NEW GAME DESIGNS IN DEVELOPMENT:
2008-09 RFP RESULTS

The following projects were selected as “Games in Development” in the Fall 2009 Call for Proposals by the Reacting Advisory Board.  Among them, seven received $2,000  grants to help support materials development and testing.

Acid Rain and the European Environment, 1979-89

In Acid Rain in Europe, students represent the European nations at a series of major international conferences, beginning in Geneva in 1979 and ending in Helsinki in 1989. The goal of these conferences, held under the auspices of the United Nations, is to negotiate the first major international treaty to address long range transport air pollution. If successful, these negotiations will provide a model for dealing with other international environmental issues such as ozone depleting chemicals and Global Warming. In 1972, the UN adopted a statement that held nations responsible for the effects of pollution that travels outside their borders, but, prior to 1979, no treaty has been negotiated to implement this statement of principle. The long range transport air pollution treaty is negotiated against the background of the formation of the European Union and the beginning of Détente between the Soviet client countries and the West. These changes and the political events in the individual countries provide changing pressures on the negotiators during the course of the ten year span of the game.

The time frame of the game provides a rich context for these discussions in which both the scientific and ethical understanding of the environment are evolving but on a solid footing. Research on the impact of acid precipitation in the environment was at its peak, yielding a large body of primary and secondary literature, much of which is accessible to non-science majors. Similarly, the debate over whether environmentalism is simply a utilitarian reaction to the damage done or is an example of deeper inherent rights of nature as a whole is in full swing. Finally, the debate juxtaposes market economics as a tool for environmentalism against command and control approaches common in Europe during this period.

About the Designers: David E. Henderson is Professor of Chemistry at Trinity College and a founding member of the Environmental Science Program at Trinity. His research has included studies of acid precipitation and its effects on stream chemistry. He is also an expert on liquid chromatography and has published widely in the field. He has a wide range of interests including environmental protection and the history of religion. He is author of two other Reacting games, Evolution in Kansas and Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.   Susan K. Henderson is Professor of Chemistry at Quinnipiac University. She has published research on food and environmental chemistry.  She also has a wide range of interests including human health, nutrition, and yoga.

America’s Founding: The Constitutional Convention

America’s Founding is a game about what surely is the most important legal event in American history—the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  Students gather as members of state delegations sent to Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation or to replace it with something better.  Familiar elements, such as the Virginia Plan, the New Jersey Plan, and the Great Compromise, structure the first half of the game.  Here the principal theoretical divide is between large-republic advocates, called nationalists, and small-republic advocates, called confederalists.  In order to give prominence to these competing visions of republican government, the game deviates from the historical original in one significant respect:  it incorporates, in concert with the Convention’s examination of the New Jersey Plan, arguments articulated in the state ratification debates and in Federalist and Antifederalist writings.

In the second half of the game, the Convention responds to reports written by committees attempting to resolve delayed matters and to put the constitution in its finished form.  How to elect the president, what to do about slavery, and whether to include a bill of rights are just a few of the issues that come up at this time.  The game ends in a vote to accept or reject the constitution.

The constitution drafted by students need not replicate the one produced in Philadelphia; however, freedom of action is constrained by the fact many of the same structural problems and historical contingencies are in place.  Thus students will find improving upon the Electoral College, for example, to be not that easy.

About the Designer: J. Patrick Coby is professor of Government at Smith College where he teaches courses in political theory. He is author ofSocrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment:  A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras, Machiavelli’s Romans:  Liberty and Greatness in the Discourses on Livy; Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament (“Reacting to the Past”); Thomas Cromwell: Machiavellian Statecraft and the English Reformation; and of over eighty articles and reviews.

Defining the Mind: The APA in the 1970s

This game reenacts the intellectual collision between three theories of the mind as exemplified by the debate over whether homosexuality should be declassified as a mental disorder in the early 1970s and the ensuing debates surrounding the definition of “mental disorder” that followed.  Game play includes revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to revision III and the creation of the first definition of “mental disorder.” Students will advocate psychoanalytical theories, which explain behavior in terms of conflicts between putative mental entities,; behaviorist theories, which explain behavior in terms of external stimuli and reinforcement; and cognitive theories, which explain behavior in terms of an underlying information processing system. 

