Episode 128 Thorsten Kodalle on Strategic Wargaming
Thorsten Kodalle on Strategic Wargaming
Episode Summary:
In this episode of Experience Points by University XP, host Dave Eng speaks with Thorsten Kodalle, head of Innovation Laboratory at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College and an expert in Strategic Wargaming, Gamification, and Serious Games. Thorsten shares insights into integrating Gamification into Strategic Thinking, using board games like Scythe as teaching tools in seminars. He emphasizes the importance of considering DIME (Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economics) in strategic wargaming, and discusses how cultural factors influence military strategy. Thorsten also delves into serious game design, balancing entertainment with educational goals, and shares examples like the cyber card game adapted for crisis management training. The episode highlights the necessity of understanding the purpose of games and aligning game mechanics with educational objectives. Thorsten shares resources for further exploration, emphasizing LinkedIn and his YouTube channel.
Thorsten Kodalle
he/him/his
Head Innovation Lab at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College
The Bundeswehr Command and Staff College
thorstenkodalle@bundeswehr.org
Thorsten Kodalle is the Head of the Innovation Laboratory at Bundeswehr Command and Staff College. He is a leading expert in strategic wargaming, gamification, and serious games. As a lecturer and Scrum Master, he pioneers projects like global wargaming with cyberwarfare, and gamifying strategic thinking. Thorsten is passionate about lifelong learning and serves as an Ambassador for the Khan Academy, advocating for blended learning. With over ten years at the Military Academy, he continues to shape the future of military education.
(Twitter): https://twitter.com/kodalle
(LinkedIn): https://de.linkedin.com/in/thorstenkodalle
(Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/thorsten.kodalle/
(Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/otligtk/
(YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZRg_4wvD5tnrOMm7Fp-lgQ
Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com. On today's episode, we'll learn from Thorsten Kodalle. Thorsten Kodalle is the head of Innovation Laboratory at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College. He is a leading expert in Strategic Wargaming, Gamification, and Serious Games. As a lecturer and Scrum master, he pioneers projects like Global Wargaming, with Cyber Warfare, and Gamifying Strategic Thinking. Thorsten is passionate about lifelong learning, and serves as an ambassador for the Khan Academy, advocating for blended learning. With over 10 years at the military academy, he continues to shape the future of military education. Thorsten, welcome to the show.
Thorsten Kodalle:
Well I'm glad to be on your podcast. Thank you very much for having me, Dave.
Dave Eng:
Great. I'm glad to have you here, Thorsten. So I think that your background is incredibly interesting, and specifically, I wanted to learn a little bit more about gamification and Strategic Thinking. So can you share some insights into your role as the head of the Innovation Laboratory at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College, and how you integrate gamification into Strategic Thinking?
Thorsten Kodalle:
Yeah, well, thank you much for the question. I actually run a seminar, Gamification of Strategic Thinking with a civilian university, and part of our German Armed Forces. So the idea was that within this seminar, I tried to teach basic tools of strategy development, like for example the SWOT analysis, strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which is a fundamental and very basic tool for developing strategies. And I try to make this more accessible by actually playing one of the best strategies available. So I came along, and played Scythe, the board game, and I integrated that as the heart of my Gamification of Strategic Thinking seminar.
Dave Eng:
I see.
Thorsten Kodalle:
So I have a seminar with, for example, 25 people, and these will be divided into 5 teams with 5 people each. And they will now game against each other in this specific world of Scythe, where we have different actors who are playing on the strategic level actually, and this was an alternative timeline. And they need to think about military actions, and economic actions, and information actions.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
So this is actually something that is on the strategic level. DIME is one of the most popular acronyms where you need to deal with Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economics, soft power and hard power.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
And this game was of course created just for fun. It's a recreational war game, and I put it as the main engine of the seminar.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
And the players, the students need to play the game. And because the game is so much fun, there's a very high intrinsic motivation actually to put extra time into the studies. So they game a lot. They actually have fun developing SWOT analysis for all the different actors, and then see how this actually plays out in a tournament at the end of the seminar. So that is my way to integrate, in this case a full game into a seminar. And as a layer, a gamification layer, we also add this competition between the teams and the tournament at the end.
Dave Eng:
I see. All right. Thank you, Thorsten. I appreciate the response. I think as someone that plays a lot of board games in general, Scythe is I have to say, one of my favorite games, even though it's not one of the games I play often. Can you share a little bit more about why you determined to select Scythe as a particular game that you were going to focus on? Why not any other games? Was there a particular reason?
Thorsten Kodalle:
Well, actually when I played Scythe for the very first time, my first idea was, "I need to build a seminar around this game."
Dave Eng:
Oh. Yeah.
