The Global Change Game is a large-scale educational simulation devised in Winnipeg in December 1991 by a group of students from the University of Manitoba, including Rob Altemeyer.
During the Game, players are challenged to develop their economies to provide food, health care and employment for everyone, and to solve environmental problems facing their regions.
Income and pollution arising from industries are distributed periodically, and population growth will occur in some regions, placing additional pressure on economies and resources.
Leaders can also choose to declare war; victory is determined by the number of military tokens deployed, but if nuclear weapons are used, serious global consequences result.
When an ozone layer depletion crisis arose, the world's Elites contributed sufficient money to resolve the problem through technology.
The game opened with the Elite from the Middle East doubling oil prices, and the Soviet Union investing in armies to invade North America.
The Soviet Union invaded China instead of the United States, and nuclear war remained a threat for the remainder of the game.
[5] It has also been argued that since the Global Change Game and its outcome is dependent upon researcher assumptions about how the world works (with death toll being calculated by their own formula to account for poverty, disease and war), it may not necessarily reflect reality and authoritarians would thus struggle to "win" the simulation as they would not necessarily share the researchers' assumptions.