StarPower (game)

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StarPower
Players 12-35 (18-35 recommended)
Setup time < 30 minutes
Playing time About two hours
Random chance some 1
Skills required negotiation, basic math
1. In service to the educational goal of the game, chance and skill have a smaller impact on the game than players are initially led to believe.
"StarPower" redirects here. For the song by Sonic Youth, see Starpower (song). For the gameplay mechanic called "Star Power" in the Guitar Hero video game series, see Guitar Hero (series)#Common gameplay elements.

StarPower is an educational game for ages 12 to 25, designed by R. Garry Shirts for Simulation Training Systems[1] in 1969[2]. [3] The game combines chance and skill at trading to establish a score. Players are assigned categories based upon their relative scores, with the highest scoring category being able to change the rules. The game is designed to illustrate the behavior of human beings in a system that naturally stratifies them economically or politically.

Contents

[edit] Play

Players are assigned initial lots of colored chits. These chits are not evenly assigned in value, but that information is not known to the players. Players are told to not share information about their chits.[4]. While players are told that the group assignment is based on "achievement" or "merit", the initial distribution dominates the resulting scores.[5][6]

Each round, players draw random colored chits and trade them for sets of points. At the end of each round players are assigned one of three groups and given an associated badge based on their score. The top scorers are purple squares, the middle are red circles, and the low scorers are green triangles. Starting on turn two (the first turn in which players are assigned to groups), the purple square players draw from a bag with higher scoring chits, which the green triangles draw from a bag with lower scoring chits. As a result, movement between groups becomes uncommon. Starting on the third round, the purple squares are free to change the rules any way they like.[7][8]

Key to the game's educational effectiveness is for those running the game to withhold details about the true nature and implementation.[9] That the purple squares can change the rules is only revealed to players when the ability is added to the game.[8]

Starpower is by design a very unbalanced game. Game designer James Wallis has gone so far as to describe the game as "broken" "by all conventional standards of game design."[2] The unbalanced nature of the game reduces its replayability. Shirts views StarPower as more of a simulation than a game and as a result does not view replayability as an important goal.[10]

[edit] Typical results

One commentator writing for the Sustainability Institute claimed that purple square players typically rigged the game to benefit purple squares, red circles strove to become purple squares at which point they began to act like purple squares, and that green triangles became angry and then apathetic, only becoming interested at the possibility of cheating or revolution. At the end of the game, the purple squares seldom see the oppression they engaged in while the red circles are viewed as sell-outs by the green triangles and as incompetent by the purple squares.[7]

Another commentator notes similar results. The purple squares create oppressive rules that make it difficult for lower groups to advance.[11] Lower groups turn to cheating.[12] The commentator also noted the lower groups becoming apathetic.[13]

The official site for the game lists eight lessons that StarPower teaches, mostly focused on the results of inequal distribution of power. [3]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Fowler, Sandy (2001-10-26). Tribute to R. Garry Shirts On the Occasion of Receiving the Ifill-Raynolds Award (English). Retrieved on 2007-05-14.
  2. ^ a b Wallis, James (2007-05-13). Things to do in game design #1: cheat (English). COPE: James Wallis Levels With You. Retrieved on 2007-05-14.
  3. ^ a b StarPower (English). Simulation Training Systems. Retrieved on 2007-05-14.
  4. ^ "They were told not to tell the others about their cards...."(Feld 1997)
  5. ^ "Although the original distribution of the cards largely determined the individual point totals and resulting group assignments, the participants were told that they were being placed in groups according to their levels of achievement." (Feld 1997)
  6. ^ "Variations in wealth are ostensibly based on 'merit' [success at trading chips] but most members of each 'strata' [squares, triangles, circles] unknowingly receive different resources [trading chips] at the beginning of the game and at each subsequent 'trading session." (Mukhopadhyay 2004)
  7. ^ a b Meadows, Donella (1986-12-04). Why Would Anyone Want to Play Starpower? (English). Retrieved on 2007-05-14. (Date is date of first publication, not release to the web.)
  8. ^ a b (Mukhopadhyay 2004)
  9. ^ "Much of the impact of the experience on players depends on the deliberate misinforming of participants as to the nature and outcomes of the game." Woods, Stewart (11 2004). Loading the Dice: The Challenge of Serious Videogames (English). Game Studies. Retrieved on 2007-05-14.
  10. ^ Shirts, Garry; Bernie DeKoven (2006-10-20). Guest Wisdom from Garry Shirts (English). Bernie DeKoven, funsmith. Retrieved on 2007-05-14.
  11. ^ "This particular play of the game was typical. After a very short time, the top group made increasingly oppressive rules, reducing or even eliminating any changes for the others to succeed and move up the hierarchy." (Feld 1997)
  12. ^ "The members of the lower groups responded to the hopelessness of their fate in a variety of ways; some hid their cards or themselves; others ran away; still others directly refused to follow the rules, and some of them even seemed to dare the top group members to make them." (Feld 1997)
  13. ^ "As participants came to feel that there was essentially nothing that they could do that would lead to 'acceptable' levels of rewards, they increasingly tended to withdraw and/or act in hostile ways." (Feld 1997)

[edit] References

[edit] External links