Thorsten Kodalle:
I was so thrilled by the depth the game is actually providing on the strategic level for the player. And it is also in a way taught. You can play it in two to three hours. It's not like Twilight Imperium where you need eight hours or more.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
And today, I would also consider another game like Terraforming Mars. If I want to do more into business wargaming, I think Terraforming Mars would be an excellent game to teach people business wargaming, and also, they need to develop SWOT analysis, and can do a really in-depth analysis of the environment, Terraforming Mars, and develop contingencies, strategies, or business continuity plans if the initial plan just fails, which it will probably do, "Planning the plan is nothing, but planning is everything," like President Eisenhower said.
Dave Eng:
Right? Yeah. It's one of my favorite quotes that I often cite on a regular basis that I believe the actual quotes are, "Plans are useless, but the act of planning is invaluable." Do you remember that?
Thorsten Kodalle:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's more to the real quote.
Dave Eng:
Right. All right. Thank you Thorsten. I appreciate that. Again, I think your background is incredibly unique, and I want to talk a little bit more about strategic wargaming. So I know when I read your bio, you also serve as a lecturer in Strategic Wargaming at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College. Can you share with us how you see the intersection of strategic wargaming influencing military strategy overall? I'd like to get your input on that.
Thorsten Kodalle:
Yeah. Well of course, now I have to quote Clausewitz, "War is the continuation of policy with other means." And policy can be understood as a umbrella for all domains of power projection of a national state, and DIME would be the appropriate acronym. Diplomacy, Information, Military Economics, and Military is of course only a part of the acronym, but Diplomacy and Information is considered to be the soft power. And Military and Economics is the hard power. And if you see the connection between the strategic level that has to deal with all of these domains, and the military level, of course you see the military level there is the danger that it is very enclosed, and only looking at its own domain. I think Dr. Strangelove is a good movie about this topic, about how military personnel are very keen on deploying nuclear weapons, and the politicians are very afraid of it.
And Thomas Schelling, one of the best strategists of the 20th century, did in a way in war game this Armageddon. He was a leading theorist in game theory on the deterrence in nuclear warfare. And of course, you need to have this strategic level, and the big picture, and not only the limited military view. For example, in our German history in the first World War, we had a very small focus on the military domain, and the Weimar Republic learned from this experience, because as you know, the first World War did go terribly wrong for all of Europe, but for Germany in particular. And the Weimar Republic was actually very good on strategic war gaming. So they looked at all the other domains, and were very good in diplomacy. But as luck would have it, the Weimar Republic did not prevail. And the Third Reich stepped back into the old mistakes, and had a very narrow view on military strategy only. And therefore, I think politicians are very well advised to have this big picture, and do not let only military personnel try to decide the fate of a country.
Dave Eng:
I see. All right. Thank you Thorsten. I appreciate that. Oh. Go ahead.
Thorsten Kodalle:
May I add something, additional something?
Dave Eng:
Of course.
Thorsten Kodalle:
On the other side, there is also another connection, also a historic example. The CIA played war games in 1962 about the success of military campaigns in Vietnam. And the sponsor of these war games was the political level. And the interesting thing is that the military, the CIA experts, and the red teaming cell in the strategic war game was very accurate on how they viewed how this war would play out. The political assumption was that an air campaign would be sufficient. The military expert played a war game, and they came up with the conclusion that an air campaign only wouldn't have the success that was anticipated from the political level, but this was something that the political level didn't want to hear.
Dave Eng:
I see.
Thorsten Kodalle:
So they disregarded the results of this war game, and that was one of the slipping slopes into the Vietnam War. And there was actually a book about it, Lessons in Disaster.
Dave Eng:
All right. Thank you, Thorsten. I appreciate it. I think that that was actually a segue into one of the follow-up questions I had. I think that DIME as an acronym is incredibly useful for I think understanding a lot of the different and often complicated facets of strategic war gaming. Again, just to make sure that I have it correctly, DIME stands for Diplomacy Information, Military and Economics. I'm thinking. Do you believe that culture has any role to play in a consideration in addition to those other four, Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economics, the culture for the nation states, or the peoples involved?
Thorsten Kodalle:
I think most definitely. If you want to be successful in diplomacy, and probably also in the information realm, and the economic realms, you need to understand the other players and actors. You have to have this intercultural competency, this skill set, how to read other people, how to understand them. And from the military perspective, John Boyd developed the OODA Loop, Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, which is a very brief abbreviation of the military decision cycle. But he had a very, very in-depth view on this OODA Loop, and it could be actually considered to be the scientific approach to strategy development. And in the Orientation phase, one of the things he had took a close look at was culture, but also genetics, a lot of environmental factors. So that was a very, very broad consideration of important factors. And culture is of course one of the most important factors, and as you of course probably know, culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Dave Eng:
That's great. Thank you Thorsten. I appreciate that. I want to take some time to jump into our last question here, which is specifically on serious game design, because I think you have a lot of insight to offer here, but specifically, I wanted to focus on the realm of game design and development. So how do you balance the popular "entertainment" aspect of games with the educational goals of serious games?
