I gave a talk<\/a> at the University of Maryland today (that’s where I work) as part of its “Semester on War and Representations of War<\/a>.” A little odd to come out to friends and colleagues as a (war) gamer, but generally an interested and receptive audience. I had copies of several different games out to show, including Avalon Hill’s hoary Afrika Korps<\/em><\/a> and something more recent, Bowen Simmons‘<\/em>‘ Napoleon<\/em>s Triumph<\/em><\/a>. One of the byproducts of the event was getting to meet a couple of new local gamers, including the gent behind Flash of Steel<\/a>, where there is a nice write-up of the proceedings<\/a>. From there I also stumbled across this entry<\/a> on Soren Johnson’s Designer’s Notes blog (such an obvious title for a game design blog too—now why didn’t I think of it?).<\/p>\n I offered three reasons for my interest in table top wargames in an academic setting:<\/p>\n Of course what goes unstated in such a setting are the other reasons we play games, which have a lot more to do with sociability and something called “fun<\/a>” than these higher minded rationales. But it was a good discussion, if a bit scattered at times—lots of people wanted to talk about first person shooters, for example. (Unexplored question: what’s the difference between a war game and a violent <\/em>game?)<\/p>\n\n