Game: Rock-it – a tragedy of the commons game in outer space
- Do players feel the stakes enough to understand the “tragedy” in “tragedy of the commons”?
- Importance: If players don’t emotionally feel the consequences of their actions, the game misses its key experience, which is the tension between individual greed and group ruin.
- Type of prototype: This might involve a simple shared bank of resource A (e.g., [15 x number of players] units of precious asteroid rock, oxygen, or water) and 3 rounds where everyone tries to gain as much as possible by the end. On each round, people write down the number of units they will be taking, and if the resource is completely depleted in any round, everyone loses.
- Prediction: The social dilemma in itself lends itself to tension, so I don’t think this base emotional tension will be too hard to achieve.
- How does adding sporadic inequality affect the emotional impact of the game?
- Importance: We want to amplify the emotional impact so that people see how the game translates to real-world situations. Inequalities create a huge emotional impact in real life, so I think this idea can be translated into a game.
- Type of prototype: There is chaos involved via 2 dice, where everyone would roll 2 dice in between writing their number down and everyone revealing. The 1st die determines an amount of resource (i.e., 1-6 units), and the second determines if you gain or lose that amount (even or odd number).
- Prediction: I think this will amplify the emotional effect, as some players will get lucky and stay calm/happy, and some will feel wronged and become greedier. There is a chance that the dynamic will be flipped, too, as comfortable players could feel comfortable taking more, while underresourced players will recognize the strained shared resources.
- How do roles increase the complexity and replayability of the game?
- Importance: The game has a somewhat simple premise, so we need to ensure adequate depth of the game such that people don’t get bored after 2-3 plays.
- Type of prototype: Have 6-10 role cards (duplicates may be allowed, need at least as many cards as the number of players) where you write the player’s role (eg Exquisite jewelry designer, miner, though the role is not necessary if it takes too long to come up with) and how much of each resource they need to survive each round (e.g., 1, 5, or 10 units). Players draw at random at the beginning of the game, and there is no explicit role reveal phase.
- Prediction: I think this will increase emotional investment because people will have an individual goal, and the stakes will be higher since you can individually lose before the whole group loses. I’m not sure how communication will be affected, as I don’t know how advantageous it is to reveal how many units you need to survive the round.
- When should communication between players be allowed?
- Importance: This is a social mediation game, and we want to ensure that social dynamics are interesting, which is largely affected by the communication stage’s position.
- Type of prototype: We could allow talking before people write down their numbers or after they write their numbers, but before they roll the dice.
- Prediction: I think communication will be more interesting when we’re at the balance of locked decisions and unknown (dice roll + reveal hasn’t happened) in the game, which is between writing and rolling dice. If people have hidden information (e.g., that their written number is very high), they would likely need to lie in the communication phase, which is fun and interesting. However, they would be talking about the next round’s written decisions, which might be too far away to be emotionally invested in.
