Port of Mars

Some of the hardest problems for humans space exploration aren’t technological. They’re social. 

How can we best sustain healthy human communities in space?
Port of Mars is a game designed to find solutions.It is a social science experiment to identify effective strategies for navigating dilemmas of shared resources, common good, and collective action under conditions of high uncertainty and high risk. 
Like space, for instance.
Players are citizens of Mars charged with working together to provide for the sustained welfare of the community. 
All player actions are tracked and analyzed. Researchers examine what behaviors worked, and what failed. Each instance of gameplay is a simulation, a modeling exercise for future of humans in space.

Port of Mars began as a project of the Interplanetary Initiative.

Project lead
Lance Gharavi 

Project team
Christina Carrasquilla
Lorenzo Faivre
Tanya Harrison
Marco Janssen
Allen Lee
Liz Leo
Titus Lunter
Nick Moran
Brian Nelson
Christine Nguyen
Calvin Pritchard
Michael Yichao
Patrick Young

Port of Mars is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.