ould influence global food security.
A core team of planners representing the sponsoring organizations identified players based on their current and future influence in government, business and international organizations. By design, the game brings together individuals with experience as high-ranking military and defense officials, cabinet-level government leaders, and business and international organization executives.
Armed with these new insights, players will return to their real-world positions ready to identify measures that can foster policy development and initiatives to mitigate future risks to global food security.
A game that's not a game
As a test bed for serious decisions and actions, games provide a range of benefits. Players represent broad and relevant interests, helping mitigate group-think issues that can occur within any government, business or organization. As players see the scenario advance in response to their decisions and actions, imagination and creativity take over, which can yield more effective solutions to complex problems with many possible solutions. And, because players drive the solutions against the backdrop of potential consequences, gaming promotes active ownership of problems, as well as the actions each player takes.
Much like the real world, in the game setting players may still encounter asymmetric information and uncertainty if some players choose to collaborate or negotiate with other players without alerting the whole of the player pool. And yet, they are able to better understand how their decisions can influence the decisions and actions of other actors, as well as their impact on the crisis, itself because the findings of the game, usually in the form or a post-game reconstruction and analysis, highlight all of the play dynamics. Players can also gain insight into each other's actions and reactions, leading to innovative collaborations that ultimately may prove more effective than the actions of any single player. Learning in this way also helps shape players' decision-making outside of the game, by expanding the known range of possible outcomes and the drivers of those outcomes.
Through the game, players will identify the answers to a range of critical questions that represent how the world will respond to food insecurity. For example: How will leaders respond to pressure felt by their citizens? How will leaders balance internal needs with growing global instability? Will individual nations choose to grow more isolated, or will they cooperate to restore stability? [U.S. Military Prepares for Global Unrest Amid Climate Fears (Op-Ed)]
The answers to such questions can serve as the foundation for national and global policy and planning efforts as the world drives toward a mid-century facing an additional 2 billion people, larger cities, a changed climate, and new and continuing areas of social, economic and political instability.
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.