StarPower (game)

Infobox_Game
subject_name = StarPower
image_link =
image_caption =
players = 12-35 (18-35 recommended)
ages =
setup_time = < 30 minutes
playing_time = About two hours
complexity =
strategy =
random_chance = some ¹
skills = negotiation, basic math
footnotes = 1. In service to the educational goal of the game, chance and skill have a smaller impact on the game than players are initially led to believe.

StarPower is an educational game for ages 12 to 25, designed by R. Garry Shirts for Simulation Training Systems [cite web
url = http://www.stsintl.com/business/tribute.html
title = Tribute to R. Garry Shirts On the Occasion of Receiving the Ifill-Raynolds Award
accessdate = 2007-05-14
date = 2001-10-26
last = Fowler
first = Sandy
language = English] in 1969cite web
url = http://www.spaaace.com/cope/?p=50
title = Things to do in game design #1: cheat
accessdate = 2007-05-14
date = 2007-05-13
last = Wallis
first = James
work = COPE: James Wallis Levels With You
language = English] .cite web
url = http://www.stsintl.com/schools-charities/star_power.html
title = StarPower
accessdate = 2007-05-14
publisher = Simulation Training Systems
language = English ] The game combines chance and skill at trading to establish a score. Players are assigned categories based upon their relative scores, with the highest scoring category being able to change the rules. The game is designed to illustrate the behavior of human beings in a system that naturally stratifies them economically or politically.

Play

Players are assigned initial lots of colored chits. These chits are not evenly assigned in value, but that information is not known to the players. Players are told to not share information about their chits. ["They were told not to tell the others about their cards...."(Feld 1997)] . While players are told that the group assignment is based on "achievement"or "merit", the initial distribution dominates the resulting scores. ["Although the original distribution of the cards largely determined the individual point totals and resulting group assignments, the participants were told that they were being placed in groups according to their levels of achievement." (Feld 1997)] ["Variations in wealth are ostensibly based on 'merit' [success at trading chips] but most members of each 'strata' [squares, triangles, circles] unknowingly receive different resources [trading chips] at the beginning of the game and at each subsequent 'trading session." (Mukhopadhyay 2004)]

Each round, players draw random colored chits and trade them for sets of points. At the end of each round players are assigned one of three groups and given an associated badge based on their score. The top scorers are purple squares, the middle are red circles, and the low scorers are green triangles. Starting on turn two (the first turn in which players are assigned to groups), the purple square players draw from a bag with higher scoring chits, while the green triangles draw from a bag with lower scoring chits. As a result, movement between groups becomes uncommon. Starting on the third round, the purple squares are free to change the rules any way they like.cite web
url = http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn151starpowered
title = Why Would Anyone Want to Play Starpower?
accessdate = 2007-05-14
language = English
date = 1986-12-04
last = Meadows
first = Donella
authorlink = Donella Meadows (Date is date of first publication, not release to the web.) ] (Mukhopadhyay 2004)]

Key to the game's educational effectiveness is for those running the game to withhold details about the true nature and implementation."Much of the impact of the experience on players depends on the deliberate misinforming of participants as to the nature and outcomes of the game." cite web
url = http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/woods/
title = Loading the Dice: The Challenge of Serious Videogames
accessdate = 2007-05-14
year = 2004
month = 11
last = Woods
first = Stewart
work = Game Studies
language = English] That the purple squares can change the rules is only revealed to players when the ability is added to the game.

Starpower is by design a very unbalanced game. Game designer James Wallis has gone so far as to describe the game as "broken" "by all conventional standards of game design." The unbalanced nature of the game reduces its replayability. Shirts views StarPower as more of a simulation than a game and as a result does not view replayability as an important goal.cite web
url = http://www.deepfun.com/2005/10/guest-wisdom-from-garry-shirts.html
title = Guest Wisdom from Garry Shirts
accessdate = 2007-05-14
date = 2006-10-20
last = Shirts
first = Garry
coauthors = Bernie DeKoven
work = Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
language = English]

Typical results

One commentator writing for the Sustainability Institute claimed that purple square players typically rigged the game to benefit purple squares, red circles strove to become purple squares at which point they began to act like purple squares, and that green triangles became angry and then apathetic, only becoming interested at the possibility of cheating or revolution. At the end of the game, the purple squares seldom see the oppression they engaged in while the red circles are viewed as sell-outs by the green triangles and as incompetent by the purple squares.

Another commentator notes similar results. The purple squares create oppressive rules that make it difficult for lower groups to advance. ["This particular play of the game was typical. After a very short time, the top group made increasingly oppressive rules, reducing or even eliminating any changes for the others to succeed and move up the hierarchy." (Feld 1997)] Lower groups turn to cheating. [ "The members of the lower groups responded to the hopelessness of their fate in a variety of ways; some hid their cards or themselves; others ran away; still others directly refused to follow the rules, and some of them even seemed to dare the top group members to make them." (Feld 1997)] The commentator also noted the lower groups becoming apathetic. ["As participants came to feel that there was essentially nothing that they could do that would lead to 'acceptable' levels of rewards, they increasingly tended to withdraw and/or act in hostile ways." (Feld 1997)]

The official site for the game lists eight lessons that StarPower teaches, mostly focused on the results of inequal distribution of power.

Notes

References

* Citation
last = Feld
first = Scott L.
year = 1997
date = 1997-03
title = Simulation Games in Theory Development
periodical = Sociological Forum
publisher = Springer Netherlands
publication-date = 1997-03
volume = 12
issue = 1
pages = 103-115 (Available online: cite web
url = http://www.springerlink.com/content/?k=Simulation+Games+in+Theory+Development
title = Simulation Games in Theory Development
accessdate = 2007-05-14
year = 1997
month = 03
last = Feld
first = Scott L.
work = Sociological Forum
language = English)
* cite web
url = http://www.whatsrace.org/pages/starpower.htm
title = Starpower: Experiencing a Stratified Society
accessdate = 2007-05-14
year = 2004
last = Mukhopadhyay
first = Carol C.
work = What's Race Got to Do With It?
language = English

External links

* [http://www.stsintl.com/schools-charities/star_power.html StarPower] - official site