Fishbanks Simulation Game

In this session you will play an unplugged fisheries game set on the fictional island of 'Ayenusia', where several groups share fishing grounds that regenerate slowly and can be damaged permanently. You will manage a fleet, decide where to fish, and negotiate with the other groups while trying to maintain the ecosystem.

No preparation is required and no prior knowledge is assumed. The rules are explained at the start and the first round is played slowly as a walkthrough.

If you want to read something first, one short piece on common-pool resources is enough — see Learning Material. Come willing to negotiate out loud and to have your reasoning examined afterwards; the discussion is the substance of the session, not an add-on.

By the end of the session you will be able to:

• describe how a shared renewable resource can be depleted while every individual decision still looks reasonable
• explain why delayed and partial feedback makes overuse hard to detect in time
• distinguish between depleting a replenishing stock and damaging the habitat that produces it
• relate the dynamics you experienced to a real resource system you know

Background reading about the original:

• Fishbanks, the simulation this session is loosely based on. Originally developed by Dennis Meadows; a web version was developed by John Sterman at MIT Sloan. Commercial version at forio.com
• OpenFishbanks (openfishbanks.org) — an open-source asynchronous extension of the MIT version. I haven't checked its licence or how well maintained it is.

Resources on systems:

• Sustainability Institute, 2003, Commodity Systems Challenges [Download]
• Kim, D.H and Anderson, V., 1998, System Archetypes Basics: From Story to Structure [Download]

The session is completed by taking part in the structured debrief that follows play. The debrief covers:

• what each group's position looked like at the end, and against what goals
• the reveal: the actual stock and habitat trajectory across the whole game, shown against what you could see at the time
• when you first suspected something was wrong, what information you were using, and what you would have needed instead
• what agreements formed, and why they held or broke
• one resource system from your own context that behaves similarly

Participants should submit a short reflection (half a page, please include an image from the game!) on one decision they made and what they would now do differently.