Deadlus' End

Investigate, Negotiate, Debate, Compromise, Cooperate. Daedalus' End is a turn-based negotiation-and-decision centered online MMORPG /resource-and-ecology management game designed for civil and environmental engineering students, and others involved in development training (including development students, MBA students, NGOS, consultancies etc). They roleplay members of engineering teams consulting for various constituencies/factions with opposing agendas involved in the long-term (25 to 50 year) infrastructural and industrial development of a specific country or region.

The focus of the simulation is to immerse the players in the social, political, economic, and ecological complexities and controversies of engineering in the context of development policy. The players will also be confronted with how technology, expertise, and capital flows, must be negotiated across cultures and borders in an era of globalization.

Development engineering projects addressed by the game will include energy production/transmission (hydroelectric dams, solar plants, oil/coal plants); water and sanitation management; transport infrastructure; ecological engineering (flood control, reforestation). The game will emphasize how these various projects are politically/economically interdependent and mutually impact upon each other in the long-term view of development.

The core skills players will learn will be beyond technical but still key to being an engineering professional in the global context. These core skills include virtual teamwork, intercultural negotiation, and a complex awareness of how engineering projects are formulated, for better and for worse, in real-world contexts of political struggle, technological scarcity, economic pressures, social protest, and ecological imbalance.

Copyright 2002, MIT.