You have just completed a task and have gained $30,000,000 and 200 exp. Congrats! Your exp bar is now full and you have leveled up to lvl 10. You have 5 points to allocate to your 4 abilities: (1) fracking power (2) legal persuasion (3) public relations (4) espionage. You decide to put 2 points into fracking power, 1 point into legal persuasion, and 2 points into espionage. You continue on with the game.
Current stats:
Fracking power: 20
Legal persuasion: 8
Public relations: 2
Espionage: 20
You have the ability to move to a new zone in Nebraska and you chose to do so. You begin to set up your fracking area around shale well API Number 26,033,225,670,000.00 in Cheyenne County. All of a sudden one of your spies detects Central Operating Inc. You have two options: attempt to attack and take over the fracking site or leave them alone. With your lvl 20 espionage, you attempt to attack the site. Success! You have acquired more land and 4 new transport trucks in the process. You begin fracking. Estimated time of completion: 5 minutes.
Letting your fracking team do its thing, you move over to the “shop” section. You have a total of $435,000,000 of money to spend on resources (can spend $50,000,000 for a new point if you wish to do so). You spend $30 million in more espionage workers and assassins, $100,000,000 on legal persuasion to raise it to lvl 10, and $200,000,000 on Fracking power to raise it to lvl 24.
5 minutes have passed and you have successfully fracked. A giant “SUCCESS” sign appears on your screen with an animation of 2 dinosaurs high-fiving each other. The option pops up: “Attempt to frack again?” You select “yes”.
Uh oh, a wild legal team from the state capitol of Nebraska appears! They are charging you with not disclosing the chemicals used in your fracking process. You have three options: (1) Battle them in court (legal persuasion), (2) pay a fine, or (3) attempt to assassinate the capitol leaders of Nebraska. You opt for option (2) and pay a $60,000,000 settlement.
By: Nathan Woo
Good evening! Traveler welcome to the world of fracking!
You have a total of 500 turns in order to reap the vast amount of resources found here!
You are a researcher that just finished school at UC California with a degree in Engineering! Congratulations!
To start of roll the dice!
Player 1 rolls. And receives an event card “given at every turn/be good/bad”
Player 1 receives a corrupted politician card! Use this card to bypass the EPA or any other environmental groups for one drilling site.
Game: You can either drill now, or wait 5 turns to better research fracking?
Player 1 researches fracking and enables them to harvest more by using better recovery techniques!
Player 1 turn again and this time receives a “This isn’t your mama’s global warming class” card
Game: As you begin to start the process of drilling, thousands of liberals come over and start protesting!
Game 1: You have two choices you could either pay off Environmental groups, or you could use you corrupt card
Player 1. Uses corrupt card! Just then the POTUS has just declared that the EPB declared fracking safe. Causing liberals to go in disgust.
This what is what I thinking about when I did some research. I think we really have to focus on the sort of stuff that lets fracking companies get away from all the stuff. I think we have to learn strike hard and open people’s eyes. We need to focus on the borderline/ illegal/ ethical things in order to create attention. But we have to also make it very realistic so people don’t think we are just making this stuff up
Sources:
https://netimpact.org/blog/where-are-grads-getting-jobs-anyway
http://www2.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing
http://www.theenergyreport.com/pub/na/15625
By: Juan Paulo Pagaran
Congratulations! You’ve leveled up! Please select a new locations to set up new drilling rig.
(Map that looks a lot like North America pops up with blinking dots scattered throughout. The green dots indicate where the policies allow for the least trouble for fracking. The yellow dots show which places might have some complaints. Orange show where there might be protests. Red shows were laws forbid it. These dots can all be changed to green if you campaign before you start to frack. There are a few purple octopuses on the map, showing where there are already established fracking sites.)
*selects green dot in what looks like Texas*
-Frouston is a huge blah, blah, blah
*taps skip intro*
-Ready to drill?
*selects yes*
-Begin!
(Gameplay is much like that of goldigger. Player tries to reach end of maze and get to the trapped gas. The player has three lives. If the player loses all three lives in this round, a natural disaster (earthquake or explosion) occurs and the area becomes unplayable for the next few turns, the player must pay a fine, and the dot becomes red.)
-Congratulations! You’ve completed the drilling process!
*returns to map and selects a yellow dot*
-What would you like to do in Bromaha?
-Campaign for fracking/ buy out government official/ build fracking drill
*selects Campaign for fracking*
-The campaign has begun! This might take a while. Check back in to see the peoples opinions on fracking or convince them yourself.
