Play
The game consists of the player being presented with the Massachusetts state budget, which is 3.2 billion USD in debt with its taxes and expenditures; they have to raise one or cut the other to eliminate the deficit, and not cause problems at the same time (for example, cutting too much of the Department of Mental Retardation brings you in conflict with a Supreme Court ruling). After breaking even or better, they can then submit their work. The game then randomly generates conditions and applies them to the budget (for example, the creation of a fund to aid treatment of mental retardation offsets the cuts to it in the budget).
Read more about this topic: Mass Balance
Famous quotes containing the word play:
“In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)