If we take the ideas behind The Sims to a more office like situation, consider the following situation where person A and B, or Bert and Ernie, influence each other. Bert’s Recognitions-level is way down; he doesnt feel any recognition at all on his job, so his goal becomes “Getting Recognition”. Bert in his mind has three possible strategies which all revolve around just getting attention (as he gets no feedback at all he is dying for any attention at all):
- Passive: doing nothing, see if anyone reacts;
- Aggressive: full force complaining and bitching;
- Escape: doing completely something else that delivers some kind of recognition.
Whatever strategy Bert chooses, his efficiency in his work will drop. Now is a good time to bring in some new element: environment properties. Not only the actors itself have properties, but also the environment in which to have their setting. Most obvious example is the element time; this is a global property for the virtual reality. But also the economic climate, the meteorological climate, but also “global variables”, e.g. in a project setting On-Time, Within-Budget. The values of these global properties can also play a part in the game engine.
To get back to Bert and Ernie, the fact that Bernie doesnt work as efficient as he should will affect the global property On-Time. This will become false. Ernie in this case is the Project Manager and the change in the global property On-Time influences Ernies property “In-Control”; its value is decreasing. Ernie can have none of that, and therefor his goal becomes “Increase In-Control”.
Ernie is not much of a manager, so he has only one strategy available: Putt the Pressure On People With Low Efficiency. And what you know, that would be Bert. But by putting the pressure on Bert, Bert’s Recognition Levels drop even more, and the spiral downwards has begun.
Tags: cas, complexity, interactions, modeling, sims, systems
