Strikers Game (SG) – for a Transition Toward a Low Carbon Economy
It is essential for grassroots citizens to get involved in the climate struggle and the transition to clean energy. We cannot be passive onlookers. Strikers Game is a friendly but competitive game to find balanced and useful information and ideas.
These games start with about a dozen people and can be distant from the place where they are trying to effect change. A series of games and evolving Discussion Questions can lead to action, or lead to further questions, or challenge other groups to run their own game.
The structure of the game gives integrity to the results. The Discussion Question gives direction. A Gradient, or a prize in this case, gives a reason to engage, even for people who may not think much about climate issues.
Good leaders should look ahead, think about potential threats and find alternate pathways. But many of them are busy enough with day-to-day pressures and surround themselves with people who will not challenge them. So they follow the crowd. If citizens don’t talk about an issue, leaders won’t talk about it either.
Recipe for a Strikers Game
Take about a dozen participants and randomly form 3 teams of 3 players each, plus a panel of 3 judges. Give a Discussion Question. Teams take a short period of time to talk and create their own position, followed by presentation to the judges who will choose the winning team. Prize money is paid out and the process is repeated and developed. It’s moved forward with the next Discussion question. This process can be continued until there is an opportunity for action or engagement with others, pushing the process ahead so that others can use it too.
Strikers Game is a type of dynamic polling. Follow-up questions depend on the answer to the previous question. Teams and judges can be re-mixed as often as needed by drawing straws or other random method. Family and friends can be used to start the game but to have full effect, players and judges should not be self-selecting. They should be chosen in a way to balance the bias.
One simple way to do this is by choosing them according to the day and month of a person’s birthday. For example, the 10thof June or the 25thof March. This automatically balances factors of Race, Gender, and Age.
In a Striker’s Game the prize creates a tension, a gradient that keeps people engaged. Gradients push uphill or pull downhill in a general direction. Electrical gradients help a TV or computer tune in lots of information – but only if plugged in – and only if it has the right internal structure. A toaster can be plugged in but because of its internal structure, it won’t tune in the local radio station. It will only produce, well . . . toast.
We must find the right structure of social groups that can filter and produce useful information. Attempts to bring different people and different ideas together is admirable and sometimes useful, but if it’s not plugged, if there is no competition, then it’s not reaching their potential for finding useful information.
The question of where to get the prize money can be a Discussion Question itself. Even small donations, if added together, can create sufficient pull to engage a few people to search and work for the money. Finding an escrow, a trusted keeper of the money, will be important so that the players know it’s there.
Discussion Questions can be Issue Question, addressing specific issue, or it can be a Process Question, thinking about the process itself and how to improve it. So the question of finding an escrow or in some way to insure donations will be a Process Question.
Business and government also have the advantage of doing things on a large scale. By contrast, games can work on a small scale by creating reliable feedback for the system. One can turn a ship around with reliable feedback.
What if the results of a Striker’s Game are ignored or rejected? Then re-mix or choose different players. Maybe change the Discussion Question, increase the prize, or find another place. In any case, it’s important to push the process itself so the players in another town can use it to find better information for themselves.
Gathering and filtering information for your own place (T1) can be considered to be a first order game. Then expanding the game and challenging players from another town (T2) is a second order game. Players from both towns can be mixed together on the same team.
In a third order game, one town (T1) challenges players in the second town (T2) to start the game in a third town (T3). In this case, the prize money is for players of the second town but only if they can teach the third town to collect their own prize money and run a successful Striker’s Game. An increase in the prize may be needed but at some point there will be enough leverage to make it happen. It’s like planting a seed and watering it.
Most money in politics is spent broadcasting messages from one political campaign. Moving even a small fraction of that money to the receiving end of the information with a Strikers-type of game will be a filter and be more valuable to more people. Players and supporters of the Game are essentially paying each other to find ideas and filter the information.
With prize money as an incentive, one does not have to be a salesman or rely only on gaining trust. Simply invite a dozen people and challenge them to a game, but give them the tools. Even for people who think they have no time, Striker’s Games can be very efficient, one hour from start to finish for most Discussion Questions. Longer games for more complex issues might be needed if the players are to make a wider search for information.
Goals of the Game:
One goal can be to push a target town (T2) to become Sustainable on Low Carbon. What would that look like for that town? Depending on the local geography, each town may use a different source of energy – Wind, Water, Waves, Solar, or Thermal.
Discussion Questions can even reach across national borders. An example might be the question of how a Central American farmer can raise crops when their climate has recently become more arid. Farmers in the Middle East have had to figure this out and will likely have useful information. The first few rounds of the game is on the Issue Question of what crops to raise. Subsequent rounds might become the Process Question: “How do we contact farmers in Central American to move this information?”
Since the farmers have knowledge of their own local conditions, there might be more games required with farmers to figure out what might work best for their area. There must be better solutions than subsistence living simply because farmers don’t have the necessary information in a changing environment.
Why do we need games?
Many people in leadership positions have known for more than 40 years that too much carbon in the atmosphere would be a problem and yet nothing was done. In fact, there are still carbon subsidies for fossil fuel companies.
This is a failure of leadership. They may not see a path to a clean energy economy that does not have them and their friends at the top. Maybe they are afraid of what others might think, or a fear of making the first move.
In the Tobacco Wars, courts played a key role in but according to surveys done by the tobacco companies themselves, most smokers wanted to quit. The same is not true of fossil fuel. We all love our hot baths, our cars, our homes warmed in the winter and air conditioned in the summer. We love our stuff and jet travel too. The inertia of daily life is immense. All of these take energy and most of it comes from fossil fuel.
Solutions will have to be creative and yet address our individual need for meaning in what we do. Courts, governments, and business can make significant dents, but they cannot do it alone. If we rely only on policies and laws, then individuals and companies will wiggle out, they will drag their feet, and they will hire legions of lawyers to look for loopholes. We need engagement, not simply coercion.
The internet and social media seem to have the potential to reach millions, but the numbers for environmental groups are still small and, of course, politicians only listen to large groups. Yet we can find ways to change the system, ways to create new divisions of labor, and find Useful Information for better Feedback.
Many Games can be focused simultaneously but independently on one place, like a magnifying glass in the sun. It will be an intense few days or weeks for that town, but an exciting period of gathering ideas, information, and useful feedback for moving more certainly down the path toward a low carbon economy.
There are likely some employees of coal and oil companies who would like to find another job. Using a Strikers Game can help them do that. This should not be done out of anger or revenge. We must start with people where they are, with their understanding of the issue, but continue to push forward. We are all climbing a steep mountain and must point out footholds for each other.
Why would anyone interact with other people in some distant place? For one, it can be easier to give honest feedback to others outside than to one’s own group. But do it for the fun, the challenge, or the money. Play a Strikers Game for the social interaction and to be able to talk to people who will listen – because they are on your team. Play to get your ideas heard.
Questions-
-Can we learn from each other?
-Do we trust the information received?
-Can we use it?
More Ways to use SG’s:
1. Find points of resistance to the flow of Useful Information.
Change it or do a workaround?
2. Stop Fossil Fuel support by governments.
3. Find and use other kinds of gradients. (Dinner for 3? Or 4?)
4. Raise $ for prizes?
5. Are big business and finance helping to make changes
– commensurate with their size – or are they just talking?
6. How to build solar panels.
7. How to add insulation. Which homes would benefit the most?
8. What is the difference between temperature and heat?
– and why is that important?
9. Where are we (they) wasting Energy?!?!
10. Where should we start? What place? What group? What DQ?
Go! Go!! Go!!! – Remy
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