(By campaigning yourself, the colors of the dots change faster and you raise you PR bar faster)
-RANDOM EVENT!
-Little Johnny Smith from Frouston claims fracking gave him cancer. How do you handle the situation?
– Gag order/ make the Smith family “disappear”/ deny fracking caused this
(Gag orders take time and cost money, but makes the complaints from the dot stop; the disappearing act ceases all complaints but loses PR; denying fracking depends on Science level and Legal level: the higher it is, the better using this works out for you)
Author: Shannon Lipp
You are the owner of a very large fracking company in Oklahoma and you have to choose where to move a second company to. You have the choice of anywhere in the United States or somewhere in Canada or Mexico. You have word that your business will possibly more successful outside the US but you will be met with a lot of problems with the Canadian and Mexican people. If you choose the United States to develop in, it will be more expensive.
Once you choose a place to spawn a new company, you have to deal with all the potential problems in that area. Expect riots or sicknesses that cause you to pay off people to avoid major law suits. If you fail to use your money and neglect the problems you will go to court, the results of the lawsuit always will lean in your favor, however if you have enough, eventually the company will lose. That potentially means losing money and losing one of your companies. When you make enough money you can get a third company. The game now becomes the quest to develop a company in every continent in the world.
By: Micheal Samson
I load the game up and the game tells me I am assuming the role of an energy company’s fracking division manager in a California well site. A video comes up that shows me how fracking works in a slightly entertaining manner. After a short tutorial of the gameplay and an explanation of how my income is being made from the cracking of the earth’s subterranean area, I can already see that this is going to cause trouble for the earth. The HUD comes up and I can see an isometric view of my well-site akin to what one would see in SimCity. I can see trucks going along their routes carrying the collected gas and at the end, they disappear and green text floats up saying “$104”, describing how much money I get from each truck’s returns. As this happens, the total money at the top of the HUD is continuously increasing. Text flies across the screen that say “Week 1” and shortly afterwords, a prompt comes up.
During Week 1, my problem is that residents are complaining of water and air contamination. I choose to ignore it for now as it seems to be just a warning. Week 1 ends and in Week 2, officials come and investigate the cause of Week 1’s complaints. A prompt comes up with different choices I can select to take a course of action to deal with this mess. I choose to falsify test results and say my chemicals are safe, but I do not disclose the chemical composition of the fracking liquid since it is business property. Revealing it would stiffen competition from other companies and so I was allowed to keep the composition hidden. Week 2 ends without a hitch. At the end of each week, I can see a summary report of my gains and a total history of what choices I made to the problems that came up. The gains go to my monetary total with a satisfying cash register sound.
Week 3 begins and the residents complain more. I choose to present them with monetary compensation to move out of the area and sign a gag order to not relate their health problems to my fracking site. Week 3 has been successfully dealt with.
Week 4 begins and I receive knowledge that the company’s scientists came up with a new innovation that will increase gas yields. A new drilling system will also lower well costs. I see that the monetary green text increases to “$106.” During Week 5, as a result of week 4, my company is contacted by an investor. I settle a deal and we gain assets which will help our gains in the long run.
The weeks go on by and eventually, a large sinkhole comes up near my well site, forcing my company to stop drilling in the area, as well as forcing nearby residents to evacuate the area. This puts a stop to the operations and hence, is the end of the game. A summary report comes up and shows my final score, with a report of the choices I made throughout my playthrough and compares it with statistics of the choices that other players have made. At this point, I realize how destructive fracking is to the environment and society. I also realize that the choices throughout the game weren’t just ordinary business decisions. The choices balanced over innocent moral issues as well, and I couldn’t help but ignore most of what I felt was the right thing to do in order to make my score higher. Before closing out, I end up feeling the need to share this quick and informative game with my friends to spread the awareness of fracking. By: Christopher Mai
Having just bought my eighth fracking territory, I am running low on funds. Since I chose to buy land and territory rather than invest in technology, research, or manpower, these territories are not producing nearly as much oil as they could be.
Luckily, my karma is somewhat high after making a string of morally sound choices (moving to a remote area even when a populated one was cheaper, helping to open a wildlife preserve before buying out a territory, etc.), and I catch a stroke of good luck. The price of oil is rising due to other companies’ failure, and a big investor recognizes that my territories have massive production potential. He starts by dropping $1 million into my company, which we use to hire a few more workers in each territory.
