EPISODE 15: SIMULATIONS

What this episode covers

Episode 15: Simulations | 3 March 2026 Stephen and Trent (re)simulate the brainstorming and co-authorship process behind The Worldbuilding Workshop’s (spooOoOOoky) thirteenth chapter, “Simulations,” including: Differentiating between “simulations” and “games”; Kerbal Space Program as an exemplary simulation-game hybrid; How Democracy 3, SimCity, and Civilization encourage learners to tinker with real-world complex systems and visualize their effects; Simulations as a way to explore “what-if” scenarios via learner inquiry and critical thinking; Procedural rhetoric and evaluating the biases embedded in simulation design; First-person versus third-person perspectives and whether calling third-person distant “god-like” is a misnomer with respect to simulations; Understanding simulations as teaching how systems operate versus role-plays teaching how people operate; Knowledge-as-doing and the criticality of maintaining a one-to-one relationship between learning and simulation objectives; Separating evaluation of a system from individual people's performances *within* that system; Beyond Nuremberg: Courtroom 600 as an example inquiry-driven, museum-based virtual reality simulation; Balancing agency in simulations of well-defined historical events; Examining the rhetoric of decision-making trees to identify how individual actions can affect multiple parts of a complex system; “Bumper cars” (exerting agency within a constrained system) versus “rollercoasters” (being locked into a linear pathway from beginning to end); Simulations for teaching cause, effect, and nuanced reasoning; Benefits of the “choose-your-own-adventure” model; Going meta on the decision-making process to situate thinking in real-world problems; The Model United Nations program, GlobalEd research project, and Mars: An Ethical Expedition video game as tools for studying intersectional governmental, economic, social, and cultural structures; Avoiding the artificiality of traditional assessments via simulations of ill-defined problems; Transforming education from transactional career preparation into a vehicle for teaching critical thinking and empathy; Helping future teachers understand specific instructional technologies (giving them a fish) versus helping them understand foundational principles of technology integration (teaching them how to fish); Why reductive, essentialist thinking can’t and won’t solve “wicked problems”; and Demonstrating how “practomime” (Roger Travis’ term for “performative play practice”) shapes learner thinking and behavior. Episode References: Maxis. (2000). The Sims [Video game]. Electronic Arts. MicroProse. (1991). Sid Meier’s Civilization [Video game]. MicroProse. Maxis. (1989). SimCity [Video game]. Brøderbund Software. Young, M. F. & Slota, S. T. (Eds.). (2017). Exploding the castle: Rethinking how video games & game mechanics can shape the future of education. Information Age Publishing. Squad. (2015). Kerbal Space Program [Video game]. Private Division. Positech Games. (2013). Democracy 3 [Video game]. PosiTech Games. Miyamoto, S. (1985). Super Mario Bros. [Video game]. Nintendo. Deterding, S. & Zagal, J. P. (Eds.). (2018). Role-playing game studies: Transmedia foundations. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315637532 Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: The expressive power of videogames. MIT Press. Greenhouse Studios. (2020). Courtroom 600: A virtual reality encounter with evidence of the Holocaust [Virtual reality game]. University of Connecticut. Capcom. (2019). Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy [Video game]. Capcom. Streiner, S., Burkey, D. D., Young, M. F., Cimino, R. T., Pascal, J., Dahm, K. D. & Wagner, T. (2022–2026). Mars: An Ethical Expedition [Video game]. University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering/University of Connecticut. Brown, S. W., Lawless, K. A., & Boyer, M. A. (2013). Promoting positive academic dispositions using a web-based PBL environment: The GlobalEd 2 project. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 7(1), 67–90. Lichtman, G. (2014). #EdJourney: A roadmap to the future of education. Jossey-Bass. Levitt, S. D.& Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. William Morrow. Johnson, S. (1998). Who moved my cheese?: An amazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Travis, R. (2010, November 18). A note on the word “practomime” [Blog post]. Play The Past. www.playthepast.org.

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