Thorsten Kodalle:
Yeah. That is actually a very, very good question. And it is always a balance, and a trade-off. I really try to create a game that also provides intrinsic motivation to play it. I recently took part in the Wargaming Designer Course at the US Army War College.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
That was an awesome experience. Great course. And they also focused on the problem to keep players engaged in the game. A serious game, of course, is not designed to be fun as such, or as fun as the main purpose of the game, but is of course not forbidden to have fun. So you can integrate fun into the game, and still focus very much on the educational goals. And the very first question you always need to ask if you try to apply a game, actually any game, what is the purpose of the game? What do you want to achieve also as an educational goal?
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
For example, my blackout simulation Neustart, it's not actually my blackout simulation. I didn't develop it, but I implemented, and I use it several times in the last week. We played it three times in the week before, also two times. It's an awesome tool for team building, for 21st century skills, for collaboration, and communication. So if you just want to train these parts, you can just play this game. But on a content level, it also provides a lot of awareness concerning crisis management for attacks on critical infrastructure and preparedness. What should I do to be prepared for such a worst-case scenario? Fortune favors the prepared mind, and playing this game will provide you with a lot of insights into your own preparedness on the content level, and on the level of the game mechanics. It keeps all of the players engaged all of the time.
There's almost no downtime. You are always thinking, and discussing, and communicating with all the others. You can make this very serious with time pressure. And the game was actually designed for crisis management teams as a training tool. So if you use such a tool, or you want to design such a tool, you can try to design it that it is possible to achieve different educational goals. I would argue that if you play Gloomhaven, this is a perfect team building tool for cooperation. It is not a war game. It's not a series game. It's just for fun. But if you want to train collaboration, and communication, such a recreational war game, dungeon crawler is a very good game. But it is of course not designed for this, but it could be used for that. If you also want to achieve a specific goal concerning the actual content of a game, you usually end up with these serious games that actually have a serious content, and are not really designed for fun.
For example, This War of Mine, which is a computer game, is also available as a board game. And on the board game, there is mentioning this is R rated, and you have to deal with death, and grief. So this is by definition a very, very serious game. And it's probably not fun really to play it. If you played This War of Mine, there's a lot of dying.
Dave Eng:
Right.
Thorsten Kodalle:
But the game was designed to deliver this feeling if you play a refugee in a war zone, and you just need to try to survive, and you just experience how difficult it is, and you will eventually probably die. So this is not a good gaming experience if you are just out for fun.
Dave Eng:
Right.
Thorsten Kodalle:
So it is always the question, "What do you want to achieve?" And then you can of course try this, and implement this with specific game mechanics, but it is a small line, and it is sometimes crossed onto the wrong side.
Dave Eng:
Thank you Thorsten. And I appreciate that. I have not been able to play This War of Mine. It came onto my radar initially as a board game. I know that there's a digital version of it, but I have not played it yet. But often, I share the same disclaimer that you shared with us right now, which is that it's very serious content. It's designed as a commercial game, but it also has a lot of mature themes. But my follow-up, and something I think is interesting is that cyber card game that you mentioned before, I know that you adapted it, but is it available for anyone to review, or possibly download a print and play version?
Thorsten Kodalle:
Well, I actually have this cyber card game available in my master thesis, and I also have some PowerPoint slides where all the game components available for someone to print out. So I could make this available on a Google Drive, and I think it's currently in my Dropbox.
Dave Eng:
Okay. Well if that's something that you're willing to share, I'd be happy to post it in the show notes if you'd like.
Thorsten Kodalle:
Yep. That's no problem at all.
Dave Eng:
All right. So that brings us to our outro. So Thorsten, thank you very much for joining us today. I appreciate you sharing all of your insights, your background, and your experience. Where can people go to find out more about you if they'd like to get in touch?
Thorsten Kodalle:
I must confess, I'm most heavily engaged on LinkedIn.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm.
Thorsten Kodalle:
I have a YouTube channel, which is not very populated, but I have a presentation on my Gamification of Strategic Thinking seminar there that was actually the presentation I also gave in one of your conferences, the Virtual Serious Game Conference we did two years ago.
Dave Eng:
Mm-hmm. All right. Well thank you Thorsten. I appreciate that. I'll make sure that I share out those links in the episode description, and show notes. Thanks again for joining us. I appreciate it.
Thorsten Kodalle:
Dave, thank you very much for having me.
Dave Eng:
I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on Gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification. You can also get a full transcript of this episode, including links to references in the description, or show notes. Thanks for joining us. Again, I'm your host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you like this episode, please consider commenting, sharing and subscribing. Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you. I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. We live to lift others with learning. So if you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit. Also, make sure to visit University XP online at universityxp.com. University XP is also on Twitter @University_XP, also known as X, and on Facebook and LinkedIn as University XP. Also, feel free to email me anytime. My email address is dave@universityxp.com. Game on!
Cite this Episode
Eng, D. (Host). (2024, December 29). Thorsten Kodalle on Strategic Wargaming. (No. 128) [Audio podcast episode]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/128
Internal Ref: UXPIJEWZOW7T
References
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