Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Educational wargaming has gained increasing attention in higher education andprofessional military education as a form of experiential and game-based learning. Despite this growing interest, empirical research on educational wargaming remainsfragmented. This article presents a semi-systematic review of empirical studies oneducational wargaming published between 2014 and 2024. In addition to mappingempirical research, the review introduces a conceptual framework for analysing howlearning is articulated, operationalized, and theoretically grounded.Across fifteen peer-reviewed studies, the review examines three interrelated questions:what contexts, game formats, and learning objectives characterize educationalwargaming; how learning is conceptualized, operationalized, and empirically examined;and how learning theory is integrated with wargaming theory and practice. Theanalysis draws on the Presage–Process–Product (3P) model to structure comparisonsacross research designs, educational settings, and game formats. The findings showvariation in how educational wargaming is designed and studied. While many studiesreport positive learning outcomes, such as increased engagement, improved decisionmakingskills, and conceptual understanding, approaches to assessing learning areoften inconsistent and limited. The review identifies gaps in the literature, includinglongitudinal research, insufficient attention to facilitation and debriefing processes,and weak integration between wargaming practices and learning theory.

Professional military wargaming constitutes a form of simulation-based training in which participants collaboratively manage unfolding tactical scenarios under institutional constraints. Conducted as digital, map-based exercises in officer education, such wargames require cadets and instructors to coordinate decisions, responsibilities, and interpretations of simulated events in real time. This study engages with the role of laughter in such simulated military operations, examining how laugher and “light-heartedness” (see Lymer, Lindwall, and Sellberg, 2025) functions as a mediator between professional and frivolous framings of wargaming as a pedagogical activity. 

This follows an emergent set of studies opening the “black box” of simulator practices (see for example Lymer & Sjöblom, 2024 for a review), by examining laughter as a collaborative resource in both gameplay and debriefing phases of wargaming. The interactional functions of laugher in simulator practice has previously been studied by Lymer, Lindwall, and Sellberg (2025), and the present study extends this focus to the realm of military education. Pedagogical wargaming has had relatively little scholarly interest, but Frank (2011) provides an relevant study of how pedagogical and competitive framings of wargaming counteract each other. 

Drawing on approximately 25 hours of audiovisual data from naval wargames in the Swedish Defence University’s officer program, we adopt a multimodal conversation-analytic approach (Mondada 2019) to examine how participants coordinate action through talk, gaze, bodily orientation, and the timing of laughter. Rather than treating laughter as an expression of internal emotion, we analyze it as a situated, sequential practice that shapes participation and accountability (Glenn 2003; Jefferson 1984).

The analysis shows that laughter plays a key role in organizing collaboration under conditions of competitive pressure. During gameplay, cadets deploy laughter to frame tactical moves as clever or provisional, to acknowledge miscalculations without undermining team cohesion, and to negotiate shifts between competitive and pedagogical orientations. In moments of simulated failure or escalating tension, laughter enables participants to recalibrate the seriousness of the activity, sustaining joint engagement while preserving professional alignment. In debriefings, instructors strategically join or resist such laughter to rekey events as objects of collective reflection, thereby redistributing epistemic authority and guiding shared meaning-making.

By tracing how laughter coordinates transitions between action and reflection, we demonstrate how professional learning in simulation is accomplished through embodied, collaborative interaction. Wargaming emerges not simply as a pedagogical technique, but as a social setting in which roles, responsibilities, and standards of professional judgment are continually negotiated. In line with SimPro’s focus on collaboration in simulation, the study highlights how seemingly minor interactional practices contribute to the collective production of professional knowledge. Through detailed analysis of laughter in action, the paper advances understanding of simulation-based learning as a fundamentally social and situated process.

References

Frank, A. 2011. “Gaming the Game: A Study of the Gamer Mode in Educational Wargaming”. Simulation & Gaming, 43(1), 118-132. 

