Reverse Roles Monopoly:

Reverse Roles Monopoly: 
An Immersive Gamified Experience
By Dream Team Catalyst for Mercatique Consulting
NPC SMME Red Tape Reduction Advisory Immersion & Launch Event 
6 or 7 November 2025, Lindiwe Sanitary Pads, Centurion
Empathy Through Play: Red Tape Reform Simulation
Our Purpose
We present an immersive turnkey game concept for the National Planning Commission's SMME Red Tape Reduction Advisory Immersion and Launch Event. This isn't merely another presentation—it's a transformative experiential learning opportunity that puts policymakers, funders, and stakeholders directly into the shoes of struggling entrepreneurs.
What We're Asking
We seek approval to proceed to detailed production planning and budget allocation. Our goal is ambitious yet essential: to inspire genuine empathy and create urgent momentum for red-tape reform through powerful experiential learning that participants will remember long after the event concludes.
Event Snapshot: The Game Space
Who's Playing
100 participants representing government officials, private sector leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, and media professionals
Time Investment
75 minutes total: 60-minute immersive gameplay experience followed by 15-minute facilitated debrief session
Physical Layout
4 themed stations plus central scoreboard tracking real-time metrics of entrepreneurial struggle
Core Objectives: Why This Matters
Build Empathy
Let policymakers, financiers, and media professionals experience SMME hurdles firsthand—not through statistics, but through lived simulation
Surface Insights
Generate actionable intelligence for red-tape reform by capturing real-time participant frustrations and breakthrough moments
Create Urgency
Transform abstract policy discussions into visceral understanding that demands immediate action and sustained commitment
This immersive experience creates a shareable, high-energy empathy-building moment that participants will carry back to their organisations, amplifying impact far beyond the event itself. When decision-makers feel the weight of bureaucratic barriers rather than simply reading about them, reform becomes personal.
The Experience: Reverse Roles Monopoly
Gameplay Mechanics
We've transformed the familiar Monopoly concept into a physical, immersive environment with four interactive stations. Unlike traditional board games, participants don't simply move tokens—they become the pieces, navigating real bureaucratic obstacles.
Teams rotate through stations, each representing a different red-tape barrier that SMMEs face daily. The experience is designed to be simultaneously playful and deeply frustrating, mirroring the actual entrepreneur journey.
Role Immersion
Participants assume roles such as Entrepreneur, Regulator, Funder, Media, or Academic—many stepping into perspectives dramatically different from their day-to-day positions. This role reversal is deliberate and powerful.
Teams must complete Business Missions whilst battling bureaucratic barriers. A real-time scoreboard tracks the mounting costs: Time Wasted, Capital Drained, Jobs Lost—making abstract policy consequences viscerally tangible.
Participant Journey: 60 Minutes That Change Perspectives
1
Briefing
0–5 minutes
Participants receive role assignments and business mission cards. Teams form and strategy begins. Energy builds as the game rules are explained and stakes become clear. Pre-selected teams with delegates receive a lanyard with team tag on helps teams form quickly and get straight in to the game. 
2
Gameplay
5–55 minutes
Teams rotate across four stations, encountering and resolving challenges. Frustration mounts authentically as bureaucratic barriers slow progress. Referees enforce rules that mirror real regulatory complexity.
3
Final Tally
55–60 minutes
Scoreboard results are revealed. Teams reflect on their accumulated losses. The mood shifts from playful competition to sobering recognition of systemic barriers.
4
Debrief
60–75 minutes
Facilitated conversation transforms gameplay insights into reform priorities. Participants connect their simulated struggles to real policy implications. Action commitments emerge.
Roles & Business Missions
Policymaker
Navigate the system you've created
Financier
Experience why SMMEs can't access capital
Entrepreneur
Fight through barriers you face daily
Media
Tell the story whilst living it
Academic
Research becomes experiential reality
Sample Business Missions
Each team receives a specific mission card representing real South African SMME aspirations:
Launch a fintech app targeting township consumers, requiring multiple regulatory approvals
Scale agri-processing operations from 5 to 50 employees, navigating labour and safety compliance
Secure microfinance to purchase equipment for a manufacturing startup
Launch export apparel business, managing customs, quality certifications, and trade permits
These missions aren't hypothetical—they're drawn from real experiences documented by the Department of Small Business Development and represent pathways that should be straightforward but are riddled with obstacles.
Station One: Locked Doors
The Challenge
Licensing and permit acquisition hurdles that delay business launch by months or years
What Participants Experience
Teams must navigate multiple approval stages, each requiring specific documentation. Forms are incomplete, requirements change mid-process, and approval stamps are deliberately slow to obtain—mirroring real bureaucratic friction.
Real-World Mirror
This station simulates the average 120+ days South African SMMEs spend waiting for basic business licences, as documented in the DSBD Annual Performance Plan 2024/25.
