@3pm Barn Awning
We’ll co-create concepts for projects and efforts to pursue as a community between now and the beyond.
I’ve been noodling over my discomfort with the rodeo and reflecting through gameplay. In the rodeo I prioritized getting all the ideas into five ideas, over grouping by pragmatic fits (rationalizing alignments over synergism) or community urgency/timeline fit… because I didnt want to have a sixth, because that would mean a group was excluded.
Also I prefer collaborative social exercises over competitive. I think it better serves the ideas being considered.
I understand why this could be useful for a funding community, though for generating/directing distributed action, there are other kinds of games we could try playing together. I’m happy to help support prosocial game mechanics for next goat. : )
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I also experienced this tension. I think it was intentional (if you’ll pardon the pun: “in-tension-al” 
), but I agree that there are probably less competitive idea refinement exercises we could try.
I would be curious to hear what alternate activities you would have favored! Should break that out into a new forum topic?
Happy to open another thread if there is interest.
A lovely overview of serious enviro games linked below, and there’s at least one other serious gamer 
in the herd and between us we could probably build anything (model/sim/outcome) for a low fi, in-person gathering version. If there are other folk interested… ???
For example, I played one that was like dominos but you build out from one node that is an offered resource. Its sorta like “yes, and” improv game after that. There are many many many existing games across the world,
“ Here are 5 reasons why we play environmental games:
Dynamic Learning
Games are ‘designed experiences’ where players can learn through experimentation. Players are able to learn at their own pace and make informed decisions, rather than absorbing information from reading and traditional lecture formats which can cause disengagement.
First-Hand Experiences
According to decision science, first-hand experience is a much better teacher than exposure to information. Games provide high-levels of autonomy and agency which helps players connect to the characters, storyline and surroundings on an emotional level.
Real-Life Simulation
Games allow players to build empathy by taking on various roles and perspectives. Games help the player visualise their impact and allow for visioning — for example, being able to envision oneself in the future — and seeing consequences of actions at different points in time.
Practical Application
Games can simulate complex models or provide a level of control that is not possible in the real world. This is particularly advantageous when visualising atmospheric systems or water management operations - processes that would be otherwise difficult to bring to a hands-on level.
Measurable Outcomes
Environmental games can target outcomes, such as players’ motivations, attitudes and values…”
It occurs to me that this could be any of:
- Video gamers
- Game theorists
- Board gamers
- ?
I guess I was asking a bit more concretely - given the stated objective (1) of the activity - whether there are specific alternate activities you already have in mind that you would have favored?
(1) What can we Do Together better than you could do alone to animate the proto-GOAT?
It would be nice if the list of ideas and the 5 groupings were posted here (I can’t remember them all or how they were grouped…), but as I recall some of the ideas were “meta GOAT” initiatives (i.e. how to improve the group’s connectivity or the functioning/nature of future conferences) and other ideas were “GOAT output” initiatives (e.g. promulgate better soil sampling).
The former feel more in the spirit of “animating the proto-GOAT” to me, but I can imagine the later involving network effects that ultimately strengthen GOAT too.
As far as reducing the competitive feel of the activity, just removing the arbitrary number of groupings could help, but I think there’s still value in recognizing the relationships/similarities/“complementary-ness” between the ideas. The constraint of an arbitrary grouping did force people to stretch a bit to identify those relationships/similarities…
Another way to impose a similar pressure would be to have the participants (who aren’t holding an idea) still form herds with the ideas they feel the most affinity for, then within each of those groups brainstorm 5 (or some number) of distinct graph edges between the idea and other ideas - where those edges represent ways the ideas are inter-dependent, similar, or able to complement each other.
Ideally, there’d also be some mechanism early in the process to promote discussing/sharing/refining the nuances of the ideas and making sure everyone has a clear understanding of them.
I’m not sure where the hypothetical activity should go from there either, but it would probably be interesting to look at the structure of the graph and cases where herds have mutually identified the same relationships…
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