The Japan Association of Simulation and Gaming was founded on January 21, 1989 to accept a letter to hold the 1991 general assembly of the International Association of Simulation and Gaming. Before then, research fields of simulation and gaming had been divided into each of specific domains and they had acted their own way without exchanging useful outcomes among them. Inviting ISAGA1991 to Kyoto was a great opportunity for Japanese researchers and practitioners to gather there to exchange professional and methodological issues, communication and cultural issues, environmental and developmental issues, and economical and business issues with the world. 12 years later, JASAG invited ISAGA 2003 to Chiba and it showed that JASAG was one of the leading associations in simulation and gaming. Another12 years later, JASAG hosted ISAGA2015 in Kyoto to contribute to simulation and gaming.

This paper describes the experience of the global community after ten years of implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action, the global blueprint for reducing disaster risk. The paper reviews the status of achievements and the remaining gaps as reported by counties over this HFA decade, and outlines the challenges that need to be addressed under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which replaces the HFA, and which sets ambitious targets and goals for all to achieve over a period of 15 years to 2030. The paper then elaborates a few key issues identified in the Sendai Framework, as those that may contribute the most to achieve its goals, and then concludes with the observation that our understanding of the options for actions to build resilience is not as developed, as compared to our understanding of the disaster risks. The paper then notes the opportunity now for the global academic and research community to support the elaboration of these options for actions to build resilience, in particular the cost and benefits of these options and between options, which will form the basis for accelerated actions by countries and stakeholders in the coming years.

This study explores the history of board games and game boards, beginning with a discussion of the origin of play and games. Then, it summarises ancient game boards from all over the world. Finally, it discusses the development and modification of these games over time. Some of the games disappeared, while others survived. Subsequently, new board games that are descendants of the ancient games emerged. Exploring the history of games is one way to explore human nature.

This paper describes a case study in which gaming and simulation were introduced to a Japanese university social psychology class. Although participatory learning methods, including gaming and simulation, have been attracting considerable attention in Japan, lectures remain the norm, especially in higher education. The author suggests that the use of gaming and simulation within a participatory learning framework has great potential, although many obstacles must be overcome before it becomes widespread in schools. This paper focuses on three topics. First, course design based on the “learning cycle” developed by Kolb (1984) and, more specifically, the “macro-cycle of a game session” developed by Klabbers (2006) are discussed. Second, several examples of classes are presented to provide readers with a more concrete idea of course design. Third, the applicability of this approach to other courses is discussed. Based on the results of 4 years of practice and feedback from students, the author concludes that this course design is particularly effective, although it is still evolving.

As students pursue their careers, management and accounting skills are necessary, along with a holistic view held by today’s executives. Nevertheless, teaching those points to students in a short time at the university level is difficult using conventional teaching methods alone. Therefore, the authors have been developing tangible board games, called BASE business games, since 2007. They have been played by over 1000 students in Japan and Thailand. In terms of having students grasp a business outline, the authors believe that an analog business game is a respectable method. The most unique action of BASE business games is its face-to-face bidding. Bidding is enjoyable and excites players with enthusiasm. At the session of “Time to Play 3 of ISAGA2013 (International Simulation and Gaming Association’s conference 2013)”, the authors demonstrated the BASE manufacture game with face-to-face bidding. Participants enjoyed the game. As described herein, the authors used the SCC game and the SCC2 game, one of BASE business games, at the School of Management Technology (MT) of Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology (SIIT), Thammasat University in 2014. The authors asked students to answer the same questions before and after this lecture. Comparison of the results confirmed that the rate of comprehension of important business ideas increased. Students pointed out that bidding was interesting, but that the most difficult action as decision making. Then the authors used two methods of bidding, which are face-to-face bidding (open bidding) and no face-to-face bidding (closed bidding) and investigated the influence of them on their decision making. Contrary to the authors’ previous ideas, more than 80% of students stated that closed bidding is more fair and comfortable than open bidding. Closed bidding enables them to decide honestly, whereas open bidding necessitates management of their competitors’ pressure, which are weak points and points strongly affecting bidding effectiveness.

This study explores the processes required to achieve consensus on controversial issues that involve social dilemmas and developed the “Consensus Building of Wind Farm Game” (WinG). A social dilemma is a conflict between personal profit and public benefits wherein the results of individuals pursuing their own profit means that public benefits decline; thus, ultimately, individuals lose their profit. Shared recognition of a common goal is crucial in resolving social dilemmas; however, in actual practice, developing such a shared recognition is difficult due to conflicts among stakeholders. To help identify effective resolutions to this problem, we examined a case of planning for a wind farm, which often involves controversy, even though many people generally agree to the plan. WinG was developed to simulate the type of conflicts among stakeholders when planning a wind farm. There are five types of players (stakeholders) in WinG and each has a different goal and is provided with different information. All the players are required to maximize their individual goals within the time limit, however at the same time, from the viewpoint of public benefit, an optimal achievement point is hidden in the game that results in the second best outcome for all the players. Through negotiations, bargaining, and debate, the social dynamics of achieving (or failing to achieve) a consensus were observed in WinG. Analysis from 10 games showed that shared recognition of a common goal was related to consensus, while only information sharing was not sufficient.