Jobs in Professional Wargaming

 

Connections USA is the professional wargaming conference. Colonel Matt Caffrey, USAF, was ordered to run a conference to further professional wargaming, and the order was never rescinded. So, since 1993, the great and good of professional wargaming have gathered to discuss their art and craft.

Before the pandemic, I was sitting around a table in a bar during Connections USA. As I bought a round of drinks, I realised that the majority of the active professional wargamers in the world could fit around a single table: Peter Perla, Roger Mason, Ed McGrady, Yuna Wong, Tom Mouat, Tim Price, and a handful of others. Professional wargaming was a tiny world in 2017.

In 2026, professional wargaming is an integral part of military education, training and analysis. Practically every defence company of note now has at least a few staff with some responsibility for wargames. Many people are interested in getting into this world, and some of them ask me how to get a job in professional wargaming. I respond by suggesting how they might become a rounded professional because that's the skill set that will actually get them to an interview.

Know your domain

The first step is to become a master of your professional domain. If you want to run a space wargame, you need to know about satellites. The same goes for cyber, air, submarines, and any other area of modern warfare. You cannot expect a political party to let you umpire a game about a "run on the state currency" unless you can persuade them you understand national economics. It helps, of course, to have a subject matter expert to facilitate the game — but you still need to know more than the basics yourself. When I ran a game about a "run on the pound" some years ago, it helped enormously to have an advisor from the Bank of England on the team, but I still spent a week reading before the initial sponsor meetings. Wargaming is a skill, but it doesn't replace the need to be genuinely knowledgeable about the topic being gamed.

Know your craft

When I talk to professional wargamers, I'm often frustrated by how limited their mental toolbox of techniques can be. Wargamers who say they only use "simulations," or only “digital games”, or only “manual games”, are restricting their expertise to a narrow slice of the field. Some insist that every wargaming problem can be solved with a matrix game (or a board game, or whatever their comfort zone happens to be).

To be a master wargamer, you need to be familiar with a very wide range of games,  professional and hobby alike. You should have designed matrix games, used AI to assist a strategic-level game, and understood military course of action analysis (and why it isn't a wargame). You need to know what a hidden scenario is, what a committee game is, and stay aware of developments in roleplaying. Watching someone run a game of Dungeons & Dragons can be a masterclass in conjuring a scenario and immersing players in a game world. A roleplaying session of Call of Cthulhu can teach you a great deal about putting players under mounting stress. Practically every top-rank professional wargamer I know plays hobby games to some degree. So if you don't know what a megagame (or muggergame) is, or what confrontation analysis is, go and find out.

Getting to the interview

There's a wide range of professional wargaming jobs out there and some jobs in serious games, and even more in hobby wargaming, but to get to an interview you need to know the military domain being gamed to a good standard. You also need a genuinely broad base of wargaming experience, spanning miniatures, Eurogames, cyber, multi-domain operations etc.

When you're on that lifelong journey to becoming a master wargamer, I'll see you at the bar. The round's on me, while you tell me about the trials and tribulations of the professional wargaming world. Is professional wargaming an art or a craft? We have never been able to agree, but perhaps you will be able to tell us.