Background events that inform the discussions include the rise of psychopharmacology, the Kinsey study, the split between Anthropology and Psychology, and the Behaviorist philosophy of science-based critiques of Wundt’s introspective protocol and Gestalt Psychology.

About the Designer: Peter Bradley is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, where he specializes in Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science. His research focuses on the interface between psychology, physics, and philosophy in the study of color and color vision.  In recent years, his research interests have led to a study of the early era of American Psychology, focusing on the work of Christine Ladd-Franklin, David Katz, and the Gestalts.

Kentucky, 1861: A Nation in the Balance

As one of the northernmost slaveholding states, Kentucky plays a pivotal role in the crisis unleashed by Lincoln’s election in 1860. Student roles include political leaders, newspaper editors, and militia leaders. Opening with a special session of the legislature, Kentucky, 1861: A Nation in the Balance forces students to struggle with the complex and divided loyalties of their roles. They must determine how to reconcile varied motivations, interests, and ideologies with an unprecedented and intensely combustible situation. Informed by assorted speeches, debates, and political tracts, students debate the cultural, economic, and political concepts driving secession while reacting to a constantly shifting political and military situation. Through the use of rhetoric, the press, and paramilitary action, they struggle to alter the fate of the nation.

About the Designer: Nicolas W. Proctor teaches history and administers the first-year program at Simpson College. He is author of Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South, and is currently working on several projects for the Reacting to the Past series.

King or Commonwealth? The English Civil War, 1647–1652

It is the fall of 1647 and England is in chaos.  Parliament’s New Model Army has routed King Charles I’s forces on the field of battle, but stability proves to be extremely fragile.  In response to the Puritan Parliamentarians’ decision to disband the Army without pay, the disgruntled soldiers have arranged to meet at Putney to debate the nature of political representation and challenge the authority of both King and Parliament.  Charles is in custody at Hampton Court, but the growing tension between Parliament and the Army, coupled with an army of Scots to the north, does not bode well for peace.  Furthermore, a wave of political tracts has flooded the nation, advocating everything from Hobbesian absolutism to universal democracy, and roused the people to unprecedented involvement in the affairs of government. This enthusiasm for politics is coupled with millenarian expectations, as the horrors of the war bring about the spectre of the apocalypse.  

Students are thrust into this historical context, assuming roles in the Parliament corresponding to the main factions of the time: Royalist supporters of Charles I defending the traditional notion of the divine right of kings, Puritan Parliamentarians seeking to construct a “godly” state and limit the King’s authority, and members of the Army whose egalitarian experiences and control of military authority provide a stark challenge to traditional English political bodies.  Drawing upon a wide variety of political and religious texts (especially works such as Filmer, Hobbes, and the Levellers), students will attempt to build a stable government upon the rubble of the Civil War.

About the Designer: Scott Breuninger received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research focused on European Intellectual History.  His current project “recovers” the Irish dimension of George Berkeley’s work through a contextual examination of his social and economic writings.  He has incorporated a variety of “Reacting to the Past” games within his courses on British and Irish history.

Living History in 1894 Korea: The Kabo Reforms

Living History in 1894 Korea: The Kabo Reforms situates students in the great debates over reform that swept East Asia following the irruption of Western imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century.   The game is set in the Deliberative Council, a body established by the Korean court in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War to discuss and implement measures to restructure government, economy, society, and education.   Members of the Deliberative Council represented a wide range of opinions.  Those pushing for radical reforms included men who had studied in Japan under Fukuzawa Yukichi and men who had studied at schools in the United States.  There was also a significant conservative Confucian group of the Eastern Way, Western Machines persuasion who, following the example of Qing China, sought to strengthen the traditional order by selectively adopting Western technology.   The Council was presided over by the erstwhile isolationist, the Taewŏn’gun, who was also the father of King Kojong.   The Council’s deliberations took place amid palace intrigue and foreign pressures.  Students will have to consult a wide range of writings from Korea, including Yu Kilchun’s Observations from a Journey to the West, as well as key documents by Japanese and Chinese thinkers, in constructing their arguments for and against reform.