Glenn, P. 2003. Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge University Press.Jefferson, G. 1984. “On the Organization of Laughter in Talk about Troubles.” In Structures of Social Action, 346–369. Cambridge University Press.Lymer, G., O. Lindwall, and C. Sellberg. 2025. “Laughter, Failure Talk, and the Sensitive Nature of Negative Feedback.” Classroom Discourse.Mondada, L. 2019. “Contemporary Issues in Conversation Analysis: Embodiment and Materiality, Multimodality and Multisensoriality in Social Interaction”. Journal of Pragmatics 145: 47-62

This presentation focuses on the potential of naval wargaming for how military cadets collectively develop battlefield acumen. Through interaction analyses of video-recorded material from officer training in a digitally mediated wargame context, the study examines how interactions between cadets shape a distributed battlefield acumen, sometimes with the aid of military instructors. With a particular focus on a critical interaction phase – where contingencies are noticed, and future courses of action are introduced – the study investigates how cadets negotiate a shared situational understanding during complex naval scenarios.

Hulterström (2024) defines battlefield acumen as a crucial cognitive capacity for military success, encompassing situational awareness, problem-solving, and decision-making under uncertainty. While Hulterström primarily conceptualizes battlefield acumen as an individual capacity, he explicitly identifies team dynamics and collaboration in wargaming as a vital area for future research. This study responds to Hulterström's call by empirically investigating the collective dimension of battlefield acumen, aligning with established research on situational awareness in military contexts (Endsley, 2015; Stanton et al., 2017), which increasingly recognizes the distributed and social nature of awareness in complex operational environments.

The groups operate within a staff structure where cadets assume leadership roles, significantly impacting the negotiation and development of collective battlefield acumen. Drawing on authority-in-interaction (Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012), preliminary analyses explore how parts of this acumen emerge sequentially through epistemic and deontic negotiations between participants and focus on how cadets assert, challenge, and acknowledge each other's knowledge claims (epistemic negotiations) and decision rights (deontic negotiations) during gameplay. This approach aligns with previous research on how authority relations shape joint decision-making processes (Clifton et al., 2020; Bennerstedt & Svärdemo Åberg, 2024).

By "opening the black box" of moment-by-moment interaction, the study illustrates how the group's collective battlefield acumen is not the sum of individual understandings but rather a dynamic, socially negotiated practice that emerges in interaction. This work lays the foundation for future research that could combine interaction analysis with pre- and post-testing methodologies, potentially creating a more comprehensive understanding of how wargaming environments facilitate the development of both individual and collective battlefield acumen.

References

Bennerstedt, U., & Svärdemo Åberg, E. (2024). Educational leadership in collegial decision-making? How course leaders and teachers participate and influence decisions in planning meetings. Qualitative Studies, 9(3), 8-41.

Clifton, J., Larsson, M., & Schnurr, S. (2020). Leadership in interaction. An introduction to the Special Issue. Leadership, 16(5), 511-521.

Endsley, M. R. (2015). Situation awareness misconceptions and misunderstandings. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 9(1), 4-32.

Hulterström, P. (2024). From Play to Power: A Philosophical Inquiry into How Educational Wargaming Can Help Cultivate Battlefield Acumen. Åbo Akademi University Press.

Stanton, N. A., Salmon, P. M., Walker, G. H., Salas, E., & Hancock, P. A. (2017). State-of-science: Situation awareness in individuals, teams and systems. Ergonomics, 60(4), 449-466.

Stevanovic, M., & Peräkylä, A. (2012). Deontic Authority in Interaction: The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(3), 297-321.

