Co-founders of the North: A strategy simulation game

• Main Authors: GENG, Xuesong, SINDHWANI, Saumya, ZHANG, Whitney
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Strategy; decision-making; collaboration; competition; trade-offs; VUCA; Curriculum and Instruction; Instructional Media Design; Strategic Management Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cases_coll_all/192; https://cmp.smu.edu.sg/case/1971
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Co-Founders of the North is a digital multiplayer turn-based strategy game. Players take on the role of “co-founders”, so named for their joint pioneering role in constructing buildings on a set of four fantasy islands. Players must both compete and cooperate, having to balance limited resources and allegiances while contending against each other’s hidden agendas. Collaboration is essential to winning, yet only a single player will ultimately win. A player must accumulate the most allegiance points to win. This is accomplished by constructing buildings on available slots, or by paying to demolish a building and constructing over it. Each building generates a different number of points for different allegiances and costs a certain amount of gold to construct. Players receive additional income (i.e., gold) each turn from completed buildings. A player will often not have enough gold to construct a building on their own. In these situations, a player may instead invest a partial amount, allowing other players to invest in completing the building. When this happens, players receive an income proportional to their respective investment. Players are thus confronted with a dynamic environment that will affect their strategic choices, such as when to cooperate and when to go it alone. At the end, there can only be one Ruler of the North! The key learning objectives include understanding the nature of strategic decision-making in the face of a changing competitive environment with VUCA characteristics (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), and the trade-offs inherent in decision-making.