Serious games are good
Alex Vince established the Fast Stream Wargaming Network. In more recent years, he’s been working to promote serious games across the UK Government. Here Alex argues that games have a serious purpose.
Serious games are an important addition to any organisation - especially those aiming to deliver public good.
I have been a Civil Servant for a few years now. In that time I have worked on some of the most pressing crises of the decade - and there have been a lot of them. From the final days of getting ready for the UK to exit the European Union to the initial COVID response, I’ve seen the inside of Government as we navigate periods of risk and uncertainty.
Throughout this, serious games have helped us get our heads around these challenges. From the worst to the weirdest, and helped remind us why we do what we do.
A serious game is a discrete exercise where game design techniques are used to explore serious subjects, often involving participants responding to each other as they make a series of choices, exploring alternative points of view and the consequences of complex chains of events. This could be via red teaming, wargaming, simulations, or other techniques. you can find out more from the MOD Wargaming handbook or the good work done by Policy Lab.
There are four reasons I’d like you to consider exploring using more serious games as part of your work:
Serious games help bring our purpose sharply into focus
Ideas can struggle to cross boundaries. Serious games can help them
Serious games can be a helpful tool to get your head around complex scenarios
It’s important for people to see that they’re contributing to the whole
Example Game: Climate Chaos
We sourced ideas from our science and engineering Fast Stream on achieving Net Zero by running them through a half day game where they had to navigate the world of business interests, protest groups and parliamentary procedure - and took away the ideas they came up with to help deliver our Net Zero goals.
Purpose
Why do our organisations exist? This is often seen as an obvious question, but we often spend months (and spend a fair bit on consultants) creating new visions, setting new missions and re communicating our organisational purposes.
However, I don’t believe this work is redundant. The day to day can be quickly drowned in process and admin work, personnel issues and business cases. The minutiae of doing our part - and working with others - can quickly distract us from the reason our organisation exists.
After drowning in distractions, a good serious game can bring us back to the surface.
Here is the problem. We are this organisation. We are here to do this. Everyone chip in - How do we get it done?
Ideation
“We need ideas.” I’ve heard it many times, especially as we work to tackle some of the most long standing problems in Government.
Yet, talking to a colleague, they reflected “we’ve never actually had a chance to contribute our own.”
There are a lot of rules, spoken and unspoken, that stop ideas from travelling between parts of your team and organisation. “I don’t want to upstage this person.” “I’ve not been here long enough to be taken seriously.” “I can tell people my idea… but nothing would be done with it.”
“If I have an idea, that means I get more work as I’m asked to implement it.”
Within the space of a serious game, especially with good facilitators, you can try and equal the playing field. Put junior colleagues in senior positions. Try out ideas as they come up. Source the wisdom of the team as participants to vote on if a particular idea is likely or not - and follow through with discussion that might be challenging. See what ideas are unearthed once the chips are metaphorically down.
Example Game: Vaccine Distribution
In a post EU Exit world, what are the challenges the UK might face as we race to build up our vaccine capacity? From arranging logistics to a fiercely competitive market, this game saw players explore some of the unique challenges of acquiring vaccines in the face of global demand
Thinking things through
Most colleagues will usually be able to tell you sensible things if you ask them a question. “If A happens, what will that do to B?” or “How will C react to D?”
We are quite good at judging simple cause and effect.
Where we start to trip is when these are chained together. One by one, easy to think through. As a collective? How will X react to Y if C happens while B was going a bit wrong and F was bouldering in unexpectedly?
To follow it all in your head is a challenge. To bring an entire team of people with your thinking is an even greater one. Serious games can take some of that burden, clearly creating a narrative where everyone can see how events have impacted each other - and letting you dive into what may or may not happen five or six steps down the line. To put people into a situation where they can see the consequences of their choices is a powerful tool for analysis and decision making.
Example Game: Influence
How do you navigate a complex series of stakeholder relationships in order to deliver a policy? This game did so - and helped unearth the many unsaid perspectives in a team on how stakeholders interacted with each other, what they could do and how we could meet their needs.
Magic
Why do we do what we do? A love of an endless back of forth over email? To be lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth because you want to spend a tenner? To try and do something simple and find that it has, for some reason, been made frustratingly hard?
For most of us, the jobs we do carry a certain magic. For me, the ancient buildings, the history, the gravitas of the work does a lot to make the frustrating and mundane seem worth it. The idea that my work will eventually lead to someone having a better life - and if we crack something big, we could help millions.
But that magic can sometimes sputter against reality, a dying ember against a cold breeze.
Serious games can help provide a tonic to these ills. They can remind you that it’s not about the emails, the meetings or the process - it’s about working towards something greater. That work can be dynamic, invigorating and fun. That these things should not be an afterthought.
Looking across a table, seeing that spark of competition in one person's eye and another deep in thoughts that remind them why they wanted to be a public servant - all coming together to think through challenges, prepare strategies and fix problems. That’s why we come to work.
Alex also presented at MegaCon in 2021 and you can check out his video about serious gaming below:
What do you think? Does Alex have it right that games are important decision-making tool at the heart of government or should other methods be used? Let us know on our Facebook group!
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