What you keep today will shape tomorrow.
Paper or digital, archives never sleep. They prove an invention, protect a town, defend a family, get a water station running again. In ThinkTankers Trace, you are the archivist: you choose what will be kept… and find out ten years later what your choices were worth.
- 4 missions
- 10 min per mission
- A new game every time
- No data recorded
Why this game?
Archives suffer from an outdated image: dust, basements, forgotten boxes. The reality is quite different. Today, paper and digital coexist: far from everything has been digitised, and files have weaknesses of their own. Either way, keeping the right information at the right time is a strategic decision.
How to play
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1
SortIn front of you are 12 documents or files. You only have 4 places. Examine each one: date, signature, format, content. Whatever you don't keep is lost.
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2
Ten years laterSomething nobody could have foreseen happens: a lawsuit, a risky project, a claim, a breakdown. You need three pieces of evidence to get through it.
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3
The verdictAn expert opens your boxes, document by document. Then the debrief shows you the archivist's reflexes and the profession behind them.
complete
You'll never look at a box, or a file, the same way again.
Over four missions, an invention, a public building, a family plot of land and the water supply of an entire town depended on your choices. With four places each time, and without ever knowing the future.
That is exactly what an archivist does. They don't tidy away the past: they prepare evidence for stories that haven't begun yet.
Next time you hesitate before throwing away a piece of paper or deleting a file, you might ask yourself the right question: what if, ten years from now, it were the only trace?
A little challenge: replay a mission. The documents will have changed. Your reflexes will still be there.
The 4 missions
Play them in order or pick the one that interests you.
About ThinkTankers Trace
What is ThinkTankers Trace?
A free serious game, playable online without signing up, that shows the strategic role of archives, both paper and digital, through four missions of about ten minutes each: business, territory, citizens and digital.
What do players learn?
To recognise the value of a document: a dated and signed original, a certified copy, a measurement tied to a place, a file in an open format and a validated version. And to beware of traps: an incomplete copy, an automatic print date, an unsigned draft, a shortcut, a link to a personal account.
Who is the game for?
The general public, secondary school and university students curious about the professions of archivist and records manager, teachers looking for teaching material, and organisations wishing to raise their teams' awareness.
Can it be used in class or in training?
Yes. Each mission takes about ten minutes and draws new documents every game: several players can compare their choices and results.
Is any player data recorded?
No. Everything happens in the browser: no data is collected or stored.