A Case Study on the Development of the Home Defence Training Game HOT SEAT

Home defence is concerned with enhancing the prospects for survival and recovery of this country in the eventuality of nuclear war. Contingency plans exist for the creation of a system of wartime regional government which includes elements from peacetime local and central governments. Senior officers in local government with designated wartime roles receive training at the Home Defence College. The Home Office decided that a crisis management game should form part of their overall programme of indoctrination. The resulting game, which is known as HOT SEAT, has been successfully implemented and is now in regular use at the College. This paper describes how the need for the game arose, the structure of the resulting game, the problems that arose during its development, and should be of interest to those concerned with the development of management and crisis games.