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The CIA uses board games to train officers
- jinfiesto 10y agoI'm not surprised. I think games, especially board games, are infinitely better for developing strategic and tactical acumen than infinite seminars. Games actually have a feedback loop where you are rewarded for correct planning and sequencing and punished for mistakes.
- omginternets 10y agoOr, more simply put, it's about practice versus theory.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y agoNot just strategy but working together. The article mentions that Collection compares favourably to Pandemic. I've seen people start to get agitated at each other playing Pandemic.
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- gravypod 10y agoHow can I download these and print them out? I could definetly turn these into a party drinking game.
- Red_Tarsius 10y agoIf you like heavy strategy games based in historical events, you should take a look at the COIN series (COunterINsurgencies) by GMT http://www.gmtgames.com/ http://www.gmtgames.com/. Actually, their whole catalog is full of great historical games, including the the highest-ranked game on BoardGameGeek for many years Twilight Struggle. They are definitely NOT party drinking games though, and require both time and dedicated study. If you're looking for a 20min party game on the same vibe, I can't recommend The Resistance: Avalon highly enough. A more recent take on the hidden role and voting genre is Secret Hitler, but I didn't try that yet. Links: Twilight Struggle: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12333/twilight-struggle https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12333/twilight-struggle Cuba Libre (COIN series): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/111799/cuba-libre https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/111799/cuba-libre Other COIN games: https://www.gmtgames.com/c-36-coin-series.aspx https://www.gmtgames.com/c-36-coin-series.aspx The Resistance - Avalon: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128882/resistance-avalon https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128882/resistance-avalon
- oxide 10y agoA buddy of mine bought me a copy of the Steam version of Twilight Struggle. If you have a willing friend to play with, the PC digital version is just fine. Matchmaking is there as well as async play, so you can get a game going with a stranger. but, it might take awhile. I've played it (with a friend) about 30 hours so far, it really is a great game. After a few brutal losses I started to get the hang of it. There is depth, sacrifice and tough decision making. I'm definitely a fan of the game, now. Speaking of which, I ought to go take my turn.
- Red_Tarsius 10y agohttps://twilightstrategy.com/ https://twilightstrategy.com/ This blog features a detailed analysis of each card in the game. It's a useful reference if you want to become a true pro.
- nyolfen 10y agothe COIN series is also designed by Volko Ruhnke, a CIA analyst: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/in-the-world-of-role-playing-war-games-volko-ruhnke-has-become-a-hero/2014/01/10/a56ac8d6-48be-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/in-the-wor...
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- dorianm 10y agoThey should play 7 wonders, mafia, resistance, werewolf etc. Definitely reflects some real world interactions
- stared 10y agoOut of geeky (but impractical) things, here is my "A mathematical model of the Mafia game": https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1031 https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1031 :)
- Mikeb85 10y agoEver wonder why Russians are so good at politics and espionage? There's a very popular board game they're also very good at, and have been for at least a century. Humans are humans. And game theory is the same for every game, only the medium changes.
- 67726e 10y agoAre you trying to imply that Russia is skilled in politics and espionage because they're proficient at chess?
- mablap 10y agoI'm a neophyte player (1250), actively learning. I can definitely see how learning chess to a respectable level (~1500) can help you make decisions in everyday life. I could elaborate a bit but this is a subject about which much has already been written.
- selestify 10y agoWhere can I read these things that have been written about chess's relation to daily life?
- mablap 10y agoHere's a start: http://wiki.c2.com/?ChessIsLife http://wiki.c2.com/?ChessIsLife
- barrkel 10y agoI really don't think so. Getting really good at a game involving a discrete territory relies heavily on developing spatial intuitions that are specific to the game. Through experience and study of prior games, you get increasingly aware of the possibilities of positions many moves in advance; humans aren't built to exhaustively analyze game trees like the naive chess AIs of the 90s. If the game isn't a transparent metaphor for something else in life, then the intuitions won't apply either. Real life doesn't have things that move like knights, or shape the board like pawns.
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- tnecniv 10y agoIt's worth noting that JFK and Henry Kissinger were big fans of the game Diplomacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)
- paulcole 10y agoGreat article from Grantland (RIP) on Diplomacy: http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/ http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-th...
- greenhatman 10y ago“How could you do this to me? After everything I’ve done for you.” “I guess I’m just a hard muthafucka like that.” Damn, that's funny.
- jnordwick 10y agoThe writer got absolutely roasted in that article. LOL. “Are you going to be paid for writing this story?” a Scottish player asked me. “Because I am losing three days’ wages to be here so that I can get screwed by you.” (why does HN still not support decent formatting)
- jlgaddis 10y agoI usually quote like this: > “Are you going to be paid for writing this story?” a Scottish player asked me. “Because I am losing three days’ wages to be here so that I can get screwed by you." The leading > and italics make it clear that it's quoted and it avoids making the reader scroll horizontally. Not perfect but it's about the best you can do here, AFAIK.
- jnordwick 10y agoIt is best you can do and it is horrible HN still doesn't have good and easy comment formatting. Try posting small piece of code. You hear me HN?!
- krupan 10y agoThe story at the end of the article about the trainees duping the IT guy is just gold.
- rodionos 10y agoI recall going on a 3-day course to a marine officer training camp somewhere in VA. There was a obstacle course which was hard, i.e. you had to swim in cold muddy waters (October time), climb fences, dig trenches etc. 80% of teams finished within the deadline of 4 hours. And then there was a exercise room which the Marine instructors said was designed by CIA. You're locked into a room with some instruments and are given an assignment to be completed under a deadline. The outcome was binary: yes/no. Success rate was like 10%. The odds were so that they can identify the best decile.