Debriefing sessions play a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of simulations for learning in professional education and training. In this paper, we focus on post-game debriefing sessions in military officer education, where wargames are used with the goal of enhancing students’ understanding of military tactics. The central focus of this article is how the concept of tactics is used in the debriefings. The study was undertaken at the Swedish Defence University, where video data were collected from a variety of wargaming-based tactics courses for navy and marine cadets (officer students). Using a microethnographic approach, we analyze a set of video-recorded post-wargaming debriefing sessions. In the examination of the practical reasoning present in the discussions, we find that participants engage with the concept of tactics in three main ways: (1) Delineating it from other forms of related but separate areas of military knowledge (such as team communication and leadership); (2) as part of “tactical reflections” on specific events in the game, by both students and teachers; and (3) as a generalizable and transferable military skill. The adversarial nature of wargaming plays a significant role, where the goal of creating dilemmas for the opponent is important throughout. Knowledge of tactics is found to not be transparently communicated through participation in the wargame, but to require unpacking in reflective discussions. The analyses show how the concept of tactics is articulated by teachers and appropriated in students’ post-game reasoning. We discuss these findings in terms of conceptual socialization.

Wargaming is a longstanding educational method used in military training to enhance officers' decision-making and tactical acumen. The current security environment has led to increased interest in diverse wargaming formats among military and civilian stakeholders (Hirst, 2024). Despite this resurgence, empirical research on instructional interactions within wargaming contexts remains sparse.

Drawing upon studies of instructional interactions in simulations (Sellberg, 2017, 2018; Sellberg & Lundin, 2017) and occasioned instructions (Lindwall, Lymer & Greiffenhagen, 2015), this research explores military instructors’ pedagogical interventions during wargaming exercises. Using ethnomethodologically informed conversation analysis of roughly 10 hours of video from naval tactical education at the Swedish Defence University, the study examines interactional and embodied interactions between instructors, cadets, and the digital, map-based wargaming environment.

The analysis identifies three primary intervention patterns: guiding questions prompting tactical reflection, explicit calls for meta-reflection at pivotal moments, and corrective interventions that reshape hasty decision-making processes. These interventions are characterized by their situated nature, being sensitive to specific game events and emerging tactical situations while simultaneously maintaining broader educational objectives.

By closely examining these occasioned instructions, the study highlights how instructors reveal critical simulation elements otherwise inaccessible to cadets, such as resource depletion, altered tactical conditions, and the necessity for reevaluation of plans. Specific attention is given to embodied interactions—including gestures, physical positioning, and visual orientations—that facilitate collective understanding. These findings contribute both to our understanding of instruction-in-interaction in complex learning environments, as well as to the development of pedagogical strategies for military educational wargaming.

In this article we review studies of interaction in post-simulation debriefing. The focus is on research that takes an interest in the sequential unfolding of debriefing conversations, using recordings of naturally occurring interaction as data. While a growing number of studies have examined learning outcomes in debriefing using quantitative methodologies, relatively little is known about the details of debriefing interaction. We take our point of departure in prior meta-analyses of post-simulation debriefing, and discuss this research in relation to the burgeoning field of research that employs a video-ethnographic perspective, broadly informed by conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. We identify two prominent themes in the existing interaction analytic research: facilitator guidance, and the use of performance review media. In both these areas, we discuss how studies of interaction contribute to new conceptualizations of debriefing through a complementary perspective on simulation-based learning. We also identify a set of promising areas of future research into the interactional accomplishment of post-simulation debriefing: self-led debriefing; debriefing structure; the disciplinary shaping of debriefing interaction; and the sensitive nature of feedback.

This book offers an overview of how conflicts are represented and enacted in games, in a variety of genres and game systems. Games are a cultural form apt at representing real world conflicts, and this edited volume highlights the intrinsic connection between games and conflict through a set of theoretical and empirical studies. It interrogates the nature and use of conflicts as a fundamental aspect of game design, and how a wide variety of conflicts can be represented in digital and analogue games.

The book asks what we can learn from conflicts in games, how our understanding of conflicts change when we turn them into playful objects, and what types of conflicts are still not represented in games. It queries the way games make us think about armed conflict, and how games can help us understand such conflicts in new ways.

Offering a deeper understanding of how games can serve political, pedagogical, or persuasive purposes, this volume will interest scholars and students working in fields such as game studies, media studies, and war studies.

This paper presents a planned study aimed at developing knowledge of interaction in game-based learning. Specifically, it is a study of debriefing in military education, where wargames are used to develop knowledge and skills in military tactics.