Fishbanks

Created by Dennis Meadows in 1986, Fishbanks is an educational simulation that teaches players about sustainable resource management. Participants act as competing fishing fleets attempting to maximize their net worth. The primary challenge is managing the shared fish population without causing it to collapse.

In the game, teams compete to catch fish from a shared ocean, but because no single team owns the ocean, there is a massive economic incentive to overfish. Without strict regulations and communication, players inevitably deplete the fishery to the point of collapse. It effectively demonstrates how individual rational decisions lead to collective ruin.

The simulation was developed by Dennis Meadows, a prominent systems scientist who co-authored the famous 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth.' He created Fishbanks to practically demonstrate the complex system dynamics of resource depletion to students and corporate teams. It is utilized globally in environmental economics courses.

While it was originally developed as a physical board game workshop in the 1980s, modern versions of Fishbanks are played entirely online. The digital platform allows students worldwide to simulate decades of fishing in just a few hours. The online interface instantly calculates the complex system dynamics.