Presentation Title:
Year 2 - From the Last of Us to the First of Us: Rebuilding after a Zombie Crisis

Session Description :

Come for the fun, stay for the insights! 

While I/ITSEC is well known for showcasing technical advancement that immerse individuals into simulated spaces, this workshop demonstrates that high-cost, high-fidelity simulations are not necessary to engage participants, provide teachable moments or collect insightful data. This workshop makes use of aspects of fantasy tabletop role-playing games (RPG), escape rooms, and the zombie horror genre to build a participatory story.  The story plays out to provide insights into team dynamics, leadership, trust, decision making, and strategy. 

Last year’s workshop was fun, well-received and insightful.  The results are provided in multiple I/ITSEC papers that summarize the data collected and describe the process of creating such an event.  The format continues this year, building on the decisions participants made last year as they dealt with events in the first month following the collapse. Participants will continue to fight for their survival while considering efforts to move toward a more civilized society and their choices will continue to influence the following year’s workshop as the world tries to regain normalcy after the fall. 

This is an interdisciplinary exploration of how a civilized society might thrive, or fail to survive, after the infrastructure collapse. While the scenario uses a zombie metaphor for engagement, it is inspired by real-world events involving public health, national security, and public resources. Nested in this fictional storyline, participants will establish needed resources, skills, and new social norms and by doing so, these participants will create the world that next year's I/ITSEC participants inherit and continue to build upon. While the storyline is fantastic, the scenarios pose challenges that call for real decision-making strategies, negotiation skills, short, and long-term planning in the same way as actual recovery would. The immediate and longitudinal data from this format provides insights into tacit knowledge involved in complex team

Intended audience and relevance to I/ITSEC :

While designed as an engaging interactive apocalyptic experience, the outcomes are immediately and longitudinally relevant to I/ITSEC participants from defense, public policy, academia, public health, and essential infrastructure domains.  The workshop will (1) demonstrate the value of low-fidelity simulations in capturing complex collective/team/group thought processes, (2) identify patterns in collective decision-making behaviors, and (3) provide a novel gamification method for perspective taking to optimize desired outcomes.  Summary of hands-on activities and techniques to promote interaction. Activity outline: Simulation introduction. Participants will receive an overview of game "rules" and will join teams. They will complete a brief survey to collect demographics to understand participant perspectives, biases, and expectations. Decision-making. The simulation begins with triggered events that force decisions that will impact subsequent options (limit resources, expand social collateral, etc.).  Each decision leads to further consequences. AAR. Participants will complete a survey capturing how they, individually, perceived their and their group’s progress

Short statement of benefits participants will gain:

This "come for the fun, stay for the insights" approach is a serious simulation, designed to reveal high-stake decision-making trends at group and individual levels. Participants who work in teams in decision-making or decision-informing contexts will directly benefit from exploring challenges facing collaborative endeavors. Participation will provide immediate insight into tacit knowledge involved in team problem-solving. These factors will be explored in a narrative of survival, social development/social contracts, and ethics.  This experience will also provide an opportunity to explore what level of technical complexity is necessary to create an immersive experience to practice defense, health and safety tasks, and the effects of loss of infrastructure and leadership as well as many other areas.

Keywords: GAME TECHNOLOGY;INTERACTIVE;SIMULATIONS