News and Links
Simulations, news, and links from around the web
Webinar May 13: Leadership through Dramatic Times
Leadership through Dramatic Times Preparing Managers using Model-based Simulations Please join us for a 60-minute webinar to demonstrate how Fortune 500 companies are using Forio off-the-shelf simulations to prepare managers for leadership through dramatic times.
- FREE simulation to play during and after the webinar
- May 13, Wednesday, 3:00 ET / 12:00 PT (1 hour duration)
- Who should attend: L&D Managers, Curriculum Designers and Leadership Consultants
- Topics addresses: leadership, team building,communication, group decision-making, project management, planning and software management
- Register at http://tinyurl.com/ForioLead - space is limited
How the U.S. Government Designs War Games
A recently declassified U.S. war simulation conducted in 1999 by U.S. Central Command to explore post-occupation Iraq scenarios illustrates the use of war gaming within the U.S. government. The formerly secret simulation, called Desert Crossing, included 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence participants who role-played for the exercise. The simulation and seminar was essentially a change management workshop designed to minimize undesireable effects in a post-Saddam Iraq. The simulation relied on a series of descriptive worst-case and most-likely-case scenarios that were intended to be plausible, not predictive, and to present a range of ...
Game Master: The New Yorker Reports on Will Wright’s Spore

New Yorker reporter John Seabrook writes about Will Wright and his upcoming release of his new game, “Spore” by Electronic Arts. Seabrook provides a brief history of gaming, starting with Atari’s Pong, developed by Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn and advancing to “God games” in the late 80s. Seabrook writes: Computer animation is a brute-force project of converting graphic art into two-dimensional pixels, and, more recently, into three-dimensional polygons, the building blocks of digital pictures. But to create a truly absorbing simulation, one that offers some insight into the nature of real life, is a much more ...
Oil God

In Oil God your goal is to drive up gas prices over five simulated years by altering the social, environmental, and political structures of citizens in your unhappy world. You control a world of nine countries, each with its own economy, politics, natural resources and geography. Some countries are net oil importers and others are exporters. As Oil God, you can start wars, introduce natural disasters, and disrupt economies. Your extensive toolkit includes war, civial war, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, and even alien invasions.