A game platform for Organisational transformation

The Game In preparation for the game, through a guided meditation and a breathing exercise participants are lead by the facilitator to be aware of their bodies. The goal is that the participants learn to visualise and embody their needs and desires. Recent findings from cognitive sciences suggest that embodiment is an essential part of fostering a learner’s deep conceptual understanding (Kiefer & Trumpp, 2012).

Before playing the game, and as a pretest, participants visualise an important need, reflect on the their intimate feelings, and describe them in terms of the particular emotion that emerges. Second, after the meditation is complete, participants record each visualised need, the associated emotion, and the intensity of the emotion in a self report chart using a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 is the highest intensity. Thirdly, they position their game figure on the board classifying their emotions on a four quadrants chart. This chart includes a majority of emotions, moods or state of beings as follows: 1. The enthusiasm quadrant, in response to confidence for the future, and foreseeing possibilities, characterised by hope / motivation / excitement / determination / resolution. 2. The joy and peace quadrant, as a response for acceptance and confidence in the present, characterised by peace / serenity / content / joy / happiness / love. 3. The anxiety quadrant as response to expectations, self exigency and emotional attachment; when we experience lack of confidence in the future (Maturana, 2013); characterised by worries / timidity / fear / stress / anguish / anxiety / terror. 4. The pain quadrant, either physical or psychological, as a response to present pain or emotional resentment from the past, characterised by pain / frustration / sadness / anger / resentment.

Figure 1 Emotional Model Chart, Based on The Ancient Greek Stoic School of Thought presents this visually.

To start the game, first participants choose an animal of power, a small figure that will represent them on the game board. Second, participants are divided in two teams, each team must define the domains of life for their reflection during the game. Domains of life are any dimension of life that people want to explore during the game, examples of domains of life are: work, money, family, health, sex, gaming, environment, partner, territory, vocation, etc. Rounds of embodiment, reflection and positioning are conducted randomly, at each player´s turn by throwing the dice.In the first round of embodiment, before they position their figure on the game board, participants are asked to fill a self report and group report sheet. Then each participant one by one, positions him or her self on the board, and shares their reflection about the experience. The objetive of the game is that in the same round, every participant experiences well-being, positioning his or her figure in quadrant 2; this should mean that all players are experiencing the present moment at ease, accepting, and feeling in confidence with the present moment.

Through participant´s experiences, reflections and discussions on the chosen themes, and the report of their affect or emotional well-being, our fundamental human condition emerges, helping participants to be in the present state of empathy, mutuality and equality, this general mood encourages curiosity, it is in our nature to want to know more about ourselves, and to find out how every one can experiment well-being at the same time. After several rounds, participants get a change to access “magic cards”. These cards provide insights to either transform their emotion or learn how to deconstruct needs. The cards can be considered a treatment of the experimental design, the insights that they provide are based on the ontology of language (Echeverría, 2008) and cultural-biology (Maturana & Dávila, 2004) .

Finally, after all players position themselves on the second quadrant of the board, the first part of the game concludes. The second half of the game consist of a group discussion to debrief the experience and evaluate what we all had learned by being self-aware towards individual (each player) and social well-being (all the players).