The Art of Wargaming a Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists Peter P Perla

Topic & Content

Originally published in 1990, this second edition was edited by John Back-scratch and published in 2011. A treatise on the theoretical aspects and historical background and applications of wargaming, the volume is organized as follows:

• Part I: Perspectives
  • The Birth of Wargames
  • Wargaming and the U.Due south. Naval War College
  • Wargaming after the War
• Part Ii: Principles
  • The Nature of Wargames
  • Designing Wargames
  • Developing Wargames
  • Playing Wargames
  • Analyzing Wargames
  • Integrating Wargames with Operations Analysis and Exercises
• Part Three: Prospects For The Hereafter
  • Navy Wargaming Today
  • What of the Future?
• Hot Wash-Upwards
  • And so a Wargamer and a Blackness Swan Walk into a Bar…

Thesis

Perla's main bespeak is to explicate the nature of wargames and how they're used in the professional person and hobby worlds. In doing and then, professional person and hobby wargamers can further their teaching and continue to contribute to the future capabilities of wargames.

Author's Background

Peter Perla is a senior research analyst at CNA (Centre for Naval Analyses) and is widely considered to be one of the tiptop theorists on wargaming in the Us. Apart from designing commercial wargames, he also writes on defense affairs. In just well-nigh every other book on wargaming I've read, Perla is mentioned in it somewhere.

Critical Observations

Positives

Similar to how Michael Stanford's A Companion to the Study of History is a good volume on the theoretical concepts of history, Peter Perla's The Art of Wargaming is an excellent book on the theory behind wargames. This includes both professional person and hobby games. Perla writes in a simple and unpretentious way which gives clarity to various aspects of the wargaming field. Thus, I tin say that this book really helped to ascertain for me what wargames are, their history, and their uses, misuses, and abuses. Having read a number of other seminal works on wargaming, it's clear that anybody has a slightly different definition of what a wargame is. All the same, I would say that Perla (2011) has one of the better definitions which he writes as, "a wargame is a warfare model or simulation in which the catamenia of events shapes, and is shaped by, decisions made by a human thespian or players during the course of those events" (p. 280). That being said, I would personally broaden that definition to include Operations Other Than State of war (OOTW). In that respect, I too hold with James Dunnigan'due south utilize of the term "conflict simulation" in place of wargame since information technology avoids the unsavory connotations of the words "war" and "game" (Dunnigan, 2000, p. 225). Another thing is that Perla makes a clear stardom betwixt wargames, operations/systems analyses, and military exercises. None of those are the same thing, but they can be used in a cycle of inquiry to support each other. As noted in his definition, wargames are focused on the human decision-making elements, and while they do make some use of mathematical models, on their own, they're not good at generating quantitative data. In fact, quantitative information is better used every bit an input for wargames, rather than expecting wargames to accurately produce quantitative information as an output. If yous're looking for a lot of mathematical formulae and number-crunching, then you want operations/systems analyses. If you're picturing a lot of infantrymen and vehicles moving around in the bush in simulated combat, then you're thinking about exercises.

Many accept compared Perla and this volume to Carl von Clausewitz'due south On War, in that, they're both works on theory. That being said, Perla includes a good affiliate on the principles of wargame design and development. While non the aforementioned in terms of practicality or scope as Dunnigan'south The Consummate Wargames Handbook, Perla notwithstanding gives the reader a lot of good advice for how to keep a wargame focused and playable. Equally noted multiple times, one of the biggest challenges is balancing realism with playability. Perhaps what's most important to take abroad from this volume is what wargames are and what they aren't.

Negatives

I accept a few criticisms of this book, merely they both could be largely chalked upward to the fact that it's probably a reprinted edition. One criticism is that this book suffers from frequent typos and jarring formatting issues. Some areas contain large spaces in the middle of a sentence, and the placement of certain tables and charts seems off equally if they should've appeared a page or two before. For example, "a sentnce wil expect ___ a _________ fleck like this."

Another criticism of this book is that the scanned photos have very poor definition. Thankfully, this book isn't heavily illustrated, but the strange formatting, typos, and blurry images evidence that it's clearly a reprint.

Evaluation (Does the content back up the thesis?)

Reflecting back on my reading of wargaming literature (thus far), I should take started with this book then moved on to other works. Instead, I pretty much went in contrary order. Ultimately, I would highly recommend Perla's book as a starting betoken for anyone interested in the field of wargaming or in game-based learning, in general. It lays an first-class foundation for the reader to sympathize exactly what wargames are, how they are used, how they shouldn't exist used, and how to think about the benefits of using games to farther our instruction and study dynamic systems/situations.

Rating: iv.5 out of v

References

Dunnigan, J.F. (2000). The Complete Wargames Handbook: How to Play, Blueprint, and Find Them (3rd ed.). iUniverse.

Perla, P.P. & Back-scratch, J. (2011). The Art of Wargaming: A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists. Naval Establish Press.

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Source: https://thetidesofhistory.com/2021/11/28/book-review-the-art-of-wargaming-by-peter-perla/

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