High-stakes game of oil use

PNAS: ...philosophical battle on the mythical island of Catan... teams of four to six players leaned across game boards divided into a series of landscapes, or hexes, each rich with a natural resource that could be traded to populate the island with settlements, cities, and metropolises. In the Oil Springs iteration of the Settlers of Catan, a game first introduced by Klaus Teuber in 1995, one thing is clear, says designer Ty Hansen: “It’s all about oil.” As the island’s single most valuable natural resource, oil can be sequestered to protect the environment or traded so extensively for resources that its overuse triggers a series of natural disasters that culminate in the inundation of the island—and loss of the game...