System Dynamics: Values, Loops, and Arcs in Scarcity

Our game, Scarcity, is currently centered around battling with drug abuse in larger urban areas.

Values

In our game, we hope to enlighten our players with the challenges with fighting drug abuse and the tradeoffs between “quick fixes” and long term solutions.

Loops

After reading the instructions, players will have a mental model that parallels that of Battleship. Because of this familiar mechanism, we believe it will be easier to onboard new players.

Our loop consists of three main phases. The first phase of the game is research. Here the mayor chooses a tile they want to inspect. From here the disease master responds by stating whether the disease has spread or not to the tile. In the second phase of our loop the mayor chooses an action: either they can deploy the police force or build a safe injection center. Both of these actions have different behaviors, consequently, the mayor will see different results, depending on the rules. Once the resource is deployed, the disease master provides feedback on which drug sites were cured. And finally, depending on how the events took place for the mayor they will choose to act in a similar manner in the next round or try to a new technique. In the final phase, the disease master has an opportunity to continue transmitting the disease to a tile adjacent to any disease tile.

Arcs

The main arc in our game is essentially the journey of the disease. It either takes over the city and the disease master wins or the mayor is able to control the disease from spreading, in which case the mayor wins.