A proposal for gamifying the sharing economy
From a gamifyer’s point of view, there are lots of rules and regulations to play around with in both “old” and “new” economies. These “new” economies –the civic economy, the sharing economy and the circular economy– all seem to come down to one same principle: working together, whilst the “old” economy (i.e. a linear economy of producer-consumer-waist) is far more individual. Working on a collaborative pervasive game, which will take place at the Redesigning Business Symposium on November 20th 2014, I will focus on translating the essential principles of sharing economy into a small and simplified game-concept.
Game-proposal
These essential principles, in my opinion, are trust and shared benefit. Creating together gives a result that is in fact larger than the sum of its components. However, both businesses working together will have to trust that both of them consider this shared benefit to have the same high value, otherwise the system will simply fail.
This already gives a game-concept in terms of victory and failure. In this game-proposal, playing together is essential for having even a chance of winning. Not being able to play together –or trust each other, for that matter– means failure for both participants. Playing together, however, should also have an additional incentive besides winning to underline the urgency of sharing economy.
Translating these conditions to the concept of the entire pervasive game at the symposium –visualising each of the economies named earlier with four small building games, using LEGO-bricks– I’ve come up with the following proposal.
As the player approaches the table with this game, he or she is instructed to find another player, because this game can only be played in pairs. While most of the other mini games have one source of recourses, this one has two different recourses: one for each player. Both players have a bowl with one type of recourses, but in order to make the shape shown on a picture by the game-master, within 60 seconds, they will have to share their recourses AND deliberate how they are going to build the shape together in a successful way. Winning means that each competing team gets one point, meaning that playing with a player from a different team gets a better joined result than playing with a member from the same team. I’m hoping this will present the players with the concept of sharing to get a better joined benefit.
Storytelling
Imagine that both players are in fact businessmen and the teams are different companies, making a product out of different recourses. The companies do not own all the recourses however. In this case, consequently, the product can only be made by working together and sharing your recourses. Joined benefit is the key here. Of course both businessmen working together can be from the same company, but that will not gain the team more benefit than usual. Working together with another company, however, will gain benefit for both companies working together: 1+1=3!