Editing World Game (section)

==Format==
Organizers of a World Game session have a large amount of discretion over the format. The original 1969 workshop version ran for at least fifty hours from June 12 to July 31, and involved 28 people including Fuller.<ref name="Schlossberg">Schlossberg, Edwin, ''World Game Diary'', Stanford University Collections M1090, Series 18: Project Files, World Game Subseries 2, box 39, Folder 2, 19. </ref><ref name="Matter 1969">{{Cite AV media|people=Matter, Herbert (director)|date=1969|title=R. Buckminster Fuller: The World Game|type=motion picture|location=New York}}</ref><ref name="Stott 2021"/> However, versions of the World Game exist with durations ranging from as long as an academic semester (e.g. the 1967 Southern Illinois University curriculum),<ref name="SIU curriculum 1971">{{cite web|last=Fuller|first=Buckminster|date=1971|title=The World Game: Integrative Resource Utilization Planning Tool|url=https://www.bfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/world_game_series_document1.pdf|website=BFI.org|publisher=Southern Illinois University}}</ref> to one day (as offered by the group We R One World),<ref name="WROW 2019">{{cite web | title=Buckminster Fuller World Game | website=We R One World | date=December 2, 2019 | url=https://weroneworld.com/about/worldgame-fuller/ | access-date=August 26, 2024}}</ref> to four to six hours (as carried out by the [[University of California, San Diego]] in 1995, to mark the centenary of Fuller's birth)<ref name="Perry 1995"/><ref name="UCSD 1995">{{cite press release|author=<!--not stated-->|url=https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb1298198f/_2.pdf|title=Media Advisory: "World Game" to be Played on Basketball Court-Sized Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion Map, July 13 at Mandeville Auditorium|location=San Diego|publisher=UCSD Communications Office|date=July 10, 1995|access-date=August 26, 2024}}</ref> to as short as four hours (as offered by the Global Solutions Lab), and with total player amounts ranging from 15 to hundreds.<ref name="Gabel 2001">{{cite web | last=Gabel | first=Medard | title=Buckminster Fuller – Global Solutions Lab | website=Global Solutions Lab – Designing solutions for global and local problems | date=2001 | url=https://designsciencelab.com/what-is-the-lab/buckminster-fuller/ | access-date=2024-08-26}}</ref><ref name="DSL WorldGame 2.0">{{cite web | title=WorldGame 2.0 – Global Solutions Lab | website=Global Solutions Lab – Designing solutions for global and local problems | date=2021 | url=https://designsciencelab.com/worldgame-2-0/ | access-date=2024-08-26}}</ref>

The Southern Illinois University curriculum, written by Fuller, does not describe its procedures as rules, but rather as "rudimentary" guidelines.<ref name="SIU curriculum 1971"/> Each World Game session has an overarching goal, from ending [[energy poverty]] (the original workshop's goal, met by allowing each person on Earth 2 gigawatt-hours per year through increased hydropower), to improving transportation, to ending world [[hunger]], ending illiteracy, building [[world peace]], and solving [[climate change]]. Players adopt "handicaps" tied to the session goal as necessary; for example, the UCSD session involved the representatives of regions with the lowest literacy rates being barred from speaking  or asking questions.<ref name="Perry 1995"/> All players must work together, ostensibly as one common team (though organizers often opt to split them into smaller teams), to develop strategies for meeting this goal using the latest data, preferably in as short a time or as efficiently as possible—an analogous board game format would be [[Cooperative board game|cooperative gameplay]], while an analogous video game format would be [[cooperative video game|cooperative]] within [[real-time strategy]] setting. The end product is left vague in Fuller's document, but might take the form of a written report.

Fuller proposed one model for how the World Game would be played farther in the future: after a week of studying a given problem, the players would partake in three rounds of peer review and negotiations. Colleague Medard Gabel described Fuller's vision as follows, using the example of world hunger:
{{Blockquote|text=The team or individual that demonstrated how, using current technology and known resources, hunger could be eliminated in ten years, would "win". The team that could show how it could be done in a shorter time, or by using less resources, or costing less, or accomplishing more than one thing at a time, such as providing clean water as well as eliminating malnutrition, would win round 2. Round 3 would be won by an effort that was even "better". The next week the focus would shift to energy, or health or education. Eventually the focus would return to food. These efforts, as pointed out above, were not intended as academic exercises. Each new strategy that incrementally improved the method for solving a problem was one step closer to implementation in Fuller's view.}}<ref name="Gabel 2001"/>

The company o.s. Earth, which held the intellectual property for the licensed World Game version, formatted its 2000s sessions thusly: 10 teams of randomly selected players representing each region of the world were obligated to form negotiation strategies for the sake of their 'constituents', the people, with the aim of meeting five smaller objectives in human rights, technology, environment, education and health and food. There were also eight teams representing facilitators: four role-played executives of fictional for-profit mega-corporations as stand-ins for the private sectors of some regions, while four represented analogs of the [[World Health Organization]], [[UNESCO]], [[UN Environment Programme]], and [[UN Commission on Human Rights]] that "sold" strategies. The remaining two teams represented the [[United Nations]]' principal organs and aid programs, and the world's news media, which would report live on the Game's progress. Most of the action in the game centered on three 20-minute rounds of trade negotiations to ensure that all teams' needs were met, with a few dozen minutes at the end set aside for reflection. The timespan simulated was thirty years.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://exemplars.world/world-game-institute/|title=World Game Institute|website=Exemplars Guide|access-date=October 25, 2024}}</ref> Points were scored based on the sum of solutions cards and currency, with very high-development regions such as Europe, Northern America and Japan starting out at about 110-140 points.<ref name="o.s.Earth Archive">{{cite web | title=o.s.Earth Archive Global Simulation Video | website=YouTube | date=May 3, 2010 | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njoyT2EB9ow | access-date=August 26, 2024}}</ref><ref name="Gameplay Explanation">{{cite web | title=How the Game Works | website=YouTube | date=September 23, 2010 | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUkbhIY26dQ |publisher=o.s. Earth| access-date=August 27, 2024}}</ref>