Gardening Plants & People

A game to experience the value of Commitment Pooling for resource coordination

Are you ready to dive into a unique game where plants and people thrive through resource coordination? I’ve been working on this game in some form for a while and am excited about it as an interactive experience that lets children (10+) and adults explore resource coordination dynamics in an engaging and fun way. Thanks to inspiration and feedback from my ecologist partner

Aude Peronne

for helping me simplify complex garden dynamics. (This is only the beginning of such games!)

What is Commitment Pooling?

Commitment pooling as a cooperative game mechanic is inspired by nature and human communities. In the Gardening Plans and People game, players take on roles of plants in a mycorrhizal network or members of a local economy. Just as plants share resources through fungal networks and people come together to support each other, players pool their commitments (resources or skills) to overcome challenges and reach shared goals. This mechanic is both a powerful in-game tool and a proto-social model of real-world collaboration—one that shows the strength of working together toward resilience and growth.

A Walk-through of the Gardening Plants and People

1. Starting Small: Begin by making an individual commitment—this could be a resource, skill, or time. Each agents’s commitment to resources is unique, just like in real ecosystems and communities.

2. Creating a Shared Pool: Pool your resources together with others. This shared pool is a key to overcoming challenges that no individual could face alone.

3. Facing Challenges Together: The game introduces different obstacles, testing the strength and adaptability of the pool. Players use the pooled resources strategically to tackle these challenges.

4. Growing Stronger as a Group: Every success builds resilience, rewarding all players based on their contributions and amplifying the collective power of the group as a network of Commitment Pools.

5. Scaling Up: As the game progresses, the pools adapt to bigger challenges and new contributors, mirroring real-world ecosystems and communities that thrive through mutual support.

Try It Yourself!

Curious to see how commitment pooling works as a game dynamic? Head over to play.grassecon.org to experience the game firsthand. It’s easy to start, and you’ll quickly see how pooling commitments can lead to thriving gardens.

Curious to see how Commitment Pooling works in real life, talk to an ecologist or grassroots economist and check out real world implementations and tools at sarafu.network.

For Developers: Dive into the Code

Developers interested in learning more about how this game was created can check out the project on GitHub at https://github.com/grassrootseconomics/mycofig. Built using the Godot engine, the codebase provides an open-source example of implementing commitment pooling dynamics in a game environment. We welcome you to explore, contribute, and share your feedback! Hard core programmers will note that - this code could use a lot of improvements - and to use such a dynamic engine at scale for a Real Time Strategy game or other large economic games, especially multiplayer with complex routing and clearing between pools will take a lot more work!

Also check out other non-digital games using Commitment Pooling: