The field of parallel discrete event simulation is entering a period of self-assessment. Fifteen years of investigation has witnessed great strides in techniques for efficiently executing discrete event simulations on parallel and distributed machines. Still, the discrete event simulation community at large has failed to recognize many of these results. The central question is, why has this occurred? One possible reason is an apparent disagreement in both the focus and objectives of the parallel discrete event simulation research community(primarily computer scientists) and the discrete event simulation community(a widely diverse group including, operations researchers, management scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians, as well as computer scientists). An examination of parallel discrete event simulation from a modeling methodological perspective illustrates some of these differences and reveals potentials for their resolution.