One class period — the facilitator story¶
Katrin teaches social studies and entrepreneurship at a school in Tartu. She has class 9.b — 24 students, 45 minutes, and a projector. She has played Cashy with her classes and taken students to Ärilahing; now she wants to try the game where a student is neither a seller nor a wage-earner, but a leader.
What matters is everything Katrin doesn't need: a facilitator, a training course, a computer lab, or school budget. She needs five minutes the evening before, and for the students to have phones — which, of course, they do.
1. The evening before — five minutes¶
Katrin opens her laptop on the sofa and creates a class session:
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ New class game │
│ ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │
│ Scenario: Digital agency (40 min, one lesson) ▼ │
│ Companies: 12 (suggested: 2 students per company) │
│ Market: shared — companies compete for the │
│ same customers │
│ │
│ Join code: TIIGER-42 │
│ [ Create game ] │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The scenario is a compressed version of the same game Nora plays in the previous story: each in-game "day" lasts a couple of minutes, events come faster, but the decisions are the same — delegate or do it yourself, approve or reject, trust or control.
Katrin drops the code into the class group chat and forgets about it until morning.
2. The lesson starts — two minutes of logistics¶
Tuesday, third period. The projector shows a big code: TIIGER-42. Students pair up, open the page on their phones, enter the code, and name their companies. One after another they pop onto the screen: Pixelpaja. Kaks Venda. Homne OÜ. Müük & Mürts…
Two minutes later Katrin presses "Start." The screen at the front switches to the class view: the company leaderboard, a ticking clock, and a news feed carrying everything that happens in the game.
3. The game runs — the teacher walks and listens¶
The first minutes are quiet — in every company someone is reading Uku's morning briefing and whispering about what to do with the first customer. Then the news feed comes alive:
NEWS FEED ────────────────────────────────────────────
· Pixelpaja signed its first client — Õieke flower shop
· Kaks Venda's CEO wrote to a customer personally (2h)
· Homne OÜ rejected Kairi's draft: "too dry"
· NEW CLIENT ON THE MARKET: sports club, budget ~€600 —
fastest approval wins!
The shared market makes the classroom a real market: when the sports club appears, Katrin hears three pairs start arguing at once — "approve it now! no, read it first, there's a deadline in there!" That moment is precisely the point of the game: speed without judgement is gambling; judgement without speed is losing.
Katrin doesn't stand at the front. She walks between the desks and listens to the students talk — not about the game, but about management: "don't do it yourself, give it to Kairi, we're out of hours", "reject it, but write why, or she won't learn."
4. The pause — one teachable moment¶
Halfway through, Katrin presses "Pause." The class view puts two companies side by side:
Kaks Venda Pixelpaja
──────────────────────────────────────────────
Founder-hours spent 14 h 5 h
Clients 2 5
System income €0 €340
"Kaks Venda — you are the hardest-working company in this class," Katrin says. "So why are you last?"
The class laughs, but the question hangs in the air. Kaks Venda's CEO answers it himself: "We did everything ourselves… Kairi just sat there." Nobody needs to explain anything further — the table already did.
5. The final minutes and the debrief¶
Time's up. The game locks decisions and the class view switches to the debrief — not a mere leaderboard, but a story assembled from the game's own log. And there isn't one winner; there are four:
- Best company — money and reputation combined: Pixelpaja
- Best delegator — most system income per founder-hour: Homne OÜ
- Best teacher — the feedback agents learned the most from: Müük & Mürts
- Boldest turnaround — the company that changed strategy and climbed: Kaks Venda
Four categories mean four different pairs leave the lesson as winners — each having won with a different management skill.
The debrief's last slide shows the class totals: "Your class made 214 decisions today. 31 times you rejected a draft and the agents changed their behaviour. 9 times a CEO did the work personally — at an average cost of 2.1 hours per decision." Katrin builds the closing discussion directly on those numbers: what is a leader's hour worth? When is "I'll do it myself" the right call?
6. After the lesson¶
At the break, two students ask whether they can keep playing at home. They can — the class game was an accelerated test drive, but anyone can start their own persistent company, like Nora in her story, and grow it for weeks. Free.
In the evening Katrin opens the teacher view: every company's decision log is intact. She can see who delegated and who didn't, what feedback students wrote to their agents, and what to pick up in tomorrow's class.
What just happened¶
In one ordinary class period, with no facilitator and no preparation:
- 24 students each ran a real AI team — instead of watching slides about leadership;
- the class saw with its own eyes that the hardest-working company finished last — and why;
- four pairs won in four different management skills;
- the discussion needed no textbook: the game's own log was the teaching material;
- and part of the class kept playing at home that evening — voluntarily.
Katrin's preparation: five minutes and one join code.