargaming method is used. Respondents predict that the use of this method will increase in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern military training exercises often include an information warfare component. Combat manoeuvres and weapon tests may be combined with large-scale information operations, including attempts at mass deception and cultivation of fear via strategic uses of narratives in media. The ways in which fear is constructed in strategic narratives deserve more detailed discursive analysis. In this article, the authors use the largest recent Russian war games on NATO's eastern borders, the 'Zapad 2017' military exercise, as an example to show how to interpret fear narratives. They identify and analyse three strategic narratives that were formulated by Russian official spokespeople in relation to the exercise and uncover some of their underlying meaning-making tendencies: the logic of antithesis, affirmation through negation and the rhetoric of moral victimhood. Their analysis sheds new light on the uses of fear discourses that are more sophisticated and indirect than straightforward threats or (rhetorical) demonstrations of power to inflict damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One might argue that it is precisely within the nothingness of post-war landscapes - where infrastructural ruination encloses possibility and necropolitical forces stifle human and nonhuman life alike - that local, regional and international state and non-state actors produce value and accumulate capital. Manna picks up the task of excavating Syria's well-dug histories of slow violence right where Amiralay had left them off. I Wild Relatives i (2018) is a documentary essay on Syria by Palestinian visual artist Jumana Manna. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Russkaa Starina is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the evolution of wargames from historical tactical and abstract encounters to multivariable and complex historical representations often reflected in the video game genre of Grand Strategy. The article argues that, because of the increasing complexity of historical wargames, there is a need to shift the discipline to the digital space where such complexity can be retained and enable the player to focus on the game's content rather than the technical process of wargaming itself. Grand Strategy video games can alleviate several efficiency problems of physical wargames, while simultaneously providing historical breadth by depicting war and peacetime history, and depth in terms of historical narratives and details. Grand Strategy games also have the potential to support learning outcomes of history units in higher education and can be used as pedagogical tools for the exploration of historical worlds. Grand Strategy video games, and digital wargames more broadly, provide rich, accessible and active learning platforms that can enhance our experience with wargaming and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational, analytical, directed approaches for strategy creation and execution may work for creating value by conventional, hierarchically structured organizations operating in stable environments. However, when the basis of competition shifts from product features to an experience delivered by a network of independently acting participants in a complex and fast-evolving market environment, approaches based on command and control do not work. For order to emerge from such chaos and to gain more control over success, strategy based on reason alone is not enough to inspire action in others. To understand what it takes to effectively make strategy under such circumstances, this article shows how the UK's Royal Marines, in collaboration with more than a dozen different stakeholder groups, developed a novel adaptation of war gaming to affect strategic change in Afghanistan. It also demonstrates the broad applicability of this strategic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After September 11th incident, most of digital game developers commenced developing a variety of games with war theme. These games were inducing U.S. diplomatic and western attitudes toward players. Most of these games are about war and they include attractive designs and interactive features to immerse players; however, these games are transmitting political and ideological attitudes. The sales amount and audience of these games increased gradually in global scale which led to popularity among gamers in the past two decades. This paper is a qualitative analysis with meta-synthesis research method. In this method, after searching, we select 22 related papers among dimestic and international qualitative research in political and war digital games field. The criteria of classification in our research is based on opinion holders that the findings are coded in each class. Theoretical framework of this paper includes Cultural Imperialism and Orientalism approaches. The results of this research confirm that digital games, specifically action and first-person shooting genres with war theme are like enormous powerful media and diplomatic tools in the hands of game companies which are utilized to transmit their political messages to domestic and international players (audience), in order to orient their political, ideological and cultural attitudes, reproduce race, ethnic and religious stereotypes, and perpetuate inverse representation of East.

