Public Policy Simulations & Games

Simulations bring experiential learning to a new level. Accelerate your teaching with our public policy simulations.

  • Hone skills like leadership, negotiation, and crisis management
  • Test participants under realistic conditions
  • Bridge theory and practice in a sandbox environment

Sign up today for a DMS Sims account. Free to instructors at NASPAA member schools!

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The Pandemic Game

Participants take on multiple time-sensitive social dilemmas in the Pandemic Game. Teams of participants weigh the economic and public health impacts of their policies, devise communication strategies, and handle public resistance. Backed by data from the Spanish Flu, the 2008 SARS outbreak, and the COVID-19 pandemic, this simulation tests participants in crisis management, communication, and critical analysis.

Skills focus:

  • Crisis management
  • Multi-party negotiation
  • Social dilemmas
  • Communication

Metropolitan: A Sustainable Transit Simulation

Metropolitan tasks participants with lowering their city’s CO2 output. The simulation includes small job and housing models, and offers players the opportunity to work with overlapping goals. Focused on transitioning to cleaner forms of transit, this simulation tackles issues like job access, housing access, land use, and public health.

Skills focus:

  • Multi-party negotiation
  • Data analysis
  • Distributive and integrative issues
  • Consensus-building

Host Nations

Challenge participants to weigh human rights, GDP growth, and political resistance in this simulation. Faced with a migrant influx, several teams of countries try to manage the new arrivals.

To succeed, teams must negotiate, determine the distribution of limited resources, and weigh the short-terms costs of their policies against the long-term benefits.

Built using data from the 2015-2016 EU refugee crisis, Host Nations offers a realistic setting for participants to practice key skills.

Skills focus:

  • Multi-party and bilateral negotiation
  • Leadership
  • Data analysis
  • Consensus-building
  • Trade-offs (long-term goals vs. short-term costs)