The game (which so far only exists as a project)
The game Global Alternative offers a playful and experimental platform for investigating, testing, creating and further developing a new economic and social system. It challenges us to create and preserve, on a sustained basis, everything that enables people to live a satisfying, dignified and domination-free life on the basis of 11 game rules and comprehensive data material.
In the game, the participants enter a world that is temporally located in the near future, but in which the complete turning away from the previous economic systems has already taken place and change has been initiated according to the rules of the game. From then on it is up to the knowledge, the experience, the creativity, the problem-solving thinking and the willingness to communicate of each individual player to decide how he/she will get involved in the scenario and how he/she will contribute to organizing and shaping life there, to breathe life’s realism and feeling into it (see menu item …).
Feedback on the ideas, initiatives and decisions brought into the game is provided both by the immediate reactions of the players and by the changes and effects – albeit time-delayed – that the projection team identifies and projects into the course of the game as a result of the decisions and initiatives. The projection team consists inter alia of scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, programmers and game designers who use all the data and logarithms available to them to calculate the changes as accurately as possible and maintain a realistic scenario.
The goal of the game is therefore,
– to devise a viable and liveable alternative beyond previous forms of economy and society
– to check these for feasibility and validity
– seek new ways and solutions
– to make the alternative conceivable
The rules of the game are derived from an analysis of previous economic and social systems, including those of communist and socialist provenance.
The game Global Alternative seeks nothing less than a rethink. A recognition. An opening up of new possibilities.
With these preliminary considerations, the rules of the game of Global Alternative may come as less of a surprise than would otherwise be the case. They are a challenge in many ways. On the one hand, they represent a radical departure from the rules of the game of previous economic and social systems. Their complexity is juxtaposed with a relatively simple order that gets by without money and market economy, without hierarchies and forms of rule.
On the other hand, the rules of the game raise questions that demand a confrontational look not only at the ‘new’ world, but also at the present one. The process of cognition is thus one that begins with negation – the rejection of the disastrous ‘rules’ of the present, whereby the disadvantages of the old system are abolished both in the sense that they are ‘overcome’ and in the sense that they are ‘saved’ for future illustrative purposes.
In other words, this could be precisely where the appeal of Global Alternative lies – the opportunity to create the new and at the same time, prove that the old can be overcome and that there is an alternative to it.
Again: The game is a strong challenge.
Flow’ and fun are also achieved through cooperation with others, through the exchange of ideas, commitment and community. And by making it clear step by step which changes the new way of production and organisation will bring and which possibilities will open up to shape how we interact with each other and with nature.