…
A few turns later, once I’ve begun turning significantly larger profits, I decide to buy 25% of an opposing company who has just experienced an earthquake. He needs the money, and I, recognizing that he still has pretty good technology and some valuable land, decide that he will rebound for a significant profit.
In fact, the very next turn, he discovers a giant oil pocket, and his profits skyrocket. I sell the company back two turns later for five times what I paid for it. By: Zachary Moore
1. there are 10 cards and you will be randomly assigned one of them as the initial property or role
2. in every single card, there shows a role like: government official; California Fracking Company (owns 1billion dollars); Environmentalist; Judge; Fracking Company (owns 2 billion dollars) and there is totally maximum around 20 companies.
3. and every one of the company initially have 500 credits (which represent the degree of danger) every time you frack a new land, you would get 5 to 10 units out of your totally credit, it depends on what you did and what you have impacted. When you get the point of having a credit below 100, it means your company is in a really dangerous situation. The judge would decide whether or not your company is damaging the environment or threading the local people. (there would be a specific scale about how to manage the units)
4. and there is another scale that calculate how much money you have made depends on the land you are working on (you have to buy the land by using the money you initially had or you have earned later on)
5. you would die if you loose all your points or if you found by the government officials (every time you frack or break the laws would cause a result of drawing attentions of the government or the environmentalist.
This is a game that pretty much like Tetris, so it means that players would rather keep playing than win – thereby in this case, loosing the game (because you could never win, the world is going to end eventually). By: Ming Yang
Somewhere far off in the plains, there lived a family, a pleasant family. They lived a peaceful life, surrounded by farm and livestock. Their home, their life, their devotion was all here. Never once were they able to have that again. Fracking had ruined it for them.
Public outcry has drawn negative light upon your company. Your choices are to address the citizens concern, disclose the chemicals injected to fracture rocks, or to accept liability for harmful chemical emission.
Address citizen concern: Citizens are outraged at the pollutants that percolate into the air. They make hasty conclusions that your company is responsible for the potential health risk they have. You decide to issue gag orders to keep their claims silent and out of the public eye. However, citizens are dissatisfied with the monetary supply they are receiving. To avoid any complications, you agree to lend millions of dollars to each family who issued a complaint.
Disclose the chemicals injected to fracture rocks: To protect your company from the danger that may ensue. You hire a lobby team to create policy that prevents you from disclosing the chemicals, hoping that your company is exempt from current environmental laws, upheld by the EPA. Your lobby team has successfully petitioned your company’s case regarding the chemicals used in fracking. You are now pleased to reward your lobby team with one third of your current profit.
Accept liability for harmful chemicals: The case is brought to trial by concerned citizens and you are forced to list the chemicals that are injected into fracking pipelines. The plaintiffs hire experts that prove the linkage between health conditions and these contaminants. You ultimately lose the case and are required to cover the medical bills for impacted citizens. Additionally, you have to use company funds to issue a cleanup for surface dumping and have to provide a clean water supply to all plaintiffs. By: Sneha Patrachari
I begin with a certain amount of points to be distributed among several features of its company (publicity, government partners, science partners, efficiency, karma, territory accessibility, company size, and legal team.) Starting with 10 points, I choose to place 6 in karma, 2 in science partners, and 2 in efficiency. With so many points in karma, I get to choose my fracking site with little risk from random natural disasters to my site once established. However, I am forced to choose a small, common fracking site, such as Ohio1, because my publicity, company size, and government connections are not up to par.
My company has somewhat advanced techniques for this stage in the game, due to my science and efficiency points, so I begin fracking in Ohio. As I begin fracking, I have gained 3 more points which I choose to save for later. The local townspeople begin to suspect my company for producing toxic waste, and I choose to place 2 points in publicity and 1 in science. As a result, my science researchers have made a breakthrough in the ability to frack with minimal damage to the environment, for now. With two points in publicity, I can send a PR team to calm the people and assure them of the safety of my techniques before a riot breaks out.
Having completed these tasks and as the company makes a profit, I am awarded with 3 additional points and choose to invest them in government connections. With my new connections, I am able to manipulate the questions asked and results obtained from recent EPA studies in my favor2. This allows me to continue fracking without worrying about future legislation for some time, allowing me to invest some points in company size and continue the growth and increase profit from my company.
My idea of how the game could begin..
