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:
“I bow’d not to thy image for succession,
Nor bound thy bow to shoot reformed kindness,
Thy plays of hope and fear were my confession,
The spectacles to my life was thy blindness;
But Cupid now farewell, I will go play me,
With thoughts that please me less and less betray me.”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
“PLAYING SHOULD BE FUN! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for “educational” toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a “message.” Often these “tools” are less interesting and stimulating than the child’s natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.”
—Joanne E. Oppenheim (20th century)
“By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)