Over the past few years I’ve become a student of game theory. The use of games as a learning tool in the college classroom has made the classes more engaging for me as an instructor and for the students as well. The class itself is a giant game show, with the winning team constituting the winners. Over the course of the last few days I’ve been thinking about a total revamp to the game theory, moving the game from just a group phenomenon to an individual test of skill as well.
The catalysts for this change are two shows: The Big Brain Theory and The Hero. While these shows are very different, they add useful elements to the evolution of my own game design. Big Brain operates as an elimination show where the teams are not static. Each week new captains are chosen based on individual performance and those captains get to choose teams for the weekly challenge. In the Hero there is only one team and together that team decides which members go forward to complete certain challenges. Now I can see ways to use these two strategies together in the first three weeks of class in what I will call a ‘Draft Camp’ Each day will present a new challenge and at the beginning of each period 5-6 captains will be chosen to come forward and select team members. By the end of that period I will have solid draft rankings for each students providing me with an assessment of their individual skills in a number of ‘control’ areas.
The downside of this new strategy is that there is going to be people on the bottom. I can limit this by selecting tiers. You can draft as a tier 1, 2, 3, 4 (Rounds?) selection and each team must select a member from each tier. Still, starting a class where you are labeled as a bottom tier student is as likely to reinforce student apathy as it is to force that student off their butt to work. It is a risk I am willing to take. I am also ready to do the work needed to help that student figure out how to be a successful student. That is where The Hero comes in. In this show challenges may only be completed by certain people based on who did previous challenges. If I modify that to indicate that individual challenges can only be completed by certain tiers, this will most certainly force groups to ensure that lower tiered players are much more than dead weight.
I think the biggest change may come in the trades. This is a game for points after all, and attaching point values to tiers (Lower tier = higher point compensation needed) will really lead to some critical thinking about how to pick teams and how to add or remove members of a team. What is a member worth to you? I’m excited to find that out.
Now all I need to do is find a way to make it simple.