Past Games

Trust & Safety Tycoon

A browser game that puts the player in charge of managing the trust and safety team at a rapidly growing social network. Created in association with the Atlantic Council's Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web, with support from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. Learn More

Moderator Mayhem

A browser based game in which players explore the challenges related to content moderation. Commissioned by Engine to help technologists, policy makers, and journalists have nuanced conversations about related legislation. Learn More

Startup Trail

A browser based game about startups and government policy. Guide your startup through a series of dilemmas as you go from founding through to possible exit. Commissioned by Engine as a playable version of their annual report. Learn More

FutureCast

A lightweight framework for exploring opportunities and risks in an election context. Developed with the United Nations for use in fragile democracies. Learn More

Money City

We designed a two-hour game for Mozilla's MozFest that had players explore the future of money. We used a frame story of a fictional cyberpunk dystopia where players were working to overthrow a powerful megacorporation by coming up with interventions that involve monetization, currencies, payments, and more. Commissioned by Grant for the Web. Learn More

Threatcast 2020

A brainstorm game focused on how bad actors might use technology to manipulate the 2020 election. Commissioned by a major tech company and run for internal and external experts. Available to run at future events. Learn More

Positive AI Economic Futures

We designed a 4-hour workshop to explore positive visions for the future in a world transformed by artificial intelligence. This workshop was part of a broader initiative by the World Economic Forum, the Center for Human-compatible Artificial Intelligence, and X-Prize. We led 90 economists, technologists, and sci-fi authors through a series of 5 games that built out different possible futures. Workshop Recap

Costalia Refugee Crisis

A crisis game where players explore how institutions might react to mitigate the risk of violence and unrest. Run as part of the Peaceful Futures series. Game Files

Imagining Health Futures

Imagining Health Futures is a foresight game in which participants explore the future of health in 2035, from adolescent perspectives. Designed in support of UNICEF’s Office of Innovation. Facilitator Guide Game Overview

Games and Science Fiction Writing

We've run multiple writing workshops which start with collaborative worldbuilding games and then have participants engage in solo writing exercises. Recap

Hindsight 2030

A lightweight game for envisioning possible tech trends and societal outcomes across the next decade. Players start with provocative headlines from 2030 and then fill in the blanks for how we get there from today. Learn More

Machine Learning President

An event-based Presidential election simulation game that is played with ~50 people. We designed it to explore issues around the intersection of technology, politics, and money. The game has received significant attention and praise.

Walking the Future

This game was designed for and run at Refactor Camp 2019, as a way to explore the future of the urban environment. Players spent an hour walking around the neighborhood and answering prompts to envision what the locations will look like ten to twenty years in the future. Download a free copy here.

Climate Change and Land Use

Leveraged Play partnered with CollabForge and Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute to create a game for Climate Week QLD 2019. We designed an experience that kicked off a summit on climate change, land use, and biodiversity that involved senior scientists, business leaders, and government officials who were gathering for the first time with the goal of developing and prioritizing positive interventions.

We developed a variety of different games and ultimately remixed them into a workshop in which participants quickly iterated on a series of project proposals. Several of those projects are going forward and will hopefully have significant impacts on the environment.

HAL of Justice

This game takes place in the far future, where AI govern the world. Over the course of an hour, players take turns petitioning the AI overlords to amend policies and the audience votes as the AIs. The tone is fun and lighthearted. We ran it at the end of the Internet Policy WIP Conference at Santa Clara Law School as a way for attendees to unwind and have fun at the end of a long day.

CIA: Collect It All

An adaptation of the CIA’s own card-based training game, originally created to train analysts about intelligence collection techniques. We adapted the game from heavily redacted versions released via a Freedom of Information Act request. Sold over 4,000 copies via Kickstarter.

Working Futures

A scenario planning game, involving a custom-made deck of cards to help explore different economic, social, political and technological trends. Run to investigate how the future of work might play out and to inspire a volume of sci-fi stories that further explore these scenarios. The game and anthology yielded great results.

You Make The Call

A game designed for and used at multiple conferences, asking the audience to roleplay as the Trust and Safety team at a large internet social media website. Players must make hard choices about how to deal with a wide variety of controversial content. Video of the game at COMO.

Playing With Disruption

A team based game run at the Disruptive Strategy Summit to push large incumbent organizations to think through disruptive innovations that might completely change their industry.