(draft plan from FoAM Kernow as part of the Game on! experiment)

Pick a directive → this could be the habitats directive (environmental) or a few other options.

Pick an outcome that you want to play for → stronger legislation, weaker legislation, or no changes to the legislation (would anyone actually want no changes? no changes as a possible strategy for people favouring stronger/weaker outcomes from a weak political position?)

Start with a finite amount of € → the money available can be altered to see what difference this makes (this could be a proxy for a different type of organisation e.g. a small charity will start with less money, a multinational for-profit with more).

Start with a board of MEPs → the proportions of political groupings in Parliament can be altered to see what difference this makes (EEP, ECR, ALDI, GEU-NGL, Greens-EFA, EFDD, NI – you could also have Council members in addition). You have markers that you place on the MEPs to denote whether they are voting in the direction you want or not. Or perhaps simpler if there is a pool of MEP tokens that are handed to players at different points – to denote ownership of voting intention

Based on the above, there are rules that affect the start point – e.g. If you start with an environmental directive, and you want to strengthen it, you start with the greens and left wing parties on-side.

You start at the beginning of the process and work your way through.

At each stage of the process where citizens or lobby groups can feed into the process, you have various options to play e.g. invest heavily/lightly/not at all in writing for the public consultation process, have a protest event, run a petition. You choose how to allocate your € to these different options, and at which stage of the overall process – for example you could spread your efforts to have a smaller input throughout, or heavily invest at one point in the process.

Each action you take wins or loses you points – these are MEPs who will now vote in your favoured direction. The winning and losing of points could depend on the make-up of Parliament e.g. a petition when the majority already agree is worth less. We would need to plan this carefully based closely enough to reality to make it useful.

At each stage where citizens or lobby groups can influence matters, each player makes their investment decision secretly and simultaneously – the effect of these decisions is averaged on the MEP board.

The overall outcome is decided by how many MEPs are voting in each direction.