Despite the long tradition of game-based learning, there are still many unanswered questions regarding the instructional design of educational games. An important issue is the support that learners can be given in a game to enhance their learning. One recommended type of support is "advice," which means giving learners alerts and hints for appropriate actions to take in the game. Our study investigates the functioning of adaptive advice in a complex computer-based simulation game dealing with the area of knowledge management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale for the Article. Professional wargames have long been an integral part of the tool set used by the military. The literature includes many examples of wargames that have been successful in terms of training, military education, procurement, operational analysis and planning for war. However, retrospective examination demonstrates that many of these professional wargames also had major errors in them and by implication current games about future confrontations are similarly flawed. Nevertheless, the academic evidence is clear that such games are still invaluable tools. Methodology. Ten years of research into the development of wargames undertaken by the History of Wargaming Project has analysed and made generally available more professional wargames than ever before. Retrospective examination of a sample of these declassified games, from the British War Office Rules (1896) to more recent games about the Ukraine, shows significant errors. Value. Demonstrating that professional games had errors in the past opens challenges the overconfidence in the predictive capacity of games. It also raises the possibility for future research to identify game design bias and to develop better games in the future. Understanding the value of better games, even with their inherent issues, raise the possibility of better preparing decision makers for the future. Notes. The words wargame and game are used interchangeably in this article. Whilst the techniques used in professional gaming evolved from modelling the battlefield, modern professional gaming is increasingly focussed on other situations that are not war, such as state level confrontations, trade wars, politics, cyber conflict, banking crisis etc. Using the term wargame seems inappropriate when for example, gaming a shipping dispute. All the games referred to this article, unless otherwise noted, are professional wargames, used by military, government, public sector bodies and other parties directly involved in real world issues. The prefix professional has been omitted for brevity in most places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from securitization theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this article examines how the Singaporean government has "securitized" cyberspace governance. It contributes value-add to the existing literature on securitization theory by evaluating the specific backgrounds and preexisting beliefs that securitizing actors bring with them to the securitization process. Taking the case of Singapore, this paper focuses on the military elites turned civilian politicans and policymakers that have been tasked with cyberspace governance. A discourse analysis shows how terminologies describing cyberspace as an "existential" issue and key personnel appointments with significant military backgrounds reflect the prevalance of military elites, terminologies, strategies that have become embedded within domestic cybersecurity governance structures. The use of military-style concepts such as "digital ranges" and "war games" in Singapore mirrors global financial industry trends where military-derived terminology has become widespread in preparing for cyber-attacks on critical information infrastructure. Two key focus areas of cyberspace governance are evaluated: online content regulation of Internet and social media networks, and legislation to protect critical information infrastructure. The paper concludes by discussing a range of concerns raised by the target "audience" of securitization processes, such as civil society and information infrastructure providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the study is to show that war games and simulations used in the Armed Forces to improve military personnel bear the hallmarks of edutainment. Design/methodology/approach: The study is of a theoretical and empirical nature. The theoretical methods used, such as: analysis, synthesis, inference, analogy and abstraction based on literature and other available media specialist sources on the discussed topic. The use of empirical methods was in the form of observations and methods of collecting judgments and opinions with the informal interview technique with representatives from the Centre for Simulation and Computer War Games (CSiKGW). Findings: This researches were aimed at explaining the essence of the concept of edutainment, the concepts related to it, explanation of determinants determining the development of new forms of improvement off human resources in organisations and in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland. It was shown that edutainment is new, interesting form of educatin in so specific hierarchical organisations, such as Armed Forces. Originality/value: Author has obtained expert's opinions on the perception of war games and simulations as an effective form of improvement combining learning with elements of entertainment, i.e. as edutainment. Additional, in the theoretical research showed that edutainment is a successful form of learning and creating knowledge in innovative way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I would like to take a closer look at the hybrid genre of digital documentary (“docu-game”), which is part of a larger group, the so-called “serious games”. Documentary games are both game-specific (rules, levels, opponents, measurable progress, rewards, etc.), and are also strongly based on the facts, playing