A Brief History of the world game™ workshop
And How The Game Was Played
“WORLD PEACE GAME”
In the late 1940’s, the world was coping with the ravages of world war and nationalism. R. Buckminster Fuller, the American inventor, educator, and visionary, conceived a tool to help address these critical problems: the World Game™.
Fuller’s vision for the World Game™ grew out of his earlier studies of war games at the U.S. Navy War College. Like a war game, he envisioned a "great logistics game," but he originally called his version a "World Peace Game." Fuller’s game was intended to be a tool that could be used by people around the world to understand and develop solutions to what he called the real enemies of humanity: hunger, illiteracy, lack of health care, environmental degradation, and "you or me" thinking.
Later, Fuller proposed to house The World Game™ in a giant geodesic dome that he designed as the U.S. Pavilion for the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair. His giant dome was built, but the USIA rejected his World Game™ exhibit as too "revolutionary". Undaunted, Fuller continued building his World Game.™
In 1972, the World Game™ Institute was established by Fuller, Brown and Gabel. The World Game™ Institute brought the World Game™ experience to hundreds of thousands of participants around the world. The World Game™ Institute also developed the world’s largest and most accurate map of the world, one of the most detailed and substantive databases of global statistics available anywhere, and educational resources designed to teach interdependence, collaboration, respect for diversity, and individual participation in a global society.
The OSE Global Simulation is a direct descendent of Fuller’s "World Peace Game."
In this game, players collectively rule the world. Their task is to: Discover how the word really works and make sure that everyone and everything is taken care of (view video).
THE WORLD GAME™ INSTITUTE AND O.S. EARTH
World Game™ Institute (WGI) was established in 1972 by Howard Brown and Medard Gabel in collaboration with world-renowned visionary, philosopher, and designer R. Buckminster Fuller. Over its twenty-nine year existence as an operating nonprofit corporation, WGI grew into an internationally respected organization. It received millions of dollars in grants from major foundations such as the Ford Foundation, the Hitachi Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Howard Heinz Endowment. These grants funded the development of the World Game™ Workshop, a four-hour simulation game during which participants worked to find real-world solutions to global society’s most pressing problems.
WGI introduced its World Game™ Workshop in 1986 and, until its acquisition by OSE, delivered it to more than 2,000 paying clients. Nearly 250,000 individuals in 48 U.S. states and 35 countries have played the World Game™, which was made available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Japanese. The Game reached school children, CEO’s, college students, policymakers, high school students, corporate executives, congressmen, graduate students, and citizens around the globe. Clients included dozens of educational institutions (science museums, school systems, universities, and other non-profits), governmental organizations (including the U.S. Congress, United Nations, and the World Bank), and blue-chip corporate clients (such as General Motors, IBM, and Motorola, among many others).
By 2000, WGI had succeeded in developing truly innovative educational solutions and attracted nearly $2 million in grants from prestigious foundations to improve these products and to deliver them in disenfranchised communities. WGI had also created supporting product materials, and developed pilot versions of related products. It developed licensing prototypes, a global brand, a global customer base and partner relationships.
The Founding of o.s. Earth (OSE)
In 2000, WGI Chairman Howard Brown founded OSE to act as the for-profit vehicle for WGI’s working assets. In 2001, the Board sold WGI’s working assets to OSE.
Watch the video below to see the o.s.Earth Student Global Simulation being played.
In 2019 o.s.Earth’s assets were acquired by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.