The Power Game

 The Power Game is a narrative based world-building experiment. 

It confronts the player with a series of thought-provoking questions about our social and spatial environment through which the player constructs a utopian (or dystopian) alternative. Beginning at the Here& Now, each player moves through the game, and is given the power to make choices about critical aspects of an imagined future, based on their own wishes, fears, intuitions or positions. 

The Power Game is structured based on the “choose your own adventure” model, consisting of multiple decision points – Strategy Stations – which ultimately lead the player to a constructed alternate reality – Utopia. 

The Strategy Stations provide the player with the power to choose the best solution for a specific spatial or social aspect of the alternate reality. The Strategy Stations allow the player to deal with issues such as building height and density, relationship to nature, relationship to technology, methods for sustainable development and circular economy, typological focus, status of the individual, political systems, etc. 

After the players have exercised their powers and decided on which directions to take at the Strategy Stations, they are led to their own Utopia. The Utopias represent archetypal alternatives and are based on the choices taken by the player. They are structured out of various social and spatial aspects covered through the Strategy Stations and as such represent a variety of elaborate counter-proposals to the Here & Now. The Utopias also inform the player about worlds similar to their own, which were previously created by architects, writers, thinkers, artists or filmmakers. If unsatisfied, the player is given a special power, one which is not always possible in the Here & Now – the power to go back and change their mind.