The NEW COMMONS GAME

Abstract

One purpose of the NEW COMMONS GAME is to demonstrate how Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” works. Another purpose illustrates how differences in the power to exploit a commons result in feelings of frustration, alienation, and the desire for revolution on the part of players who begin the game disadvantaged. Finally, the game permits disadvantaged players to ask questions of other players thus illustrating the power and limits of publicity to control the greed of the privileged players. Differences between a college student game and a game played with participants at the ISAGA ’91 conference showed that students started with a much higher rate of exploitation than the ISAGA players, almost exhausting the resource, in the first part of the game. However, students reached a more stable cooperative exchange than did the ISAGA participants in the latter part of the game. One reason for this difference may be that a real consequence—points toward their grade—was contingent upon the students’ performance in the game, while this was not true for the ISAGA players.