In what can only be described as shot across the bow to any Army agency not called "TCM-Gaming" the new new TRADOC command policy letter #21 pretty clearly lays a smack-down on any attempts to localize procurement to support training.
The secondary effects, of course, are to (a) consolidate power in the hands of TCM-Gaming, an organization staffed by non-gamers with little/no interest in actually learning about wargaming or participating in the wargaming field in any sort of professional manner* and (b) ensure the continued flow of tax dollars to the 'big boys' of the wargaming/sims world - BAH, LockMart, Boeing, Northrup - who have the battalions of contractors needed to support the bloated legacy sims that are waaaaay to complex for their actual usage.
The interesting question will be how it impacts the training for the FA57 community, whose curriculum often includes non-standard COTS games with the intention of showing the FA57s what the state of the art is among civilian designers. No good idea should go un-stolen, so there's no reason
not to teach the FA57s what's out there, unless you're an Army agency intentionally trying to stifle independent thought so as to maintain iron-fisted control over the acquisitions of toys you approved but don't actually fully understand.
click images to enlarge and read the entire memo
* Quick, name the TCM-Gaming attendees at Connections this year. Can't do it? Neither can they - there weren't any.
By: Brant
Typical Acquisition Corps BS.
ReplyDeleteWell, as the Boss says, it's all about standardization, mobility, and reducing costs.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you're all using the same Thing, and saving money while doing it, who cares if it doesn't work, or you don't learn anything useful?
... appears to me there aren't that many FA57s in the Army, about 450 of them, about half regular and half reserve. It might be an idea to target a few of them with conference invitations or print-and-play "love bombs" to show them what's cooking with COTS games!
ReplyDeleteBrian, Mike Dunn and I do our best in the Simulations electives we teach at CGSC, with a pretty diverse set of things we show/play for at least a few minutes - from Go to Battlefield 2, from Command Ops to Kerbal Space Program, from UrbanSim to Wings of War.... We are discussing the option of showing Andean Abyss, but there's a time-to-payoff tradeoff we haven't figured through yet. (The course in question is bursting at the seams with material; if something goes in, something has to go out.)
ReplyDeleteQuite true James, and thank you for all that you do. Perhaps the reason why there are no FA57s at Connections (have there ever been? I'm sure there must have been) is lack of official release time and $ to go, together with the uncertain professional development payoff.
ReplyDeleteVolko's COIN system (Andean Abyss, now Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain) is good, but there is a definite learning curve and the payoff won't come until after several hours of concentration. But then again the subject matter is pretty deep too...
I believe Major Mike Martin, an FA57 currently teaching at West Point, attended Connections a few years back.
ReplyDeleteThe time to get to understanding the system is one of the major challenges of Volho's system; and there's also the issue of getting the students to see the value in its abstractions as well - which is valuable but AA is not necessarily the best game to drive the point. (I use a number of them to try from various angles - the most explicit push is probably TacOps' abstraction of terrain.)
Mike was there in 2010. He and I were panel co-chairs on the panel with current developments in civilian wargaming
ReplyDeleteGood point James, an important feature in teaching about wargaming is telling what it cannot do, or cannot do well - which leads into why and how things are abstracted, and why and how it often doesn't matter that they are.
ReplyDeleteVolko's system is not inherently complicated - it's a fairly simple flowchart, mechanically - but the time investment comes with needing to understand the abstractions involved, and the implications of the decisions players make. This is the difference between "complex" and "complicated" (in how I use those terms, unless I get confused and switch them around!).