Simulation & Gaming

The authors investigated student reactions to an interactive video training program called the MCGILL NEGOTIATION SIMULATOR designed to teach negotiation skills using a sales negotiation scenario. They also determined whether the program increased learning of negotiation concepts, as measured by a pretest and posttest. The authors conducted two studies. In Study 1, undergraduate students taking a sales class used the SIMULATOR and demonstrated significant learning relative to a control group. Study 2 replicated the findings from Study 1 using a bargaining and negotiation class. Discussion focuses on the implications of the findings fromthe two studies on the use of interactive video to teach negotiation skills in the classroom.

The author presents a framework for addressing the state of the art and science in the field of gaming and simulation and an overview of topics covered by the articles that fit into this scheme. Many empty cells still have to be addressed. Such a synthetic perspective on inquiry allows the gaming and simulation community to accumulate understanding on the field by looking for commonalities. Differences between a disciplinary and transdisciplinary revieware explored from the viewpoint of knowledge development in the social field of power. In that respect, designers and facilitators of games and simulations have to cope with putting their institutions at risk, as the form of knowledge generated through gaming and simulation (i.e., their social capital) may not count as recognizable currency. The articles give ample evidence of the related obstacles in research, teaching, and practice. Nevertheless, the articles show what has been accomplished and which major puzzles gamers still need to address to improve professional practice in research and education, in management and governance.

For more than three decades, researchers and practitioners in the field of English as a foreign language have faced the issue of communicative competence as a goal in language acquisition and how to reach this goal. In this article, the authors address the issue from the point of view of a theoretical and practical meshing of simulation and gaming methodology with theories of foreign language acquisition, including task-based learning, interaction, and comprehensible input, showing how simulation and gaming can be used in those phases of language acquisition in which formal instruction has proved less ineffectual. The objective of this article is to describe the close relationship between the acquisition of foreign language competence and its components and experiential learning through simulation and gaming, with specific reference to two experiments in this area.

Human ecology deals with the interaction of human organizations as open systems and their activities in the environments that surround them. The purpose of this article is to apply an ecologic approach by emphasizing the market as the dominant business environment, excluding such broader ideas of ecological space as our natural environment and sustainable development. It is a case study describing the development of the International Operations Simulations (INTOP and INTOPIA) to illustrate the practice of management games in the past 40 years. It is not a review of the development of and experience with comparative general management games. Special attention is given to relating the design process to such environmental influences as the globalization of business, international economic relations, computer technology, and education. Integrative use of the game in multimedia pedagogy and their potential application in research on the behavioral theory of the firm are subjects briefly discussed.

The authors discuss epistemological, theoretical, and practical reasons for the crisis of gaming simulation in urban studies. The enormous successes obtained by hard sciences (particularly physics) in interpreting and changing the world have driven many scholars of the so-called soft sciences to believe that the methods and tools that had proved so successful at the so-called court of the queen of science might also be successful in the drawing rooms of the social and behavioral sciences. This belief has given birth to urban models. Its terminology revealed an inferiority complex toward so-called true science. It is with this set of issues that whoever deals with social sciences has to come to terms. This applies specially to urban sciences, which must take into account the social and the spatial (physical) dimensions.

During 30 years as a systems analyst and teacher, this author has been constructing models to understand and convey key principles related to the long-term causes and consequences of physical growth on the planet. In this article, he describes two different models that he has developed to accomplish these goals. One was employed as a computer simulation; the other functioned as an operational game. In comparing them, the author points out many differences between the two tools and indicates two important challenges for this profession.

For the past 50 years, scholars and practitioners of international relations have used simulations as experimental, predictive, and educational tools to model real-world environments. This article will focus on the educational applications of simulations in international relations (IR), first reviewing the development of IR simulations and then tracing this history by examining the International Communication and Negotiation Simulations (ICONS) Project at the University of Maryland as a representative example of this genre. It will examine in particular the use of information technologies in facilitating and delivering simulations, and conclude with a brief discussion of how computer-assisted simulations have, in some cases, anticipated trends in the real world of diplomacy, and in others, attempted to respond to new trends.