Juvenile’s Dilemma

Juvenile’s Dilemma is a four-person game for the Jam-O-Drum based on the game theory problem of the prisoner’s dilemma. The story centers on four delinquent middle school students who backstab one another as they lie, cheat, and steal their way through the day of an important exam. Players face challenges requiring total group collaboration and situations in which they must single out a player to serve as scapegoat and be eliminated from the game. The final two players face off in a modified version of the classic prisoner’s dilemma.

My three teammates and I completed this project from start to finish in twenty-one days as part of Building Virtual Worlds, a core course of Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Master program. Juvenile’s Dilemma received the Building Virtual Worlds 2007 “First Penguin” Award, which recognizes brave and innovative concepts.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center