WGBX, a new outgrowth of WGBX Channel 2, the educational television station in Boston, solved two problems at once with The Most Dangerous Game. The element of audience participation changed TV watching from a completely passive to a partially active pastime. And the use of the mass media permits the public to take part in a game simulation without paying the usual high costs.

All the team members were volunteers. Members of New Zenith were Negro students, Outland was the League of Women Voters, Nordo was foreign students; the members of Hamil were ministers of various denominations, and Inland players were students.

The Transanians, as the team that was constantly on the air, were the most important. Players on the Transanian team included a lawyer, a poet, a Selectwoman, and two Harvard graduate students. The only times they were not on camera were during policy and world TV statements.

The two graduate students, aware of the preponderance of serious discussion in the game, tried several times to lighten the atmosphere.

Each of us players also had to be actors; we were told what our country's aims were, and that we should act in trying to implement them. Thus the economic minister of Transania was insistent on holding out for peace, in opposition to most of his team members. It became clear that you learn more from a simulation when you are playing a well-defined role than when you are simply reacting personally, because the team objectives are often lost in the personal reactions. By adopting a character and a country, the player virtually submerges himself in the situation and thus plays more realistically.

There were many minor technical flaws in The Most Dangerous Game, such as technicians and cameras on camera, which probably could have been ironed out if the game had continued. However, it is now off the air, because the second simulation, which was to be the Suez crisis, was not ready in time for the television staff to prepare the show.

An important result of this experiment is the interested reaction of the audience; given the chance, they did prefer active participation to passive entetrainment. And if, as producer Lee said, the purpose of televising the game is "to make more people more sensitive to the problems involved in formulating foreign policy," it seemed to be a great success.

The simulation games end in war all too often. A member of Inland said, "We all found war a more entertaining solution." Of course, as in a card game for matchsticks, the players had nothing to lose