CORPROMISE
Created on June 2nd, 2018
Essence Statement:
Corpromise is a competitive game of cooperation. We seek to challenge our players to think critically about the way companies and individuals operate when confronted with global climate change issues. Our game aims to illustrate that a solution will require the world working together to survive. Corpromise is designed to emulate the tragedy of the commons. We hope that players leave the game with a larger view on the internal conflicts which play a pivotal role on why some companies and individuals refuse to cooperate for the sake of our shared future.
Value Proposition:
The game attempts to simulate the correlation between the pursuit of profit and the impact of unsustainable growth. By challenging the players to both compete and cooperate, we hope to highlight the difficulty in working towards a common goal, while at the same time having competing interests. We have purposefully made it difficult to lower the Environmental Impact counter to emphasis the difficulty present in reducing and repairing the damage to the planet.
Main Game:
Players take on the roles of companies working together to prevent catastrophe but also working against each other to be the first one to reach $1000 to win. It’s a game about trust, greed, selflessness, selfishness and moral decisions.
Audience Overview:
Age range: 13+
Genre: Educational, Social Experiment
Gender: All
Playtime: 15-25 mins
Players: 4
For who: People who want to make an impact on climate change, and for everyone who plans on continuing to live on earth in the next two decades. People who do not know about the effects of social interaction: people taking advantage of good deeds and doing bad deeds to get ahead.
Core Gameplay:
Game Features/ Rules:
The game requires 4 Players.
The first person to reach $1000 wins the game.
If the All of the Trees are CUT from the game board, the world ends and everyone loses. There are a total of 20 trees on the gameboard
A Player’s turn consists of them first declaring Personal or Public and rolling the 4-sided die. The player then does the action that corresponds to the rolled number.
After all four players take their turn, the round ends. Move the season wheel to the next season and draw a World Event Card. Complete the action on the card.
The next round, the player with the least amount of money goes first. If tied, roll the die, and the player with the highest roll goes first.
If two players are at the same location and their position in the game is referenced (ie last place) both players roll a die. The player with the highest number rolled receives the effect(s)
Game Platform:
Corpromise is a board game that targets a wide audience. It can be fun and engaging, but it’s main goal is to provide an educational experience to the players akin to Brenda Romero’s Trains game. The purpose is to elicit different and sometimes challenging emotions from the player. Contrary to the typical board game, we want the player to think critically in this real world simulated board game of corporate gain and environmental consciousness.
Walk Through of Game Play:
When the players first come together, they should go through the game rules, and each player need to roll the die to decide their order. After that, the first player’s turn will begin. They will declare whether they are going Personal or Public, and they will roll the die. The player will then check the reference key and do the correspond actions. For example, if a player declare to go Personal, and they rolled a 4, their action will be increase $200 and cut 4 trees. After all four players went, they will advance the season wheel to the next season and pull a world event card. After the players complete the actions from the world event card, the round ends. The player in last place then goes first in the next round.
Overall user experience and reflection:
It’s been very positive. We noticed that people in the IMD cohort were much more likely to go for the Personal option rather than the Public option which quickly resulted in the game ending. Conversely, people who played our game in BIS 313, people were much more likely to go for the Public option. Our theory is that people that don’t know each other want to appear like good genuine people that care about the environment. They don’t want to be seen as the evil people destroying the environment. People in the IMD cohort, with two full quarters of bonding, were much more comfortable being competitive and selfish to get ahead of each other in order to win.
The feedback we received was nearly overwhelmingly positive. The one concern, however, was pacing. In the final game the pacing was relatively resolved so that it felt like people were progressing through the gameboard without instantly dying or being forced to go back a large amount of spaces. There still could be a lot more balancing that could be done, especially for the world event cards.
Credits:
Project Manager/Lead Designer: Jacob Luna
Art Assets: Rena Chen, Kevin Laird, Chelsea Tao
Writing: Bao Nam Tran-Thien
