Working With System Dynamics
Based on Chapter 5 of Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop
After reading about loops and arcs in Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop, my team and I ventured to incorporate our learnings into our game. The game models the system of hiring in workplaces. In addition to better understanding who the key stakeholders are, we also hope players will become more aware of biases and competing objectives which affect hiring decisions.
Our game is co-op and requires a group of 5 or more to play. Each player is assigned a role in “The Company”, such as hiring manager, human resources (HR), or senior management. Each round, 3 candidates are drawn from the candidate pile and placed in the center for everyone to evaluate. Candidate cards contain their names, work experience, and skills. After discussing, the hiring manager makes an offer for the candidate(s). If the offer falls within the range of the candidate’s acceptable salary, the candidate is successfully hired. As a team, your objective is to successfully hire 5 candidates for a new project your company is developing.
However, as alluded above, players have potentially competing individual objectives based on their role. For instance, the hiring manager is looking to hire five people as soon as possible to hit their deadline. HR, on the other hand, wants to foster a great company culture and wants to increase diversity of the team. When running against the clock, these two objectives can conflict with each other (often the hiring as fast as possible wins). We’re also interested in incorporating “bias” cards which identify various bias which occur during the hiring process. Each player will hold a bias card which will automatically prevent them from vouching for certain candidates to be hired.
While the overall objective to hire 5 candidates initially seems fairly straightforward, we expect players to experience the frustration that comes with hiring as they play. For example, the bias cards are intentionally meant to be unfair, especially when applied towards obviously qualified candidates. We hope that through the bias cards and the competing individual objectives, players will be spurred to think about how bias and politics affects hiring decisions today.
