Budgetball: A New Fiscal Sport

Colleen Macklin

Wed., June 10, 5:00–7:00, Great Hall (4th floor, Central)

How can we convey complex real-world systems through sports? How is learning through intense physical play different from learning through other forms of play? This presentation will begin to explore some of these questions though the design of Budgetball, a new sport modeling aspects of the federal debt.

Budgetball is a team-based sport designed to increase awareness of the budget deficit and reward strategic thinking and collaborative problem solving around the issues of fiscal responsibility and long-term debt management. It is designed to be played at universities as a part of a campaign for fiscal literacy launched by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. At the center of Budgetball is an original genuine physical team sport. Woven through that sport is a system of advantages and penalties called Power-ups and Sacrifices that shift the very rules of the sport and add complexity, originality, strategy, and most importantly the concept of balancing immediate benefits with future payments.

Budgetball hosted its first tournament with over sixty NYU and New School students and faculty in February 2009 in New York City. It will be played in March at the University of Miami, and in April at Philander Smith College in Arkansas. Future tournaments in Washington, DC, and across the nation are being planned.

The presentation will focus on a recapitulation of the actual play and feedback by Budgetball players about how the game revealed the workings of the federal deficit and debt management. The presentation will take up questions such as: Can a physical sport reveal abstract systems? Do players have a better sense of these systems after they play within them? Is there a greater sensitivity to the federal deficit in the news and media after playing Budgetball?

In addition to examining these questions from a player’s perspective, the design of Budgetball raised some interesting questions for its designers, such as: How can we represent the core aspects of a system in a team-based sport? How can we remove the burden of conveying fact-based content from the core play without sacrificing the learning goals? Can an emphasis on in-game strategy translate to real world fiscal strategies?

In this post-game recap we look at these and other interesting questions from the play of Budgetball.

Budgetball was designed by PETLab and Area/Code Budgetball was made possible through funding from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and support from the National Academy of Public Administration.