Mike's Enviro-Ethics Game

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Mike's Enviro-Ethics Game

Purpose:

To explore the nature of competition, cooperation, and consumption.

Number of Players:

Tested with 7 players.

Equipment:

A "deck" of special purpose cards.
A pile of consumer "units."

Instructions to the facilitator:

This game has only one rule, but at first it may seem complicated to the players. It's a game of discovery, and one of the things to discover here is that the game has no explicit objective. It would be helpful if you didn't say that, actually, but rather, if you appear slightly disorganized, and focus on the few rules, then perhaps you can get away with this deception. If someone asks, then explain the purpose of the game, but don't say "There's no goal for a single player except for understanding" (which would be the truth).

Equipment

The consumer "units" should be small in size (beans, pebbles, etc; don't use pennies because the parallel to money is too strong; money isn't the only resource to be modelled). There should be about 10 to 15 units per person. Each player should receive 5-10 units to start, the remainder left in a pile somewhere accessible.

All of the cards should be the same, but they are complicated enough that they should not appear so at a casual glance. The cards are two sided, with no preferred "front" side.

There are two portions of each face. There is a portion with a single letter, "D" or "C", called "the play" and there is a portion with 2 letters and two numbers, called "the reward."

The Rule:

The cards are played by showing the "D" or "C" to another player (who plays a card as well). The two cards are compared, and each player's reward is indexed on his own card by his opponent's play.

Example: If I play "D" and my opponent plays "C", then my reward (which I read from my card) is "2" (because my opponent played "C") and my opponent (reading his own card, by referring to the "D:") gets -1; that is, loses a unit.

This is the only rule.

Other facets of play:

It won't take long for your group to figure out that this is an under-constrained game.

Who gets to play against whom, and when? Some kind of agreement would make things less chaotic, but no particular rule is better than another. Let the players decide.
Where do the rewards come from? The opponent or the pile? Let the players decide.
Where do the negative rewards go? Notice that there are plays in which both players receive a positive reward. In a "zero sum" context, the players exchange units, with no net gain. But they should not be prohibitted from suggesting that the rewards come from the pile, or go to the pile. The pile should be small enough to be depleted in a few minutes (before everyone gets bored).
How is the timing of the cards done? Players choose how to play. If you're quick, you can figure out a policy by which you know how to react based on what your opponents played first. On the other hand, a "stone-scissors-paper" style of simultaneous play is a good strategy too.
Can the players make a contract? What about breaking contracts? Other forms of cheating? Nothing should be discouraged (apart from outright violence -- but only because it's a game, not because it's against the rules). On the other hand, the players could make an agreement, which they honour or dishonour as they please. It's more interesting if someone clues in, and starts cheating (usually someone who's played it before).
What happens when the pile becomes depleted, or a player goes bankrupt? Excellent question! I hope your game gets that far.

None of these facets need to be discussed before hand, but they are interesting to discuss in the debriefing.

Length of play.

This game really depends on the awareness of the group. Players should start to see the parallels (and incongruencies) between the game and "the world" fairly quickly. Allow people enough time to get the idea, and hopefully deplete the pile, before they get bored. The last time I played it, we spent 15 minutes.

Debriefing:

This is the important part. Most people will have noticed certain parallels, but not others.

There was no objective, so who won? Was there some kind of assumption that players were to collect units?
Did anyone go bankrupt? Or into debt?
Did anyone take units from the pile? Or put units into the pile?
Contracts, strategies? They assume a goal.

An interesting topic is that of honouring the ad hoc rules which the players create as they play. If no one cheated, why? If someone cheated, were they successful in the long run, or did others stop playing against the cheater? What did the players think about "cheating?" Were there any acts of charity? Why or why not?

The parallel between the pile and the environment is fairly obvious. The players can be seen as people, nations, industries, or similar. The players' strategies can be seen as ethical policies, and their (assumed) goals as their value system. What kind of value systems can be represented in this game?

Do the cards themselves represent anything, or are they merely a means to an end? (Recall that the players could have agreed to "exchange" units, thus making no increase of decrease -- my bet is that they chose some method of acquiring units; the actual playing of the cards was incidental)

A bibliographical note:

There is a little puzzle that ethics profs (and philosophy profs) like to use as an example. It's called "The Prisoners' Dilemma" and is essentially reproduced in this game.

The problem is this: Two prisoners are being held for some crime, and they are independently given two options: plead guilty or not guilty. The facts of guilt or innocence are unimportant, as the law (in this particular case) is not concerned with truth, only punishment.

If both prisoners plead guilty, then they both spend time in prison (two years). If both plead not guilty, then both spend less time in prison (one year). If the pleas are different, then the one who pleads guilty is given a reward (plea bargaining), and spends no time in prison, but the one who pleaded not guilty is condemned by the other prisoner's witness, and is given a stiff sentence (three years). Independently, the prisoners must decide to plead guilty or not guilty.

The dilemma is that it is in the best interests of both that they plead differently, but both would want the other to plead not guilty. If they both plead guilty, then they have a pretty bad outcome. On the other hand, they both know that if they plead not guilty their punishment is not so bad. In most treatments of the dilemma, the not guilty plea is represented by "C" and the guilty plea is represented by "D."

The reason that this is an interesting problem at all is that it serves as an analogy to many ethical issues. For example, we all agree that public transit is a good thing, and that the alternative (clogged roads due to too many personal vehicles) is a very bad thing, the "best" thing would be for me to own a car, and everyone else to use the bus. Of course, we can't all use this thinking, because we'd end up with traffic problems. Uh, hang on a second. We do have traffic problems...

The rewards on the cards above represent the sentence lengths minus one.

Acknowledgements

This game was inspired by work done by Professor Peter Danielson at UBC's Centre for Applied Ethics. He argued that a computer simulation of various strategies for the Prisoner's Dilemma, played by various numbers of agents would provide some insight into ethical issues.