Game of Harvest

Last week, we played the game of harvest. We are divided into 6 groups, each team act as a fishing boat. The game we have played consist of a few simple rules:


1.Each round is one year. Each team decides how many fish they want to catch. Write down this number and put it in your boat


2.Facilitator takes boats and gives fish randomly to teams until they are gone. Rest of teams receive nothing.


3.You get back both of your boat and harvest. Write down your profit again.


4.The resources that we had was a ‘sea’ which contains 50 units of fish. . Each year, the remaining fish are able to produce one new fish, with a maximum of 50.


HOWEVER, our resource system, the ocean, became empty in the 4th round. the players eventually follow their self-interest and fishing more than the sustainable amount.


In this blog, I will try to come up with some additional rules so that the fisher villages can harvest from the sea generation after generation.





RULE 1. Set up a Committee as the inspectors.


Every team appoints a person as the inspector before the game starts. These people from different group forming the monitoring committee. The committee members will together supervise the harvest of each team. If any team is found to exceed the sustainable harvest amount, they will be punished. Possible punishments could be being banned for 1 round. When a group is being fined for the 2nd time, they would be kicked out of the game.






RULE 2.Make sure that everyone knows what is the best option.


Before each fishing season the committee which i mentioned above promotes sustainable fishing by giving speeches. This is to make sure that all members of the game understand what is the best for them and for the sustainability of the ocean.






RULE 3. Teams take turns to receive the extra fish.


During our game in the class, there was one extra fish which could be caught without damaging the sustainability of the ocean. All the teams who comply with the rules take turns to receive the extra profits. This is a bonus for those team who obey the rules.