Celia Pearce of UC Irvine working with Buckminster Fuller Institute
on a ‘assymetical’ game with players as stewards of the real world –
not just a virtual game world. Players use mltiple devices — PCs,
phones, PDAs — to simluate and deploy ‘bottom up’ solutions to
sustainability on local, regional and global level.
Bucky’s World Game idea is some 40 years old, proposed initially I
think for the 1967 World Fair. Read the GeoScope chapter in Bucky’s
book Critical Path. (I played a ‘manual’ — month long, intensive —
version in the early 70s; that experience probably did more than any
single thing to shape my perspective on the world and my role in it.)
Computer technology has finally caught up with the potential.
In this digital versiona, players would run simulations of mission
scenarios for various world situations, and then work on thos
emissions. She offeres the example of paper vs plastic — vs. perhaps
fabric. Proof is in the pudding of course, since life cycle
assesssments — which that examplpe would be — are notoriously
sensitive to opening assumptions defining data and simulation model.
(In response to my question, she suggests that all ‘missions’ will be
‘sponsored’ — eg by Sierra Club — so people willknow what those
assumptions are. Interesting idea — to it could bottleneck the
generation of new missions.)
Players would get points for action — perhaps more for effective action?
They’re conceiving it as an ‘open source metagame,’ so people and
organizations could bring in their own game modules — a great idea.
Celia: In a way, we’re always playing this game. I’d just like us to me more conscious that we doing that!