This post is from October 2006. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month

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The best move is not to play

Yes, you know exactly which movie that line is from.

War Games is fun for several reasons (including the putting of the phone on some receiver thing to dial and connect to somewhere. I clearly need one of those). But mostly I like the giant map of the world in the nuclear control room.

The people at Introversion Software also seemed to like that part, as they have made a whole computer game called DEFCON out of it. You pick a continent, set up your ICBMS, subs, radars, etc. and then at some point, nuke all your opponents. I am not sure, but it appears that at least part of the point is to have the screen light up in a nifty pattern.

I caved and tried to play the demo but it didn’t work on my computer. Anyway, I bet it’s more fun than this ‘nonviolent strategy’ game, which my interns played for 30 minutes a few months ago and deemed too slow. But, if you do want to learn how to fix the world while safely hidden behind the computer screen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a long article all about negotiation and mediation games.

Jane Vaynman

Writing on ACW 2006–2013

Jane Vaynman is the Associate Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies and Research Instructor at the Elliott School of International Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. Her research focuses on security cooperation between adversarial states, the design of arms control agreements, and the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

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