Working With System Dynamics

VALUE: We were trying to model the tensions between peer pressures in working environments. The idea was inspired by the trending phenomenon in China, which is called “996”. In most of tech companies, employees are working overtime not only because of the overload of tasks, but more because of peer pressure. Some employees have finished the work, however when they see most of their colleges including their managers are still working, they would keep working or pretending they are working during their off hours.

In order to explore this working system, we would have cards of “finished work on time” or “didn’t finish” for players to draw. The resource would be 2 scale bars, money and health, starting from a scale 5. There would be 4 combinations in the game:

• finished work & leave -> money, health remains the same
• didn’t finish & stay -> money remains, health-1
• didn’t finish & leave -> money -1, health remains
• finished & stay -> money +1, health -1

Originally, we had this “employer” role, who decided the employee with lowest performance each role. However, we thought then the players would have different experiences. So we got rid of the “employer” and replaced it with “peer reviews”.

Instead of an open system, our game would base on social cues include bluffing, guessing and deceiving.

ARC: In each round, the players would draw a “work status” card which says either “finished” or “unfinished”. They should hide their status and resource scales from each other. Then the players would say they are staying or leaving. If everyone is staying or leaving, then we don’t need to do a peer review, but otherwise, they need to identity the “worst performance employee”. That employee would loose 1 scale of money. In the end of one round they would mark their scales on health and money.

LOOP: Then the players would draw the cards again like the idea of “a second day” and repeat the procedure. With the feedback “leaving” or “staying” from other players in last round, players would decide their actions for this round.

The person who lost all points in either money or health lose the game, and the person stays is the winner.