About the Designers: John Duncan is professor of Korean history at UCLA and has published widely on Korean history and Confucianism.   Some of his publications include The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty and such co-edited volumes as Rethinking Confucianism:  Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam and Reform and Modernity in the Taehan Empire. Jennifer Jung-Kim has a Ph.D. in modern Korean cultural history from UCLA, has published a number of articles on the construction of gender roles in colonial Korea, has taught at Smith, Occidental, and UCLA and is now Senior Editor and Assistant Director of the Center for Buddhist Studies at UCLA.

London, 1688: Revolution, Coup, or Royal Renegotiation?

The king is gone, long live who?  Acting as members of the 1688-1689 Convention Parliament, students will use Locke, Hobbes, contemporary pamphlets and memoirs to determine the future of monarchy in the British Isles.  Can the constitution abide the removal of a king?  Can parliament make conditions on a monarch and control the purse strings of the nation?  This game examines all the facets of 1688 historiography, from theories that the revolution was motivated by religion, driven by economic pressure, linked to a larger European move to absolutism and part of longer tradition of limiting royal power reaching back to the Civil War and forward to the American Bill of Rights.  In grappling with these issues, participants will dismantle the inevitability of William and Mary's succession to the throne and achieve a better understanding of 17th century religion and political theory.

Margaret Sankey is Associate Professor of History at Minnesota State University Moorhead. She holds a Ph.D in European History from Auburn University (2002).  Her research was published as Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain and in the Past and Present article with Szechi, "Elite Culture and the Decline of Scottish Jacobitism".  

Modernism vs. Traditionalism: Art in Paris, 1888-89

This game considers the question: What is Art? Students will debate principles of artistic design in the context of the revolutionary changes that began shaking the French art world in 1888-89. Images from the 1888 Salon and the tumultuous year that followed provide some of the “texts” that form the intellectual heart of every Reacting game. Students must read these images and use them as the basis of their positions. In addition to these visual texts, students will read art criticism from the period, which will help to form the basis of their own presentations in favor of one art style over another.  These discussions are complicated and enriched by secondary debates over the economics of art, the rise of independent art dealers, and the government’s role as a patron of the arts. An additional feature of this game will include an optional “art lab,” which teaches students about the issues that French artists faced in the late nineteenth century through a studio-based, hands-on project.

About the Designers: Gretchen K. McKay is trained as an art historian as well as an artist, with significant training and experience in oil painting. She has been active in the art history field, with her most recent publication focusing on the nineteenth-century reception of medieval art. She teaches art history at McDaniel College.  Nicolas W. Proctor is an historian and an experienced Reacting instructor and game designer. His Forest Diplomacy Game has been in the Reacting pipeline for some time and he is also involved in the development of games by other authors. He teaches history at Simpson College.  Michael A. Marlais is a well-known art historian specializing in nineteenth-century French art, with several books to his name on the topic. He also concentrates on French art criticism, especially at the end of the nineteenth century, which will be a critical part of the Art Game’s structure. Michael teaches art history at Colby College and continues to research aspects of French art in the nineteenth century.

Petrograd, 1917

“Petrograd 1917” plunges students into the aftermath of the collapse of the Imperial Russian government in February 1917 during World War One.  Students represent different factions striving to shape Russia’s future government in the wake of Imperial collapse.  As the game opens, Russian liberals and moderate socialists hold power in the Provisional Government, recognized by Russia’s WWI allies; but the quarrelsome revolutionaries [Bolsheviks (communists), Mensheviks (communists) and Socialist Revolutionaries (agrarian socialists)] in the Petrograd Soviet control workers’ organizations and the support of the common people, including many of Russia’s soldiers.  Students will confront both political and practical problems as they decide the fate of the empire: what form of government should the future Russian state have?  How can social justice be ensured for the majority of Russia’s population?  How will the students placate the Allies’ demands for Russia to recommence an aggressive war effort, while acquiring bread and restoring stability to the lives of Russia’s hungry and exhausted peoples?  Finally, how will the calls for revolutionary overthrow be heard?  Will the revolutionaries be crushed?  Will the moderate revolutionaries prevail in their wait for the proper conditions and for the mass of peasants and workers to rise on their own?  Or will history repeat itself and the Bolsheviks seize power?

About the Designer: David I. Burrow is assistant professor of history at The University of South Dakota, teaching courses in modern European history.  He earned his MA and PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and specializes in the history of nineteenth-century Imperial Russia.  He incorporates Reacting games into his course for USD’s Honors program, Honors 111, “Ideas in History.”

