My team made a game about the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons. Our game holds the values of resource-management and teaching the dangers of hoarding and overusing resources. In our game, we show these values with a resource consumption loop. The objects in this interaction loop are People and Food. At the end of each round, each player has to consume (discard) 1 Food for every 2 People they have. If players have no Food, they lose People exponentially for every turn they don’t have Food. Players lose immediately if they run out of people. Players have to decide whether to prioritize obtaining more Food and People based on what they currently have, and then they take the action to either obtain more Food or People. Feedback occurs at the end of each round, when Food is consumed and players receive their rewards from Challenges. When the next round starts, the interaction loop starts again. If each round is an interaction loop, then 3 rounds is an interaction arc. At the end of every three rounds, a Catastrophe card is drawn. The feedback is that players lose Food and/or People based on the Catastrophe, If player want to survive past the end of this arc, they need to prepare adequately so that they have enough Food/People to survive the Catastrophe.
