Modeling Urban Warfare: how can we model the complexity of urban space?

Wargaming has long practiced how we model conflict between armed forces. In recent years, reflecting the changing nature of conflict, wargaming has included new domains of warfare from electronic to littoral to irregular and urban. New domains offer new challenges as the same problems that hound military theorists now hound designers. Whilst working on ‘We Are Coming, Nineveh’, my co-designer and I tried to integrate the crucially messy aspects of urban conflict into our design but the question of how we model urban space, place, and communities into wargaming design remains as pressing and unclear as ever. This webinar will explore our design journey and the urban wargaming space before charting some ways forward to push the discipline into embracing the complexity of urban place and conflict.

Urban warfare has long troubled military theorists and game designers alike. Harrison Brewer takes a look at the field of urban wargaming, reflects on his own design journey, and asks where we can push the boundaries to build better models of urban operations.

Harrison Brewer is an urban planner and designer living and working in London, UK. He is also one of the designers of ‘We Are Coming, Nineveh’, a tactical/operational game modelling the Iraqi government’s campaign to retake the city of Mosul in 2016-2017. ‘We are Coming, Nineveh’ won a Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Tactical Game in 2023.

Host or Publisher Georgetown University Wargaming Society