METRO-APEX

METRO-APEX © 1970 University of Michigan & Southern California.

An educational game about county planning designed for students of Environmental Science and Forestry.

The game familiarizes players with real-life situations which include the environmental and political aspects students might encounter in their career in the fictional Apex county.

The game is played with multiple players, each is given different roles such as planners, politicians, industrialists, pressure groups, lawyers, judges, press and broadcast media. Each with their own goals. There are no specific win or lose cases for the game, but the politicians can win or lose elections, litigants can win or lose suits and industrialists can make profit or losses.

Players must role-play their role and enter their actions into the computer after which the computer feeds back the results of actions. This includes a weekly newspaper. Player actions constitute a complete year of policy decisions for their role.