Ludocognition
When people play a game for fun, much of their enjoyment comes from the experience of losing themselves in a realm different from the world in which they normally live. Because of this, one of the easiest ways to deprive players of a suitably recreational experience is to ask them to spend too much time thinking about the relationship between the gaming experience and objective reality. When, however, people play a game for the sake of learning something about the real world, the value of the experience is enhanced by awareness of this relationship. In particular, they should pay attention to those elements of the game that reflect reality and those that depart from it. To put things more briefly, when military professionals play decision games, they should engage in what might be called "ludocognition."*
Ludocognition is easiest to achieve in a decision-forcing case. This ease is a function of the high degree to which a game of that sort is tied to an event that actually took place. That is, a decision-forcing case necessarily begins with a description of a problem faced by an actual person and usually ends with an account of how that person dealt with that situation. Thus, the only "imaginative" elements of a decision-forcing case are the solutions devised, described, and defended by the participants during the Socratic conversation at the heart of the exercise.
In decision games of other sorts, the task of keeping track of the distinction between real-world features of an exercise and speculative elements increases with the number of the latter. Thus, for example, ludocognition is easier to achieve in a game in which a fictional unit armed with existing weapons is placed on a map of a place that really exists than in one in which the unit, the map, and the weapons are all the products of a fertile imagination.
Note:
*"Ludocognition" is a new word, invented by the author of this piece in order to describe what happens when a person who plays a game maintains a high degree of awareness of the relationship between the game and the things that it simulates. It is formed by adding the Latin prefix "ludo" (from "ludum," meaning "game" or "play") to the word "cognition" (referring to "thought" and "awareness.")
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