A resource management board game created by students inspired by IdeaSquare Planet
If you were to travel to an exoplanet, how would your crew manage their resources? A board game developed by students at IdeaSquare aims to tackle this question with fun thought experiments and quick decision-making!
Inspired by our upcoming educational endeavour, IdeaSquare Planet, game design students from St. John’s University in New York came for an intense week at CERN to develop a board game based on the setting of travel to an exoplanet. They decided to centre their game on resource management, a decisive aspect of our educational programme which aims to make people think about the big questions of the future to better reflect on the present.
Their game is divided into several phases, using some of the modules from IdeaSquare Planet. Thus, a preparation phase for the travel is devoted to the selection of the crew, the expertise necessary to reach the destination, but also the organisation and decision-making system (democratic, authoritarian, representative, etc.). Then, the ship takes off and begins a long journey towards the unknown planet. This journey is of course not without obstacles and the crew will have to make quick and potentially costly decisions to deal with unexpected situations that arise. Finally, when the pale dot of the planet hanging in the cosmos has grown sufficiently and it is time to settle there, the establishment of the settlement and its proper functioning brings new challenges which give rise to gameplay still a little different. Players will need to complete a certain number of rounds to win this collaborative game.
Many people from the IdeaSquare team and the CERN community volunteered to playtest multiple iterations of the game over the days, with it improving with feedback from each team of players. The students did an impressive job and initiated a collaborative effort to arrive at a version that best represents the IdeaSquare Planet philosophy.
IdeaSquare Planet is an educational programme that can take many forms and adapt to different curriculums. Here, the students have chosen to adapt three modules, but there are more, particularly concerning the societal aspects of life in the settlement on the exoplanet, and especially the return to Earth to apply the results of the thought experiment to real and concrete situations. In its pilot phase for the whole of 2024, IdeaSquare Planet will become a fully-fledged educational programme next year.
The management of resources on which the students focused is a major issue for our present and future societies. By offering the opportunity to see passionate discussions about them sparkle in a science fiction imagination, the students allow their game to confront the players, as much as themselves, with the questions of tomorrow.