Station Two: Power Down
Service Disruption Reality
This station confronts participants with the harsh reality of unreliable municipal services, particularly electricity and water, that South African SMMEs navigate constantly.
Teams must negotiate around simulated power outages and service interruptions. Production halts. Deadlines are missed. Alternative solutions (generators, water tanks) drain capital rapidly. The scoreboard penalties mount quickly, reflecting lost productivity and emergency expenditure.
Participants physically experience how infrastructure failures beyond their control derail even the best business plans, creating visceral understanding of a challenge that statistics alone cannot convey.
Station Three: Manual Loops
Submit Application
Complete forms in triplicate, attach supporting docs
Processing Wait
Documents move through multiple desks, each adding delay
Rejection Notice
Minor error found, return to start
Resubmit Cycle
Process repeats, time and money drain
This station embodies the inefficient manual systems that plague South African public services. Teams physically move files through processing stages, experiencing firsthand how digitisation failures waste entrepreneurial energy. What should take minutes stretches into hours; what should take days becomes months. The frustration is intentional and enlightening.
Station Four: Collateral Wall
The Funding Barrier
The final station confronts teams with the impossible collateral requirements that lock SMMEs out of formal financing.
Requirements Participants Face
Three years of audited financial statements (for businesses less than two years old)
Property collateral worth 150% of loan value
BEE certification requiring consultants and months of processing
Tax compliance certificates dependent on SARS efficiency
Personal guarantees and director sureties that put families at risk
Teams scramble to "acquire" these documents, discovering—as real entrepreneurs do—that the requirements are often contradictory, expensive to obtain, and designed for established corporations rather than emerging businesses. The catch-22 becomes viscerally apparent: you need financing to grow, but need to already be grown to access financing.
Mission & Chance Cards: Controlled Chaos
Mission Cards
Each team receives specific business objectives: "Secure health and safety certification within 20 minutes" or "Complete BEE verification before Quarter 2." These drive purposeful movement through stations and create time pressure that mirrors real entrepreneurial urgency.
Chance Cards
Random events inject realistic unpredictability: "Permit Delay: Lose 2 turns whilst awaiting municipal approval" or "Grant Received: Advance 5 spaces but spend 3 turns on compliance reporting." Even positive events carry bureaucratic costs.
Regulatory Updates
Mid-game, facilitators introduce "new regulations" that change requirements retroactively—a frustrating reality South African businesses face regularly. Teams must adapt strategies on the fly, experiencing policy instability firsthand.
Digital Ecosystem: The Proprietary App
Dedicated Devices
Each team receives a branded iPad pre-loaded with our proprietary game application.
Dynamic Task Flow
The app delivers clear instructions, station-specific tasks, and immersive challenges for each team.
Station Progression
Content dynamically unlocks as teams successfully navigate through each of the four simulation stations.
Rich Data Capture
Collects participant answers, qualitative feedback, photo evidence, and video submissions.
Live Performance Tracking
All inputs feed into a central, real-time scoreboard, ranking teams instantly and visibly.
This custom-built digital platform is the backbone of the "Reverse Roles Monopoly" experience, ensuring seamless navigation, interactive challenges, and immediate feedback for all participants.
The Scoreboard: Making Pain Visible
Real-Time Metrics
A large digital scoreboard dominates the game space, tracking three critical indicators that translate bureaucratic friction into tangible business impact:
450
Hours Wasted
Time spent on compliance vs. growth
R750K
Capital Drained
Money diverted from operations
23
Jobs Lost
Positions that cannot be created
Penalties accumulate visibly throughout gameplay. Teams watch their scores decline not through poor strategy, but through systemic barriers. The scoreboard transforms abstract policy consequences into visceral entrepreneurial tragedy.
Debrief Connection
During the facilitation session, these numbers become the foundation for policy discussion. Participants connect their simulated 450 wasted hours to the real 18 million hours South African SMMEs lose annually to red tape, as estimated by business advocacy groups.
Bibliography & Evidence Base
Department of Small Business Development — Annual Report 2023/24 (31 July 2024). Documents the continuing decline in SMME formation rates and identifies regulatory burden as a primary constraint.
National Planning Commission — SMME Advisory Note on Red Tape Reduction (6 June 2025). Establishes the policy framework and urgency driving this immersion event.
IOL / Business Report — "Number of SMEs being created 'is not enough' but red tape..." (22 May 2024). Provides recent media context on entrepreneurial barriers and public discourse.
DSBD Annual Performance Plan 2024/25 — Details red tape coordination commitments and provides baseline data on licensing delays and compliance costs.
Nesta — "Ahead of the Game: Using board games to innovate!" (16 August 2019). Methodological inspiration for using gamification as an empathy and policy tool.
Dream Team Catalyst — Concept missions and gameplay draft (2025). Original game design and station mechanics developed specifically for the NPC context.
This presentation represents a collaborative effort between Dream Team Catalyst and the National Planning Commission to transform policy dialogue through experiential learning.