1.
The USIP OSP (a Game Making Tool) and its Raison D'être
2.
Developing a Simulation to Improving
Thinking Around the War on Drugs
(WOD)

From BOGGSATT* to Holodeck
One can think of a technology spectrum running from simple role play up to full immersion simulation. The
USIP OSP sits near the middle of this (now) and deals mostly with strategic communications.
* Bunch of Guys and Gals Sitting Around a Table Talking.

* Technology becomes ‘invisible’ when it is completely ubiquitous.

It’s the opposite of ‘proprietary.’ Essentially anyone can see and modify the underlying source code. Some examples include …
1.
Moodle
2.
Wikipedia (Open Source-ish)
3.
FireFox
4.
Apache
5.
Linux
“Linux makes Windows better.”
Ted Kaelher of ManTech

Ohloh estimated project cost: $2,871,441 on 4/4/2012

According to the web site of David Wheeler, if one were to develop Linux 7.1 from 2001,
“It would cost over $1 billion …”
“It includes over 30 million physical source lines of code (SLOC).”
“It would have required about 8,000 person-years of development time, as determined using the widelyused basic COCOMO model.”
Linus Torvald did not contribute all 8,000 personyears. He created something ‘good enough’ for others to contribute to. He created the crystal.

Student (After Playing in our Afghanistan Reintegration Simulation)
This simulation made me realize that theory is so much different from practice. Even if we have a clear plan and good intentions, problems always happens… I have never been sensitive about how to write something as I was today.
Instructor (Facilitating Simulation)
Today was great - the kids were using the Simplatform during class while they did research, and they were getting a lot done. It was actually really interesting watching them. They also seem really into it - they're excited about trying out something new like this. "Thanks" doesn't seem like enough, but really, thank you!

Student (After Partaking in Creating Simulations)
The creation of online simulations through the OSP was surprisingly easy. Drafting the storyboard and materials are the hardest part of the process, but once those documents are completed they can be easily plugged into the online simulation platform. Programming a simulation is pretty straight-forward and does not require any in-depth training; and the online tutorial provides the basic information necessary to start the process. As a result the
OSP is program suitable for novices to experts in the field, as it can produce simulations as simple or as complicated as the creator desires.
Instructor (At GWU, where students authored simulations)
Simulation design and facilitation has always been something that has been carried out in institutions, in universities, and in expensive training programs. It has been, until this point, only available to the elites. The OSP levels the playing field by providing access to these life changing skills for anyone with an internet connection.

Enabling terrible authors since 1439

We Need to Improve
Human Decision Making at All Levels

Empathize with your enemy
Rationality will not save us
There's something beyond one's self
Maximize efficiency
Proportionality should be a guideline in war
Get the data
Belief and seeing are often both wrong
Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning
In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
Never say never
You can't change human nature

The lack of extraterrestrials may also be telling us something -- Beware the enfranchisement of the angry young man.

We Need to Improve
Human Decision Making at All Levels
Good Intentions are Not Enough, and we need to be able to show that.
In Sierra Leone, the rebels and the government learned how to ‘game’ the humanitarian relief system.
(Source “The Crisis Caravan”)
Image taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/africa_sierre_leone_amputee/html/2.stm

•In “ Business Dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world ” the story is told of DuPont’s efforts to change their maintenance procedures. (They were paying 10 to 30% more and getting 10 to 15% less up time.)
•They had their ‘Hairball’ diagram. They proved that changing the way they did maintenance would save about 9 million a year. This did not change the behavior or culture of the organization one iota.
•They had to create a game to allow people to experience months of simulated time in the span of several hours. They had to let people experience their models and see ‘worse before getting better’. This finally changed their behavior and culture.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
– Niccolo Machiavelli

“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation .”

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People like to win games.
Being able to win a game often means getting to understand what is under the hood.
Getting under the hood on real world problems is tricky since issues are always complex and everyone has an opinion.
Casting these opinions into transparent formal models allows us to take the discussion to a higher level, and opens the possibility to actually change thought and behavior.

It is extremely costly in lives both inside and outside of the US
It is terribly destabilizing
The common paradigm is the ‘balloon’ model: push on it here, and it expands over there
The hardest drug for an inner city youth to get is alcohol (Source ‘Drug Crazy’)
After 40 years, it needs to explain itself
There is a better way

"If you had asked me at the outset," Everingham says, "my guess would have been that the best use of taxpayer money was in the source countries in South America" — that it would be possible to stop cocaine before it reached the U.S. But what the study found surprised her. Overseas military efforts were the least effective way to decrease drug use, and imprisoning addicts was prohibitively expensive. The only cost-effective way to put a dent in the market, it turned out, was drug treatment. "It's not a magic bullet," says Reuter, the RAND scholar who helped supervise the study, "but it works." The study ultimately ushered RAND, this vaguely creepy Cold War relic, into a position as the permanent, pragmatic left wing of American drug policy, the most consistent force for innovating and reinventing our national conception of the War on Drugs.
Source: “How America Lost the War on Drugs: After thirty-five years and $500 billion, drugs are as cheap and plentiful as ever. An anatomy of a failure” By
Ben Wallace-Wells

Image taken from the movie ‘War Games.’

Create a formal model of the WOD including the market size, effects of treatment, effects of intervention, etc.
Tie the model into a multi-player simulation of the WOD
Play test with many, many people
Seek funding to create a ‘snazzier’ game that can be made freely accessible to the
American public