An idea i’ve had for a while: Making an Effective Altruism/DGB board game might might be an high impact project.
The reasons for why that would be are rough, but sensible i think.
1: Games can teach mindsets and viewpoints of the world that other media cannot, and since much of EA is counterintuitive, a game can be a great learning tool.
2: It can serve the same purpose as an documentary (aka: an EA awareness tool)
3: could be fun to whip out at EA hangouts and play with people new to EA ; related to 1st point.
4: Board games are having an golden age right now, with more people buying them then ever, and marketing/releasing a board game is radically cheaper then in the past, as far as i can tell.
what are some reasons not to pursue this project?
Well...
1: making a game takes long time, and...
2: Terrible career capital (as far as i can tell)
So unless you have much game design experience, or can persuade a fellow game designer to do it, it’s very much not worth your time. 80 000 hours and CEA may be able to do something with this project, but otherwise im drawing a blank.
I have made a rough sketch of how a game like this would work, but it’s not very good because i am not a game designer.
The way the game works is that every player has a random private morality that they want to satisfy (e.g. preference utilitarianism, hedonism, sadism, nihilism) and all players also want to collaboratively achieve normative good (accumulating 1000 human QALYs, 10,000 animals QALYs, and 10 x-risk points). Players get QALYs and x-risk points by donating to charities and answering trivia questions.
The coolest part of the game is the reincarnation mechanic: every player has a randomly chosen income taken from the real-world global distribution of wealth. Players also unlock animal reincarnation mode after stumbling upon the bad giant pit of suffering (the modal outcome of unlocking animal reincarnation is to be stuck as a chicken until the pit of suffering is destroyed, or until a friendly human acquires a V(eg*n) card.)
I’m also thinking about turning the game into an app or computer game, but I’ll probably need an experienced coder to help me with that.
Cool idea. Although I think domain-specific board games might be more intuitive and vivid for most people—e.g. a set on X-risks (one on CRISPR-engineered pandemics, one on an AGI arms race), one on deworming, one on charity evaluation with strategic conflict between evaluators, charities, and donors, a modified ‘Game of Life’ based on 80k hours principles, etc.
I’m super into this! I’d be happy to check out your rough sketch. A couple thoughts:
I think we should not bucket all of our time into a general time bucket. In fact, some of our time needs to be “fun creative working time”. e.g. Sometimes I work on EA things, and sometimes I make music. “Designing an EA board game” could be part of that “fun bucket”.
An idea i’ve had for a while: Making an Effective Altruism/DGB board game might might be an high impact project.
The reasons for why that would be are rough, but sensible i think.
1: Games can teach mindsets and viewpoints of the world that other media cannot, and since much of EA is counterintuitive, a game can be a great learning tool.
2: It can serve the same purpose as an documentary (aka: an EA awareness tool)
3: could be fun to whip out at EA hangouts and play with people new to EA ; related to 1st point.
4: Board games are having an golden age right now, with more people buying them then ever, and marketing/releasing a board game is radically cheaper then in the past, as far as i can tell.
what are some reasons not to pursue this project?
Well...
1: making a game takes long time, and...
2: Terrible career capital (as far as i can tell)
So unless you have much game design experience, or can persuade a fellow game designer to do it, it’s very much not worth your time. 80 000 hours and CEA may be able to do something with this project, but otherwise im drawing a blank.
I have made a rough sketch of how a game like this would work, but it’s not very good because i am not a game designer.
Thoughts?
I have a fully-formed EA board game that I debuted at EA Global in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. EAs seem to really like it! You can see over one hundred of the game’s cards here https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Byv0L8a24QNJeDhfNFo5d1FhWHc
The way the game works is that every player has a random private morality that they want to satisfy (e.g. preference utilitarianism, hedonism, sadism, nihilism) and all players also want to collaboratively achieve normative good (accumulating 1000 human QALYs, 10,000 animals QALYs, and 10 x-risk points). Players get QALYs and x-risk points by donating to charities and answering trivia questions.
The coolest part of the game is the reincarnation mechanic: every player has a randomly chosen income taken from the real-world global distribution of wealth. Players also unlock animal reincarnation mode after stumbling upon the bad giant pit of suffering (the modal outcome of unlocking animal reincarnation is to be stuck as a chicken until the pit of suffering is destroyed, or until a friendly human acquires a V(eg*n) card.)
I’m also thinking about turning the game into an app or computer game, but I’ll probably need an experienced coder to help me with that.
Cool idea. Although I think domain-specific board games might be more intuitive and vivid for most people—e.g. a set on X-risks (one on CRISPR-engineered pandemics, one on an AGI arms race), one on deworming, one on charity evaluation with strategic conflict between evaluators, charities, and donors, a modified ‘Game of Life’ based on 80k hours principles, etc.
The link doesn’t work sadly, but it sounds cool!
Message me on facebook or my email ( soderberg.vincent@gmail.com)
I fixed the link.
Not sure if it’s just me but the board_setup.jpg wouldn’t load. I’m not sure why, so I’m not expecting a fix, just FYI. Cards look fun though!
I’m super into this! I’d be happy to check out your rough sketch. A couple thoughts:
I think we should not bucket all of our time into a general time bucket. In fact, some of our time needs to be “fun creative working time”. e.g. Sometimes I work on EA things, and sometimes I make music. “Designing an EA board game” could be part of that “fun bucket”.
A game like Pandemic (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30549/pandemic) could be a good starting point for designing the game (or to work with them on designing it). Essentially, use Pandemic as the MVP game for this, then expand to other cause areas (or to EA as a whole). Also, see 80,000 Hours most recent podcast on pandemics (the concept, not the oard game :) https://80000hours.org/2017/08/podcast-we-are-not-worried-enough-about-the-next-pandemic/
Here’s my favorite piece on game design (by Magic the Gathering’s head designer) http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/ten-things-every-game-needs-part-1-part-2-2011-12-19
My instinct is that this should be a collaborative game (or, as William Macaskgill would say, a “shared aims community”).
There is a THINK module with an EA board game attached http://www.thehighimpactnetwork.org/modules/paths-to-impact