Rage Against the Machine: Technology, Rebellion, and the Industrial Revolution

Rage Against the Machine is set in the midst of the period of wage crisis, class conflict, and rapid technological change in Manchester, England during the early years of the Industrial Revolution. The players are drawn from all classes of society, from lords to laborers and everything in between. This game provides a platform for deep discussion of the complexities of the Industrial Revolution by engaging the students in serious reading of key historical texts (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Robert Owen) and prompting subsequent debates about industrialization, unemployment, labor exploitation and the impact of technology on traditional manufacturing.

About the Designer: Megan Squire is an associate professor of Computer Science at Elon University. Her primary research focus is on open source systems, "hacking capitalism", and a commons-based peer production of software. This interest has spawned the development of a General Studies seminar in Technology and Society, which allows student exploration of the impact of technology on societies, specifically through role playing the Trial of Galileo in 1616 and the Industrial Revolution in Manchester 1817. Megan has a PhD in computer science from Nova Southeastern University.

Red Clay 1835: Cherokee Removal

Red Clay 1835: Cherokee Removal and the Meaning of Sovereignty focuses on American Indian removal from the American Southeast in the 1830s and events leading up to the Trail of Tears.  In particular it focuses on a pivotal historical conference held in Red Clay, Tennessee in October 1835 at which the United States presented terms for a removal treaty a few months before the illegal Treaty of New Echota was signed.  It deals not only with this too-little-known part of American history, but it also opens up other issues of the period (many of which have continuing relevance today), including westward expansion, race and the status of Native Americans within the framework of the United States, cultural change and assimilation of minorities, how one deals with social problems, and the sectional divide that eventual leads to the American Civil War.

About the Designers: Jace Weaver is Franklin Professor of Religion and Native American Studies and the Director of the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia.  He has published 10 books in the field and was the advisor in the “Trail of Tears” episode of “We Shall Remain” series of American Experience on PBS. Laura Adams Weaver is a lecturer in English and Native American Studies at the University of Georgia.  She is the author of numerous articles on Native American history, literature, and culture.

The Josianic Reform: Deuteronomy, Prophecy, and Israelite Religion

The Josiah Game, set just before a monotheistic reform of Israelite religion (622 BCE), takes up several tensions within the Bible: “the one versus the many gods,” the nature of sacred text and prophecy, and the conflict of ideas within the Bible itself. The central conceit is that the action takes place at the moment of 2 Kings 23:1-3a when all the elders and people of Judah assemble to hear a newly discovered “Scroll of the Teaching” read out to them. The de Wette hypothesis proposes that Deuteronomy is the very text found. The game makes this moment the center of gravity around which discussion of the Hebrew Bible and the practice of Israelite religion revolve. The disintegrating power of the Assyrian Empire supplies an international context for the nation to imagine recovering lost territory if it pleases God by reforming. You are a woman, the prophet Huldah, who vets the scroll: How will you defend it? You are of the royal house: Should you ally with Egypt? You are a Traditionalist: Won’t these changes “remove the ancient landmarks?” The Documentary hypothesis—the literary-historical notion that the Torah grew out of a set of traditions, documentary “sources,” and editorial activity—takes seriously the competing idea sets within the Bible. Why does the found-scroll differ in tone and ideas from the Priestly and Yahwistic traditions? The game’s factions “embody” these idea sets and play out their tensions.

About the Designers: Adam L. Porter is an associate professor of Religion and Philosophy at Illinois College. His research specialty is Second Temple Judaism (Judaism from ca. 550 BCE to 70 CE) and has taught a wide range of courses in Bible, as well as Abrahamic religions, Ancient Near Eastern Religions, and Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean. He is interested in new pedagogical methods and is author of Introducing the Bible: An Active Learning Approach (Prentice Hall, 2005) and has been experimenting with role-playing games in his classroom for several years. David Tabb Stewart is assistant professor of Ancient Near Eastern Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Long Beach (and formerly associate professor of Religion and Philosophy at Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX).  His Ph.D. was earned at the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies with specialties in Hebrew Bible and Hittitology and particular attention to ancient Near Eastern law and ritual. He is currently working on the book, Ancient Sexual Laws. Stewart has taught a wide array of courses in Western Religions, Hebrew Bible, and ancient Near Eastern myth and ritual.