The Narrative History of the Chocolate Wars: A Short and Tasty Bargaining Game

ABSTRACT

This single lesson classroom game is designed to test student knowledge of Realist and Liberal concepts through an imbalanced resource bargaining mechanic. The game is designed for approximately 20 students divided into state teams of three to four students each and uses chocolate to represent the state teams’ economic capacity, military capability, and human security. Each state team had competing goals, over which they must cooperate or conflict for additional pieces. This game also uses an abstract design to maximize active learning through a short course of play while also making the game useful for testing concepts at any point in an International Relations course. In addition to offering a complete yet easily modifiable game for classroom use, this article also describes the game’s pedagogical contribution to the discipline, game design notes, and techniques for preventing students from stuffing their faces with game pieces.

KEYWORDS:

• Bargaining
• conflict
• cooperation
• game
• international relations
• liberalism
• opportunity costs
• pedagogy
• realism
• simulation

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Paul Bolt, Damon Coletta, Christopher Dinote, Kelly Fielder, Joseph Foster, Ryan Guiberson, Chris Hocking, John Riley, David Sacko, Patrick Schoof, Fred Smith, three anonymous reviewers, and fellow panelists and audience participants in the 2017 Midwest Political Science Association Games and Simulations session for their actionable comments.

Notes

Game mechanic is defined as “methods invoked by agents [or players], designed for interaction with the game state” (Sicart 2008). Not to confused with methodological “mechanisms” or “causal mechanisms.”

This is not synonymous with the two-person, zero-sum matrix game found in mathematical game theory. For a brief description of narrative-style matrix wargaming, see http://www.mapsymbs.com/wdmatrix.html (accessed February 12, 2018).

Avalon Hill’s “Advanced Squad Leader” is a seminal example. See http://www.advancedsquadleader.net/ (accessed February 12, 2018).

There are also a variety of free and open-source tools for creating electronic board games, including The Vassal Engine (http://www.vassalengine.org/) and Cyber Board (https://cyberboard.brainiac.com/; both accessed December 3, 2017).

PAXSims (https://paxsims.wordpress.com/) and Kansas State University’s Gaming Political Science (https://www.k-state.edu/polsci/gaming/) are also fantastic game-design resources (both accessed February 5, 2018).

This game could also be modified for use in an undergraduate comparative politics course by requiring students to create backstory narratives with relevant comparative concepts for each state team.

I have used this game in a 45-student class with mixed success. While it is modifiable for larger sections, enlarging the game requires more chocolate pieces (and associated costs) and more or larger teams, and reduces the amount of time the teacher/referee can dedicate to moderating each team. I recommend assigning a student aide for games larger than 40 students to mitigate the increased administration requirements. As for chocolate costs, the figure does not account for the hefty bribe I made to my wife, to whom I had to account for spending so much on chocolate. There is another bargaining lesson there, I’m sure.

I typically create teams randomly in order to mix student personalities. However, the teacher could also purposely build teams to align specific students, or let students form their own teams in order to observe bonded group dynamics.

The teacher could provide all starting resources and goals if evaluating how students perform with perfect information.

For an exhaustive list of feedback questions, see Pallister (2015, 365).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James D. Fielder

Lt. Col. James D. Fielder is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations Division Chief at the United States Air Force Academy. He earned his PhD from The University of Iowa in 2012. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. government.