Serious games are fun, and we can learn a lot by playing through (simulating) real world scenarios. As a serious game designer for 10+ years, I specialize in strategic political-corporate simulations with a focus on the Middle East, Ukraine-Russia, the South China Sea, and Australia-Europe Relations. Through immersive training exercises, I help academic, military, and corporate audiences navigate complex geopolitical and business challenges.
My experience comes from organizing strategic simulations/war games with the likes of St.Gallen University (Square, HSG) in Switzerland, the Australian Council on Foreign Relations, TNO, Defensity College, Rotterdam School of Management. My academic and hands-on expertise stems from my work as lecturer at University College Utrecht where I ran simulations and taught on the Arab-Israeli conflict (2016-2022), Game Based Learning Advisor to the Centre for Academic Teaching at Utrecht University (2022), being a board member of SAGANET (2022-2025), as co-founder of the Utrecht Institute of Conflict and Crisis Simulation (UICCS), and working at the World Food Programme in Zambia (2009-2010).
These activities often run through Stratsims - our company run by a dedicated and experienced team of serious games enthusiasts - or in cooperation with other partners such as Goldsworthy, Stolk & Associates.
Strategy Days 2025 | St.Gallen University (HSG) @SQUARE
The St. Gallen Strategy Days are a geopolitical leadership simulation hosted by SQUARE at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. This interactive and high pace two-day event engages over 100 students and (young) professionals in a Europe-centric scenario where teams of 2-5 participants assume roles as state representatives, corporate heads, international organization leaders, NGOs, and press. In the video above, I give a short sneak preview to the participants.
Players tackle current political, economic, defense, energy, and climate challenges through strategic cooperation and conflict. The simulation spans Europe and major geopolitical players including China, Russia, India, NATO, and the United States, addressing issues from ongoing conflicts to semiconductor dynamics, artificial intelligence, and energy-climate tensions. Industry experts provide additional insights throughout the experience.
We worked with St.Gallen University and SQUARE to organize the Strategy Days in 2023 and 2025. The next Strategy Days will take place on March 26 & 27, 2026.
For more information and registration, click here.
In 2024 we wrote a practical handbook on serious gaming for education and training. You can find it, for free, here. From the book:
"In his seminal book Homo Ludens, published in 1936, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga pointed out that “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.” The question of whether we engage in play to learn or learn to play, therefore, is an age-old matter of contemplation. With this timeless insight in mind, we invite you to step into the world of serious gaming – a realm that encompasses learning, engagement, and fun."
"Indeed, our ability to learn playfully is not exclusive to us “Homo Ludens”. Many species learn just as much through play. Somewhere in the course of human evolution, we came to think of play as an unimportant pastime of toddlers and children; we began to believe that real learning could only take place when students are under serious instruction, sitting still and concentrating on a teacher`s lecture."
"With the ongoing revolutions in neuropsychology and other related fields, such strict notions of what we understand as learning have also exited stage left. Playful learning is back where it belongs and is now recognised as an effective way to deliver applied, experiential learning. University faculty are waking up to this new reality and experimenting with forms of “serious gaming” in their own seminars."
Want to work together?
Tag der Lehre 2023 | St.Gallen University, Switzerland
In 2023, I was keynote speaker at the Tag der Lehre at St.Gallen University. Here, I hosted a hands-on workshop "Playing with Intelligence - The AI-Powered Art of Serious Game Design" together with the amazing Niklas Koch and Fiona Lehmann (see above). Students, lecturers and other participants were taught to build a (serious) game in 30 minutes using ChatGPT.
Pax Ludens - Australia Europe 2025 | Australian Council on Foreign Relations
To mark the 80 years since the end of World War II in Europe, Stratsims works together with the Australian Council on Foreign Relations to host Pax Ludens Australia-Europe, a hands-on platform for exploring the future of Australia-Europe relations through immersive role-play and scenario-based learning. The edition from the video took place in 2025 in Sydney, Australia. The image on the right shows the organizing team in Australia's parliament.
Mappingwave @ UICCS:
Gamifying the Bay of Bengal
The Utrecht Institute for Conflict and Crisis Simulation (UICCS) was founded by students and lecturers during the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2021 - as part of a course on serious games and simulations I was teaching at University College Utrecht. As a counterbalance to boring one-way online lectures, UICCS offers interactive learning experiences through crisis simulations and provides innovative insights into conflict through data analysis and academic reports. In doing so, offering an opportunity for students to develop personal skills through practical experience.
Read more on the origins of UICCS here.
Video by then-student and ever-talented Sabine Hillen, visualizing her methodology for creating a map for a matrix game on the Game of Bengal, accompanied by music. I tend to call her audiovisual approach "Mapping Wave".
Find out more
For more information on the organizations and projects I work with, check out their websites below.
