When Dr. Arthur J. Simental launched a Kickstarter campaign in October 2024 for a board game about wildfire emergency response, he expected modest interest from fellow emergency management professionals. Instead, the campaign hit its funding goal within three hours and ultimately raised $184,000 over 60 days.
That game, Emergency Operations Center – Wildfire Mayhem, became the foundation of EM Disaster Gaming, a company that has since sold over 3,000 games to first responders, emergency management agencies, military units, and educational institutions across the U.S. and 25 countries.
The concept fills an unusual gap in professional training. While military forces have used wargames for strategic planning since the 19th century, civilian emergency management has lacked similar commercially available tools. Simental, a Certified Emergency Manager with 16 years of field experience including deployment to the Waldo Canyon Fire, designed his disaster response training games to bring the same immersive planning exercises to homeland security and emergency management.
From Prototype to Publisher
What started as a single wildfire scenario has expanded into a series covering hurricanes, train derailments, hazmat incidents, and counter-terrorism situations. The Emergency Operations Center Wargame Series targets professional emergency managers, but playtesters have included both seasoned disaster management professionals and complete novices.
EM Disaster Gaming has evolved beyond its own titles to become a publisher for other disaster-focused games. Partnerships with subject matter experts have produced offerings like Empathy Cue, a crisis communications training card game, and StormHaven – Maw of Zephryos, a Dungeons & Dragons-style scenario. The company also sells home preparedness games and mass care shelter simulations.
Training Real Agencies on Real Problems
The company’s client list reads like a directory of federal emergency response: DHS, FEMA, NATO, the National Guard, and various military branches. Simental also consults directly with agencies to create custom emergency preparedness simulations for specific scenarios, from base drone incursions for the Air Force to civil-military mobilization exercises involving tanks and bridges for NATO.
Beyond selling games, EM Disaster Gaming operates a Disaster Gaming Academy offering training courses and is partnering with colleges and universities to develop curriculum for academic credit. The company’s branding deliberately echoes World War II Civil Defense imagery, connecting modern emergency management to its historical roots.
Simental, who also serves as a professor and researcher, compares his work to Thomas Schelling’s Berlin Crisis wargame, which helped U.S. leadership navigate the Cuban Missile Crisis. Schelling later won a Nobel Prize in Economics. It’s an ambitious benchmark, but with disaster management board games now being used by emergency agencies worldwide, the comparison might not be entirely far-fetched. Simental has stated his ultimate goal is developing disaster wargaming systems for FEMA leadership, the National Security Council, Congress, and the White House.