A Brief History of the World Game™
Buckminster Fuller’s World 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.
1940
A 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."
1967
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.™
World Game™ Institute (WGI) was established in 1972 by Howard Brown and Medard Gabel in collaboration with R. Buckminster Fuller. 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.
1972
World Game™ Institute
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.
1986
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).
2000
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.
2001
In 2001, the Board sold WGI’s working assets to O.S.E.
The Global Simulation is O.S. Earth's flagship product. A live-action game that puts participants into the roles of global leaders who must use creativity and integrated thinking to find individual and communal success in a complex environment.
2019
In 2019 O.S. Earth’s assets were acquired by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
Began work on Synergetic Universe project that shines a light on how Bucky's Synergetic Geometry describes how fundamental forces and elementary particles can be explained in terms of a single type of field - the isotropic vector matrix (IVM).
2021
Initiated post-COVID evaluation/redesign of the Workshop Format.
2022
Received funding to produce the results of our initial research to identify Geographies of Cooperation throughout the world as the foundation for an interactive multimedia World Game Workshop exercise.
2024 - Present
Commence research for World Grid "Geographies of Cooperation" project. Developing framework and documentation of examples of Bucky's prediction of spontaneous cooperation manifesting "invisibly" around the world as countries working together across borders to realize the full potential of renewable energy technologies.
Explore the key concepts of the World Game™ Workshop here.