Sources:
1: http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/fracking-across-the-united-states
2: http://www2.epa.gov/hfstudy/study-potential-impacts-hydraulic-fracturing-drinking-water-resources-progress-report-0
By: Kenneth Harary
Player one rolls the die. The die is ten-sided, and a seven comes up. Player one smiles excitedly as she looks down at her point matrix. She has seven points to distribute, secretly, among her sections (sample picture uploaded). The game master adds seven to her total number of points earned during the game (this is so that she cannot add more points than have been granted in the game to her chart). Because the game has just begun, she only rolls once—every player starts with a roll to represent the start-up capital. With each new well the player gets an additional roll, thus increasing the company’s power exponentially as time goes by. Each player rolls once until they can afford their own well—and as mentioned before, they get additional rolls for additional wells.
Higher points can be used to unlock things. Since all points are cumulative (you don’t lose points when they are spent, you just can’t buy the next level up of the resource until you reach that point value) items are unlocked to be used. To protect one’s secret corporate power, each player keeps how they distributed their points a secret—they only have to disclose this information to the game-master to purchase levels. The game-master will check the math to be sure that the numbers are correct—the GM keeps tabs on the points of every player and can see any player’s investment cards when a player wants to level up. The game-master is not a corporation. Player one puts five points to a new well, unlocking the first well of the game. She will have to put in seven more points, making her total in that topic 12, before she can unlock a second well. She can place this well wherever she wants. Like settlers of Cataan (in some interpretations of the rules) all of the number tiles that determine how much oil is in one location are flipped upside down so no one can see the amount of natural gas in the state. If she had allocated 5 points to R & D, she would have been able to flip over one of the tiles. Instead she must choose at random, and hope that the state she picks has a good amount of natural gas.
Although the amounts of gas are randomly dispersed at the beginning of the game to keep the game interesting for multiple plays, the states are all unique. States where lobbying is hard such as California, where fracking is decided county by county and there are many counties, some, such as Santa Cruz, have already imposed moratoriums on fracking (1). California may require a player to have 30 points in lobbying before they can frack there. These states will be color-coded. The darker the green, the more expensive the lobbying is. States like North Carolina would be very light colored (2). North Carolina can be bought by a player with only one point in lobbying. As time goes on, and if different versions of the game are released to reflect changing attitudes, the colors of the states can change too.
Now, Player One allocates her remaining two points to the lobbying group. This is enough to buy the pale state of North Carolina. She then flips over the amount of oil tile. This tile indicates which dice she will be using when she rolls for the new well that is built here. The tile is labeled six, meaning that for this well she will roll a six sided die. This makes her frown because some tiles go as high as 20 sided die. She should perk up—the lowest die is a three sided one! The game master puts on a little yellow oil well to represent her well, and keeps the tile there so that everyone remembers that that is her state.
There is a special number on every die—the number 3—that has a special power. When rolled it makes the player pick up a special event card. These can be good, such as random power-ups that increase the point totals of a category. These cards are always displayed to all players, and the GM makes note of the effects on his roster. Most of these cards, however, relate to some part of some well or wells breaking. Based on the gravity of the card, a player might wish they had invested in a better legal team or compensation fund!
Notes:
(1) http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Fracking-foes-shift-focus-toward-local-limits-4908260.php
(2) http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/28/3145187/officials-ok-rule-to-force-fracking.html
Sample Player Investment Card.jpg
By: Alexis Caligiuri
You roll your dice and a 4 appears. It means you can choose an action during these 4 months.
- Dig some oil and increase your money.
- Help people and increase your karma.
- Do a vacation and increase the happiness of the employees.
- Increase your technique and spend your money.
You choose the first option and you earn 400,000 dollars but lose 4 karmas
Now, randomly choose one card in the random cards area.
Two of your machines are broken and you have to use 20,000 dollars to repair them.
Now you have 1,980,000 dollars, 80 karmas and your technique level is 3.
……
You use the card: two actions.
You roll your dice and a 5 appears. It means you can choose two actions during these 5 months.
- Dig some oil and increase your money.
- Help people and increase your karma.
- Do a vacation and increase the happiness of the employees.
- Increase your technique and spend your money.
I’d like to add an other element to the status of the game. After each turn, the game will display a statistic about the damaging level of the earth. And the random cards include some events like the emission of the chemicals and the natural disasters. Those kinds of events do not affect the money and karma of each company but they will increase the speed of world ending. A larger company may damage more when they getting these kinds of cards. In addition, even nobody in the game get such cards, the damage level will automatically increase.
http://www.dangersoffracking.com/
http://www.elsevier.com/connect/fracking-the-pros-and-cons
By: Changjun Lei