Field Games

世光 · 田野游戏

Four short games about how development work actually goes: what you notice, who decides, what the report can see, and what is still standing after you leave. Each takes five to ten minutes.

The Needle Leaves针走了

Three years in a hill village. Listen, stitch houses together, deliver projects. The report decides how many days you get next year.

Listening · legibility · hand-over

Five Steps五步

Run a summer camp with a school, urban families, rural schools and a foundation, through SEESALT+'s five steps. Three summers later, does it run without you?

SEESALT+ · co-design · ownership

Before the Flood洪水之前

Six years of adaptation finance for a river district. Prevention works when nothing happens, and nothing happening is hard to report.

Adaptation Lab · prevention · attribution

What the Number Sees数字看见了什么

Design an indicator to find the worst-off households in a village. Then a funder starts paying for the number to go up.

Indicators · legibility · Goodhart's law

What the games are built on

LegibilityJames C. Scott: Institutions count what they were built to see. Listening, trust and things that did not happen leave little trace in a report.
MētisKnowledge that lives in practice: The people in a place already know things no project brings. The work is to find that knowledge and connect it, not to replace it.
The substitution trapSEESALT research: A capacity brought in from outside can take the place of one that was there instead of building on it, and fade when its sponsor leaves.
The needle, not the fabricSEESALT Terra · SEESALT+: Outsiders connect the fabric. Cooperation means deciding together and accepting that it costs you control. The work is judged after you leave.

The Needle Leaves

针走了，线还在

Three years in a hill village. The light is already here. Find it, carry it from house to house, and leave something that holds without you. Your report decides how many days the funder gives you next year.

Year 1 of 3 · field days

16 days left

The report0people reached this year · 0 projects

What the place holdsNot measuredNot in the report

Village no. 2018

Tap a house to listen.

Field notes

Nothing written yet.

How to play

Listen. Tap a house. One day. You learn what the person there knows. Listening never appears in the report.
Stitch. Tap two houses you have listened to. One day. Stitched houses carry each other's light. A stitch only reaches a neighbour.
Deliver. Two days; the report jumps at once. On a house already stitched to two others, the project is designed with them and lasts. Dropped in from outside, it dims the houses around it and stops working once you are gone.
Winter. Between years, the village works without you. Houses stitched to two or more reach out to a neighbour on their own. Next year's days depend on this year's report.

Five Steps

五步 · SEESALT+

A summer camp for urban and rural students aged 11 to 15, run by four parties who need each other: an international school, urban families, three rural schools and an education foundation. You are SEESALT, and you are only here to connect them.

What is inside it

Cooperation over coordinationSEESALT+: Coordination means telling each other what you are doing. Cooperation means deciding it together, and accepting that this costs you control.
Consultation after the decisionA common failure: If a party joins after the design is fixed, it is consultation, and the people consulted can tell.
Pooled stakesShared investment: A party that contributes nothing material has no stake, and a party that pays for everything owns it.
The second summerThe real measure: The camp was based on Wheat Ear 2030, SEESALT+'s one real application so far. One application is not a proven method, and the game does not pretend it is.

Before the Flood

洪水之前

You manage six years of adaptation finance for a river district of 400 households. Each year, split the budget between prevention and response. The funder renews the budget according to what its dashboard can see.

Flood, if nothing were preparedHouseholds floodedWhat the funder saw

Year 1 of 6

$100k

budget this year

Prevention40%

Drainage, raised paths, early warning. Builds up over the years.

Measure what did not happen0%

A counterfactual study, the Adaptation Lab method, so the funder can see floods that were prevented.

Response60%

Relief and rebuilding after a flood. Every household assisted shows up on the dashboard.

The river has not risen yet.

What is inside it

Attributive ambiguitySEESALT research · AAG 2027: When a disaster is small, no one can say whether the state prevented it or the river was kind. Credit flows to visible response, so capacity shifts there.
Prevention and response capacityAdaptation Lab: A state can be good at responding and bad at preventing, and a single resilience score hides the difference. Adaptation Lab is a method to measure them separately.

What the Number Sees

数字看见了什么

A programme can reach eight households in this village. Design the indicator that picks them. You have four points to spend on measurement. Then see who your number found, and who it missed.

Measurement budget

4 of 4 points left

What is inside it

LegibilityJames C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: A measure simplifies a place so it can be governed. Whatever the measure does not see, the programme cannot reach.
Goodhart's lawCharles Goodhart: When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Roofs and enrolment certificates are easier to change than lives.
Asking the villageParticipatory wealth ranking: People in a place usually know who is worst off. Asking them costs more time than a survey and is harder to put in a spreadsheet.