The struggle of mutants

Author: Zsóka Vásárhelyi

Recommended age: 12-99

Number of players: 10-30

Space needed for the game: classroom

Difficulty level: 2

Playing time: 15-30 minutes

Preparation time: -

Accessories: -

Short description: The ideas of participants are in a competition as if they were genetic variants, and if you play long enough, selection will favour some, and disfavour other variants.

Preparations: -

Course of the game: Every player thinks about three words that will represent him or her during the game. These three words could be “Shoe, cocoa, strawberry” or even “give me chocolate”, too. When everyone has found their words, players start walking in random directions in the space, and upon meeting someone, introduce themselves. However, instead of saying their name, they say their three words. This introduction means the exchange of words, too: after this, everyone will carry the three words of the last person they shook hands with. So if player A (shoe cocoa strawberry) meets player B (give me chocolate), the next time they shake hands with someone, player A now will say “give me chocolate” and layer B will say “shoe cocoa strawberry”. Play this game for some time and then form a circle and tell, one by one, the last three words you carried. If you played only 30 seconds, probably nothing interesting will happen. However, if you played for several minutes, you will see that some words disappeared, others got mixed up somehow, and some words “reproduced”. Staying at our examples, “shoe cocoa strawberry” will probably disappear, because the words are unrelated, and difficult to remember. At the same time, “give me chocolate” will probably stay alive or even get more frequent, because it is not only easy to remember, but also gives you nice thoughts. When you have discovered what happened to each three words, try guessing why the successful words were better in the game, and why the unsuccessful were not. After this, play another game, where players can consciously try to find successful words and compete by them!

Bottleneck effect: This version is different from the basic one in that in the middle of the game a large portion of players quit the game and then comes back. We can say that an epidemic or a famine killed many individuals. We are playing the basic game, and after a minute, we let the players know that the epidemic is on. Now players who volunteer, quit the game for some time. It is better if they are the majority of players. After another minute, players enter the game again, but without their own words. They will inherit the first three words they hear. When you have finished the game you will see that the number of variants alive is dramatically smaller than in the previous rounds.

Founder effect: This version is basically the same as the bottleneck version, the only difference is that the game begins with only a couple of players. They are the first inhabitants of an island, and the others, their descendants, only gradually enter the game according to the rules described above.

Biological background: Natural selection works in a way that those phenotypic variants will get more successful in a population which are more effective. When talking about individual organisms, effectiveness can mean foraging effectiveness, or reproductive effectiveness. But in this game, success depends on how easy or fun it is to remember a given three words. But similarly to natural environments, success depends on the environment here, too: it may be that a given three words have some special meaning in one class of children, and no meaning in another one. In the former case, these words will surely be successful, but in the latter case they may not be successful at all. It is also possible that a difficult three words will get mixed up by someone in a way that it accidentally becomes a very successful three words. In this case, we have seen an advantageous mutation. But words can suffer neutral or deleterious mutations, too. If the game works properly, you will see that variation decreases even if mutations occur.

References: the modification of the known name exchange game is my own idea