This is one of gaming's great attributes: It is a generally constructive activity, especially among friends and acquaintances. Games excel at stimulating thought and discussion. In a post on Defense Department war gaming at the Small Wars Journal, Colonel Eric Walters writes, "The best games focus on human interaction between players and insights gained from that experience. Participants walk away from the experience with more questions, better questions and better ideas of where to look for the answers than they did before the game." Games provide space for analysis and conversation in a way that other activities cannot match.
While gaming could deepen our knowledge of unconventional conflict, it's unclear that games covering irregular warfare would be compelling for many gamers. Many experts see difficulties in turning the models into something that people will actually want to play.
Brant Guillory, war game designer for BayonetGames and a military analyst with defense contractor CC Intelligent Solutions, points out that waging a successful counterinsurgency, for example, may involve very little actual combat. In one archetypal scenario he describes, "the firepower your unit has may pale in comparison to the personal diplomacy of the commander, or their ability to repair bridges around town. ... Eventually, you end up with a military-themed game about bridge building and religious tolerance. That might accurately model the events on the ground, but isn't as appealing as a game as, say, D-Day."
Conveying the problems of irregular warfare, especially in the information age, would require that players consider questions of national morale and public opinion, further reducing the appeal of a game. Joseph Miranda, a war game designer and an expert on unconventional conflict, sees some recurring problems with the genre. He explains that "too often UW [unconventional warfare] games are number juggling exercises. ... UW situations tend to lack dramatic moments. They are, in a way, wars of attrition, though the attrition may be of morale."
As a case in point, Neil Garra, a retired Army intelligence officer and now a game designer at his own S2 Company, cites A Force More Powerful (see Troy Goodfellow's profile for The Escapist). The game puts the player in charge of a nonviolent movement aimed at regime change or reform, and accurately simulates a lot of the political and social maneuvering that occurs in unconventional conflict. It also simulates the glacial pace, frustration and tedium of waging a battle for public opinion. The game's strengths are entwined with its weaknesses, according to Garra.
