A proposal for Gamifying the Old Economy

Proposal for gamifying the old economy

We live in a world of limited resources, but not of limited needs. This principle is called scarcity, and is one of the basic principles of the classic –or "old" economy. Scarcity describes the relation between supply and demand in an economy with limited resources.

The old economy uses the cradle to grave principle, and therefore uses their resources without re-using them. According to that principle, where resources are used only one time, you have to use your resources thoughtfully in order to make the most out of it.

Game proposal

In the Gamification Masterclass of the Redesigning Business Week, we tried to translate this principle of scarcity into a pervasive game. Each team has a limited pool of resources, with which they have to build different products to gain points. You can choose to build an easy product, but by doing so you have to use a lot of resources. The other option is to build the difficult product, for which you need less resources, but in which you are less likely to succeed because of the given time limit of 60 seconds. The resources are limited for each team, so choose wisely, because if you fail to make your product within the time limit your resources will be spent as well. You could translate this principle to the idea of designing for the dump. The easy products are simple to produce but have a lot of waste material once finished, while the difficult products –for instance, products made from durable recourses– have a lower amount of waste. Also, the idea of eliminating the used recourses from the game as waste, gives this game a definite end, which relates to the linear proces of the "old" economy.

The biggest challenge for us in this game will be to pass on this idea of scarcity and thoughtfully using your resources to the players. We have to make it very clear to the players that they can only use their resources one time, and that they have to make decisions that will affect their whole team.