A proposal for gamifying the civic economy

The topic of our Redesigning Business master class was to gamify the three economies (civic, circular and sharing economy). In practice this meant that our goal was to make a pervasive game, so that symposium visitors can experience the three different types of new economies and the old economy.

Overall Experience

Our game works like this. Visitors of the Symposium get handed different stickers at the entrance. The sticker defines in which team you are. The idea is that you can play individually, but your work will have consequences for your entire team. You have to work together with strangers for a common goal. You've got to build lego figures using four different economical strategies at the four different stands. But there's a catch: you've got to build the lego figure in exactly one minute at all the stands. If you win, you earn a point for your whole team. You can experience the four different ways of building lego blocks, which are connected to the economies at their mechanical core. The civic economy game is explained below.

Definition

The civic economy is a economy-design based on co-operating and local production, local entrepreneurs and local resources.

Gameplay and storytelling

The civic economy game is a game where you can make a product with local ingredients, but you only have yellow or black ingredients. You have to negotiate with the other local company to trade your leftovers. Together you'll be able to finalize your products. In practice that means that you start playing at one stand, which only has yellow lego blocks. But you also need black lego blocks to build your figure. You have to run to the other stand with a yellow lego block in your hand (a product you have too much of) and trade it there for a black lego block (which are leftovers for the other stand, too). You can start building your figure at both stands as starting point, but eventually you'll need the leftover resources of the other stand to finish building your figure.