vedette wargames
“Vedette has worked very closely with Jim Wallman and his team at SPS. Most recently, he led the design and development of a People Seminar Wargame for the Army Personnel Branch, a concept which others had been wrestling with for over a year and to which Jim quickly and effectively applied his exceptional expertise to develop a simple and effective approach, which is still being used and will continue to evolve. Jim applies a no-nonsense, fail-fast and then fix approach to all he does which lends itself to a dynamic and vigorous energy and outcome. He has also been part of our team over the last two years working on wargaming Influence Operations for Dstl and wider Defence. Jim and SPS also, off their own initiative, run regular wargame training days and occasional multi-player, mega-wargames. I unhesitatingly engage with Jim on wargames and wargaming and am always delighted when he is part of one of our teams. He never fails to bring a challenging and inquisitive mindset, superb ideas and a rigorous and interactive approach. I highly recommend him and his team.”
Ivor Gardiner, Operations Director, Vedette Consulting 2024
HOPE TOWN & DesHCA
“I have learned so much working with Jim Wallman from Stone Paper Scissors, who I consider to be the absolute Games Master! He not only has a passion for developing games, but really understands the role of people, communication and interaction. He has helped us develop serious games for ageing, housing, health, adaptations and social care that are now making a wide impact across the UK helping to future-proof our society. Jim really opened my eyes to the potential and power of serious games, and I am absolutely converted to this methodology. I look forward to continue working with Stone Paper Scissors in the future.”
Vikki McCall, Professor of Social Policy at Stirling University 2024
WATCH THE SKIES
“ WTS went perfectly. We had amazing positive feedback and zero complaints. I'm personally shocked at how smoothly things went off. Everyone had a lot of fun“
Peter Bates 2023
A Green and Pleasant Land
“Just a note to say thank-you to you and your experienced team at Stone Paper Scissors for delivering ‘A Green and Pleasant Land’ We had around 34 Staff players from SPO, MOD Head Office, FCDO and Military. Our 8 experienced Coach-Observers also gained a great deal from the networking, oversight and engagement in person. The flow of the Game was excellent, and thank you for helping us incorporate ‘Practitioner insights’ from Coaches as we went through. Damian Parmenter, SPO DG Strategy and International, who spoke at the start and end of our event, was very impressed with it all and thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it. “
Andrew Selves, MoD Policy Profession, 2022
Intervention
“ All-in-all, Intervention! is an excellent introduction to megagaming—and a very considerable bargain for the price. Having mastered the basics, it would be relatively easy to scale up, add complexity, or use this as a jumping off point to designing your own megagames. Rex Brynen PAXsims https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/review-intervention/“
Rex Brynen, Professor of political science at McGill University and senior editor of the conflict simulation website PAXsims, 2022
URBAN NIGHTMARE
“ Lewis we HAVE to play again, and you have to be part! Everyone who participated loved it. It was a unique opportunity to really bond as a cohort despite having never met each other in real life. We made memories to look back on fondly, which I didn't think would be possible through online learning. I daresay it would be a disservice to the first years if we didn't do this again, especially now that the word is out on how fun the megagames are. “
Computer Science department UCL/DeepMind Neuroscience +AI PhD Programme, 2021
“Honestly the fact that you learn the rules as you play, makes it feel like an organised chaos, and it is amazing. So much fun especially since everyone was super involved in it. 100% would recommend it to anyone.”
Participant, UCL Student
“thank you for all your hard work putting on Urban Nightmare for Freestyle... some feedback from the team, relating to how much fun then had and how a lot of them saw a different side to their work colleagues!! Thanks for running the day so professionally, it felt very controlled”
Pete O'Donnell, Freestyle Games, 2016
War in binni
“ I thought it was brilliant...I think it really was the best L&D experience I’ve had that didn’t involve being sent on a jolly overseas....the XWH international crisis community could be running one of these events once a quarter. I will very much champion this as much as I can.“
Manager at MoD, participating in War in Binni for the FCDO, 2020
"An excellent War in Binni game yesterday. A really interesting day" (“He wants to speak to me about introducing gaming to policy planning in the FCO.” FCDO organiser)
Policy Planner in FCO, participating in War in Binni for the FCDO, 2020
HOUSING AND AGING (Hope Town)
“ Delivery and Facilitating three 20-50 player Housing and Aging Project games, including development work and playtesting - Yes we are very pleased by how it all went, and the game has been a great success. The feedback from the 200 people who have taken part in the events has focused on how effective the game was and how it added something new and different to the programme. For ourselves as researchers, we found it generated a large amount of in-depth data that we are now using to create a report. The Serious Game inspired the participants and the researchers to think and act in a different and creative way“
Vikki McCall, Professor of Social Policy at Stirling University, 2018