Games that model reality

A lot of people think of games as frivolous (hmm, must be the name) but they're really just conceptual models that we can use to explore an idea -- like scientific theories. As such they deserve to be taken seriously. Because you can get hands-on with a game, they work much better as educational tools than sitting students down and lecturing them. Here's one we did earlier.

A new book, Playing with Reality by Kelly Clancy, surveys game theory and how games have modelled the world (for example in wargames used by the military to train officers in strategy and tactics). The book criticizes simulation games for simplifying the real-life conditions they're modelling -- an odd perspective for a physics-trained writer like Kelly Clancy to take, perhaps, as she must be aware that scientists know their models are simplifications and also that those simplifications can still yield useful results. Look at Einstein's theories, for example.

More than that, every concept humans have is a simplification of reality. Complaining that errors in our mental models lead to incorrect conclusions is stating the obvious. The point is to look at the new data and refine the model accordingly. That's how we progress.

Still, it's interesting to reflect on how games are an integral part of the way we reason about the world, and how that means we've often shaped our behaviour around them.