educational and activist roles. They can be available through browsers, similar to hypertext websites, but are often designed for stationary or mobile consoles. In terms of genres, a significant range can also be observed: platform games, like Never Alone (2014, E-Line Media), adventure games: Valiant Hearts: the Great War (2014: Ubisoft) or 1979 Revolution(2014,N-Fusion),strategic games: This War of Mine (2014, 11bit studios), RPG (educational mode in Assassin’s Creed: Origins [2017] and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey [2018]), or even survival horror: Kholat (2015, IMGN.PRO). The titles I describe present different approach to factual sources: they add documentary footage as cutscenes (Never Alone), they build narration around real events and characters, and make the player’s avatar a fictional character (1979 Revolution), they base the game mechanics on the logic of events in well-defined real circumstances (This War of Mine). Since the works based on a genre-specific hybrid strategy occupy an important place in today’s audiovisual landscape, I think it would be worth further examining this “incompatible” area: a documentary, traditionally combined with truth and seriousness, and digital games, usually associated with fiction and entertainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A current evolutionary hypothesis predicts that the most extreme forms of animal weaponry arise in systems where combatants fight each other one-to-one, in duels. It has also been suggested that arms races in human interstate conflicts are more likely to escalate in cases where there are only two opponents. However, directly testing whether duels matter for weapon investment is difficult in animals and impossible in interstate conflicts. Here, we test whether superior combatants experience a disproportionate advantage in duels, as compared with multi-combatant skirmishes, in a system analogous to both animal and military contests: the battles fought by artificial intelligence agents in a computer war game. We found that combatants with experimentally improved fighting power had a large advantage in duels, but that this advantage deteriorated as the complexity of the battlefield was increased by the addition of further combatants. This pattern remained under the two different forms of the advantage granted to our focal artificial intelligence (AI) combatants, and became reversed when we switched the roles to feature a weak focal AI among strong opponents. Our results suggest that one-on-one combat may trigger arms races in diverse systems. These results corroborate the outcomes of studies of both animal and interstate contests, and suggest that elements of animal contest theory may be widely applicable to arms races generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines simulated battle settings, to analyze how tactics are performed and victory is achieved by observing tacticians dueling in wargames. In contemporary warfare, victory in battle relates to a wide variety of elements. According to military theory, these elements commonly involve deployment, reconnaissance, manoeuvre, breakthrough, tempo, surprise, exploitation, and shock, resulting in enemy organizational breakdown. Ideally, if one side in combat exploits all elements successfully, the likelihood of victory increases. Although the use of the tactical elements is not always obvious to the participants, the study indicates a correlation between using the elements and victory in a wargame setting. Although wargames inherent bias by not being the real world, they are used in training, education and analysis worldwide. The study also illustrates that the participants view tactical victory differently in battle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large amount of research effort has been dedicated to adapting boosting for imbalanced classification. However, boosting methods are yet to be satisfactorily immune to class imbalance, especially for multi-class problems. This is because most of the existing solutions for handling class imbalance rely on expensive cost set tuning for determining the proper level of compensation. We show that the assignment of weights to the component classifiers of a boosted ensemble can be thought of as a game of Tug of War between the classes in the margin space. We then demonstrate how this insight can be used to attain a good compromise between the rare and abundant classes without having to resort to cost set tuning, which has long been the norm for imbalanced classification. The solution is based on a lexicographic linear programming framework which requires two stages. Initially, class-specific component weight combinations are found so as to minimize a hinge loss individually for each of the classes. Subsequently, the final component weights are assigned so that the maximum deviation from the class-specific minimum loss values (obtained in the previous stage) is minimized. Hence, the proposal is not only restricted to two-class situations, but is also readily applicable to multi-class problems. Additionally, we also derive the dual formulation corresponding to the proposed framework. Experiments conducted on artificial and real-world imbalanced datasets as well as on challenging applications such as hyperspectral image classification and ImageNet classification establish the efficacy of the proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an outline of activities related to gaming the historical past and examines the use of an interactive decision-making game about the Danish in 1015-1016 and the Norman in 1066. Topics covered include the types of war games based on the scenarios of the eleventh-century conquests, the type of war game practised by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, and several medieval war games.

Copyright of Revista de Filosofía (0185-3481) is the property of Universidad Iberoamericana Cuidad de Mexico and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)