Commercial gaming finds its origins in military wargaming in the form of commercial tabletop games. Since then, the market has evolved and technology has moved from physical tabletop games to the use of computer technology. War games are a form of rehearsing an operation on a grand scale or a manner of witnessing possible courses of action. Officers give orders to pieces on a map to mimic what would happen in real life. For example, during the pre-war period of World War II, the US Navy ruled out its defence of the Philippines based on information gained from gaming. The market continues to grow and has begun to feed back into the defence industry through the development of gaming engines that allow the generation of training products and the utilisation of commercial games that have been found to be beneficial to defence training and simulation (T&S).

This Frost & Sullivan research service focuses on commercial gaming in defence T&S. Within the T&S market, commercial games have traditionally been used for wargaming and as constructive simulation tools. As the commercial gaming market has outpaced the defence industry in terms of the production of gaming technology, game engines have increasingly been adopted by the industry to aid in the development of simulations such as Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. Game engines are one of the most significant uses of commercial gaming within defence – mainly for their ease of use and ability to function on a wide range of platforms. The engines are used to form the basis of simulation systems.