Article 4: Balance of Influence

In any game, there has to be a goal. What makes ours interesting is that the goal isn't to win a war — it's to prevent one. Not by modeling global diplomacy, but by turning the lens inward toward the social dynamics inside a single society. 

In this article, I explain why the balance of influence became the goal of our game. We break it down into three parts: what this concept means, how we arrived at it, and what conditions help sustain it.

What Balance of Influence Means

Balance of influence doesn’t mean equality. It means that no major group in society is so dominant that it silences others, and none are so marginalized that they lose all incentive to cooperate.

It’s a state where each group has just enough voice to stay engaged. Enough presence to be heard. Enough influence to keep negotiating. When that balance holds, there is still room for maneuver — the space where diplomacy, compromise, and adjustment are possible.

In gameplay terms, that became our cooperative win condition: peace is possible only if all groups reach at least 35 gems. If even one group falls short, the system tips into war.

Each group also has its own private goal — a solo win condition. This creates a constant dilemma: do I push for my group’s advantage, or invest in a balance that keeps everyone at the table? That tension is the core of the experience. It mirrors the real-world challenge of navigating between self-interest and collective stability, which both matter.

Maintaining balance is not about perfection — it’s about preserving maneuvering space. Before WWI, each unresolved crisis narrowed that space until no peaceful options remained. In our game, the challenge is to keep that space open: to make sure influence is distributed just enough to allow adaptation in moments of pressure.

Social Maturity → Balance of Influence → Maneuvering Space

This is the sequence we’re exploring. Not as a fixed law, but as a working theory.

How We Arrived at the Concept

What helps a society stay stable enough to avoid escalation?

We looked at research across political theory and conflict studies — from Galtung’s structural violence to Honneth’s theory of recognition. A common thread emerged: peace often breaks down because groups feel excluded, powerless, or ignored.

• If groups feel ignored, resentment grows.

• If decisions always favor the powerful, legitimacy erodes.

• If there's no space to be heard, people stop trying and start forcing.

This is where the idea of the balance of influence started to take shape — as a way to reduce this kind of internal fracture.

What Makes That Balance Possible

So what actually helps sustain that balance?

This is where we began developing the idea of “social maturity” — not as a fixed psychological trait, but as a behavioral capacity that can emerge at the group level. The term isn’t drawn from existing political theory; it's our own framing, developed while trying to understand what helps groups stay engaged without escalating into conflict.

To shape this concept, we borrowed from Robert Kegan’s stage theory of adult development, which maps how individuals evolve socially, gradually moving from self-centeredness toward being able to understand and integrate other perspectives. We wondered: could something similar apply to collective behavior?

We adapted this thinking to group dynamics. Just like individuals, groups can evolve — from reactive, self-defensive postures toward more mature forms of interaction, where difference is not seen as a threat but as a potential resource.

In our game, we don’t teach this idea directly. But we simulate what happens when social maturity is absent — when short-term advantage overrides long-term stability, and when mutual trust gives way to competitive fear. The result is often collapse, not because of any one decision, but because the system runs out of space to adapt.

Why We Made It the Goal

We chose the balance of influence as the goal not because it’s a universal solution, but because it’s a hypothesis worth exploring, especially with students.

It connects individual behavior to systemic outcomes. It makes abstract ideas like recognition, fairness, and legitimacy feel real. And it reveals how hard it is to maintain a system when groups are faced with moral tradeoffs, conflicting expectations, and survival fears.

This isn’t a model of how peace works. It’s a chance to test one idea: that peace becomes possible when no one dominates, and no one is forgotten, and that this fragile space depends on how we behave under pressure.