Pandora Project Game History

Different versions of The Pandora Project have been played in different settings. The one we have studied the most closely was a class of fourteen high school students who played the game over two weeks of class time: a total of nine hours of game play. The students were enrolled in an ethics class at an independent school in Massachusetts, and it was the teacher’s decision to play the game as part of the curriculum.

For the study, we interviewed players before and after the game, and players wrote daily in an online journal. In the interviews players described their views on xenotransplantation and biotechnology. They completed concept maps about xenotransplantation, representing diagrammatically their understanding of the issues and interest groups relevant to the procedure. They responded to transfer scenarios: problems designed to see whether they were using ideas learned in the game to solve problems outside the game. And we asked them what they thought of the game, what worked well and what did not.

Players in the versions of the game we’ve studied learned about the science of xenotransplantation, but they also learned to think like negotiators: the game helped the players we studied think about ethical dilemmas raised by new technologies using the epistemology of professional negotiation. Players began to analyze disputes in terms of legitimate conflicting interests of stakeholders, focusing on understanding the needs of the parties affected by a problem.

To read more about the effects of playing The Pandora Project, see the chapter on the game in How Computer Games Help Children Learn