EPISODE 15: SIMULATIONS

Written By Stephen Slota

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.

Stephen Slota
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EPISODE 14: CATALOGING PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS