We did so by building a game on Plexus that replays the enormously consequential Battle of Michigan Avenue. Due to our focus on protest, we used Nicolas Proctor’s Chicago 1968 to link our platform with the RTTP model. Throughout our research, we considered the RTTP model, which we had run in classes previously, to be the exemplar in the field of educational gaming and simulation. Nevertheless, our goal is to build a platform that can facilitate play of many different role-playing games, beyond our current two-actor model. This customizability has enabled the use of our game in contexts outside sociology, including the Arab Spring protests in a history class, the mechanics of oligopoly collusion in economics, and homeless encampment clearings in a criminal justice course.
Professors can upload educational content for students to read before the game starts, while the actor names and payoff matrix can all be customized to reflect the intended game scenario. Thus, our game model includes a payoff matrix that awards payouts to each side during repeated play, ultimately determining a final winner at the end of the game.Īdditionally, we have added support for game customizability. This entails two actors with divergent interests both facing the basic choice of whether or not to use violence to achieve their goals. To support this style of play, our game is broadly based on game theory. Originally, our game was intended for use in sociology classes, specifically as a tool to aid in the teaching of social movements and collective action: students could be placed virtually into a conflict scenario, playing as either protestors or police. In short, our solution to the classroom conundrum is “If you cannot beat em, join em.”
As a professor-student team, our impetus for this game was two-fold: first, to create active and engaged classrooms and second, to harness the (usually unproductive) student use of technology in the classroom (laptops, tablets, smartphones). Plexus is a real-time, multiplayer educational game platform built at Assumption University.
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