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FishBanks

Link to the "Fishing Game", a replacement for Fishbanks.

Introduction

The Fishbanks game was developed by Dennis Meadows, of the Laboratory for Interactive Learning at the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research, at Hood House - UNH, Durham, NH 03824. I felt that this was a wonderful game that could allow students to experience the "tragedy of the commons", and the way human nature leads us to look at the short term, and in so doing, can destroy resources critical for long term survival. The original Fishbanks game and software can be obtained directly from Dennis Meadows at: lataillede@aol.com. A new game authored by me and inspired by Fishbanks, pits a single player against two virtual fishing companies. Each of four different management scenarios are selected and played. A modeling tool enables players to determine the optimun management parameters, such as length of fishing season, percentage of area for marine reserves, or catch share (depending on the management scenario). The game results and answers to pre and post questions are emailed to the instructor at the end of the game. This makes it an ideal homework assignment.

Play the new single user Fishing Game, with multiple management scenarios <link>

Figure 1: It's pretty obvious how to use this. The "Rules of Game" button takes you to a slide show that is useful to project for students when introducing the game. You can also change the slide show. I'll explain how to do that later.