Harvest game 2.0

The original harvest game was made up by a simple set of rules. The sea contains 50 fish that if no fish is caught will reproduce to be 100 fish in the next round. If 25 fish are caught, the next time the sea will have 50 fish again. Each team writes their demand on a paper and sticks this in a "boat"  and there is no communication allowed between groups. The sea randomly picks the boats and fulfills their demand as long as there is fish. If a group receives 2 fish instead of the demanded 4 fish, it means that the sea is depleted of fish as the sea will always provide the maximum amount of fish possible. 

After playing the harvest game with the initial set of rules during class we all saw that even with a group of environmentally aware people we still emptied the seas. So something needs to be changed in order to prevent this from happening so that we all can keep our business alive and thus not empty the sea. I was in one of the groups that just did the math and always asked for 4 fishes and got 4 fishes 3 times, until the 4^th time we didn’t get any fish and therefore had to conclude (although we didn’t as we were busy accusing other groups of greed) that the sea was empty.

So what can be changed based on opening up communication?

I would suggest a wide range of tweaks that ultimately lead to more fish being caught in the end as in theory the game could go on for ever. Ultimately you want to achieve that all 6 teams catch at least 4 fish and one of the teams can catch 1 extra fish. However another approach could be to first under-fish and therefore increase the amount of fish that can be caught in the future. The latter however would only work if the game could last for more rounds than we played the game therefor perhaps this option should be discarded.

You can go two ways. First of all you could have all cards on the table and therefor really demand openness on catch figures by the individual teams. This would be most effective, but at the same time would be most controversial as well, so for that reason it will be discarded as well.

Secondly you could also control the total amount of fish being caught without going into the details of how much each individual team caught. By having all fish collected by one new governing body that consist of a new team of representatives of all teams that stay on shore. Their task is to make sure that a maximum of 25 fish are to be sold. By applying the same randomness as the sea applies to picking the order of boats to receive fish, the game element would still be present. If the maximum of 25 fish is achieved the rest of the fish that still is landed after this would be sold without the money going to the boat who supplied them, but to invest in creating a sustainable fishing label. This label would then be handed out to the teams that never ask more than 4.17 fish. If the maximum amount of fish being caught reaches 25 before all teams have landed their fish, the teams that already landed their fish get punished by not being allowed to go out fishing in the next round. I am not sure if this would lead to the seas not being emptied, but at least it would provide an interesting dynamic that could lead to more conservative demands to the sea.

If this turns out not to lead to more sustainable fishing then I would go back to total openness so that naming and shaming could do its job. If this still does not work then a punishing factor should be introduced together with a reward system. Being forced to skip a year, or with a very low catch limit could be used as a punishment, whilst the division of the extra fish capacity (4 fishes per team + 5 fishes for 1 team) could be used as a reward. 

There are many ways to try to solve this puzzle and it would be interesting to keep on playing the game with different tweaks to see what the effects would be.