- shoo 10y agoi heard something similar about designing questions for maths exams -- about half the questions should be pretty basic, so students who have studied and have a basic grasp of the concepts should be able to get them right and pass the course. then the rest are harder, with e.g. one or two questions being more difficult extensions of what was covered in the course. it sounds like the structure of the marine officer training camp avoids the problems some students have with poor "exam technique" - if you are given a fixed block of time to use to attempt all tasks (e.g. the obstacle course, the exercise room) then there is the risk of students spending all their time on the hardest task, and not leaving enough time to succeed at the other easier tasks. edit: on another hand, you could argue that "a student's poor exam technique" could equally well be called "poorly designed exam / measurement process"
- yutyut 10y agoSounds like you were at Officer Candidates School or the Basic School in Quantico, VA.
- sjg007 10y agoReasoning under uncertainty, game theory, and counterfactuals.
- eximius 10y agoThey should try Tak. :)
- krupan 10y agoI'm excitedly telling someone about this and reading the comments on the ars website where people say this was done before in the military and the thought suddenly came to me that we really need to find more excuses to play games like this in our tech jobs. Is there some kind of training we need that awesome board games could help with?
- wbl 10y agoYou could turn outages into a gane. Have someone who knows the systems design the root cause scenario and pick responses to your actions.
- DanBC 10y agoWhen you're working on a problem having a short break and thinking about something unrelated allows you to return to the problem with a fresh mind. People often report this kind of short break is a powerful tool in problem solving. This short break could easily be a game of something. When you're working in a company sometimes people are in different silos. Opportunities to discuss things across the company are lacking. But these discussions are often useful; a problem in one department might be a simple fix from another department. People hate meetings. People like games. A games afternoon once a fortnight would help people discuss this stuff.
- Nicholas_C 10y agoLarge corporations also do this with their more senior folks. They pay big bucks to consulting firms to get a custom designed game that is similar to their industry.
- SubiculumCode 10y agoVery interesting to know. I wonder if the Federal Reserve ever train similarly?
- ryanmarsh 10y agoI love love love Diplomacy but will never ever play it with people I care about. This game is "the breakup". If you want to win you basically have to lie and betray. Trust is easy to break and hard to gain.
- pmarreck 10y agoThat's funny, I sort of feel similarly about Settlers of Catan lol. Taught that game a few years ago to my Boston friends (back when I lived in Boston) and it ended up being a big hit and I never won a game again. I'm too nice, I guess. Not sure if relevant but the guy who tended to win the most now heads a multimillion-dollar company. So there's that...
- pzh 10y agoInteresting. I submitted this same story about a week ago and nobody cared until Ars Technica picked it up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13863084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13863084
- richardboegli 10y agoTime of day and whatever else has been posted.
- zorak 10y agoI feel your pain. I wanted to build board games for training in my org three years ago and management said it wasn't an interesting idea!
- frik 10y agoThere used to be a PC game genre called Real-Time-Strategy (RTS). Former famous game series were Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, War Craft, Empire Earth (and some more). The genre was very popular in 1997-2005. Sadly casual Free2Play Facebook games, mobile touch and console gamepad destroyed the genre. Today no Triple-A game worth mentioning gets released in the RTS genre. RTS is very useful and you can learn a lot.
- carlosdp 10y agoWhat? RTSs are still around... Starcraft 2 was released in the last 5 years or so, for example.
- ukyrgf 10y agoNearly 7 years, and that was a looong time coming.
- gaddferreira 10y agoAlmost 7 years ago actually[1], in the gaming world i think that's a very long time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Wings_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Wings_of_Liberty
- ygra 10y agoGames that are played competitively tend to stick around for longer. Neither players nor audiences want to re-learn everything every year or two.
- gaddferreira 10y agoYou're likely right, thanks for pointing that out.
- frik 10y agoYou can play old games for many years yes. But after a while it gets boring anyway. Some of the 10-20 year old RTS games got released as HD-editions recently. But they are just the same old games. What is really needed are new games with new content. Not just lame cheap re-releases named "HD". The world needs new Triple-A RTS games, that are not clones of Star Craft 2. Star Craft 1, Age of Empires and Command and Conquer series were better games in many respect and this is what is missing today - non-causul non-F2P new RTS games with realistic scenarios like in C&C Generals and Age of Empires or Empire Earth series.
- NeverTrump 10y agoCIA is going for PR I see. I didn't know arstechnica did "paid-journalism". New.
- sogen 10y agoParis Match was fully funded, also Dr. zhivago.
- rootsudo 10y agoLife is but a game. Also, to put yourself in the shoes of a country (in terms of crisis). Imagine you're a guy with several women: Some women are chill with being friends and understand that. Some women want you to settle, but you don't or can't. Some women just hate you. Some women share no interest but could be converted depending on time, resource allocation (e.g. time or else), etc. After a while things seem simple, then you notice time conflicts, argument conflicts. Then you begin to think: "What if they're doing the same thing I'm doing?" Then comes in the role of intelligence collection and plausible deniability as well of minimizing evidence showing alternative events of the same story. Then, of course will come a time when alliances are formed. Are you with them, or are you not? Intel sharing? What if they compare the metadata of x and y event and see an outlier?