The Innovation Game

I just had to do it. I shouldn't have done it, but I did. And now here I am inventing a game. Strange how things work out.

The thing that I did that I shouldn't have done is that in a product review of Tabular Editor 3, I threw a dig in about open source software. Probably didn't have any real place in a review of a software product but I did it anyway because; well, because I'm me. However, this ended up starting quite the discussion! I actually enjoy the discussion. It's not something people talk about enough in my opinion.

Now, my views on this subject are pretty well known. I think open source is inefficient and adds unreasonable complexity, insecure and isn't innovative. But what really seemed to get the juices flowing was my statement that open source harms innovation. And, I freely admit that it is a hard issue to prove one way or another because we do not have access to parallel worlds, one where all software is open source and one where all software is proprietary.

But, what if we invented a game where we could explore these two parallel worlds? And thus, the Innovation Game was born. Now, this game is deadly simple and only requires two players but can be played with any number of players and all that is required are dice and a scoring pad. In the Innovation Game each player takes on the persona of a software developer and the goal is to win the game following some incredibly simple rules:

1. Requires at least 2 people and the number of six-sided dice required is equal to the number of players plus 1.
2. At the start of the game, each player is given a die that they place in front of them on the number 1 and each player starts at zero points.
3. The number of turns in the game is equal to the number of players times 6.
4. All turns occur simultaneously for all players. In other words, the state of the dice at the beginning of the turn is used for all actions completed in that turn
5. Players can perform one of two actions during a turn and must decide their action prior to any player announcing their action and without discussions. Players can take either of the following actions:

• Add feature: Add a feature to their software by incrementing their die by 1, adding point value to their die.
• Points roll: Earn points from their software by rolling the spare die an equal number of times to the value of their die and adding the total to their points.

So, in other words during the first turn of the game, Player A might increment their die from 1 to 2. Player B, might instead roll the spare die a single time (since their die is on 1) and add the number rolled to their point total.

At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins. There can be multiple winners in the event of ties. However, you must have at least a single point at the end in order to win.

Now for the parallel worlds part. You can play this game under two variations that we will call copyright and copyleft. Under the copyright variation, players can only add features to their own die and only use their own die for points rolls. Under copyleft, players may add features to any player's die and use any player's die for points rolls.

That's it, that is the complete set of rules for the game. A full game includes playing the game under each variation once. At the end of each variation, total up the number of features on all player's dice and report the total. Separately, report the points total for all players. Which variation results in more total features? Which variation results in the most points? The number of features and points represent the innovation achieved by either innovating features or innovating based upon software features (earning points).

Honestly, please play this game and report back on number of players, number of features and number of points earned in both variations. I have never played this game and don't plan on playing it. I want independent results. Do the copyright and copyleft variations result in equal innovation or does one variation consistently result in less innovation? Is there a difference and how big of a difference in features achieved and points earned? Do the results vary depending on the number of players?