So we are going to be designing a board game. Or maybe we are still at the stage of that being a question.

i honestly can’t remember where the idea came from, but suddenly it was there and this morning i met with my friend Ashley Visagie [who incidentally was over at my house with his wife Helene the night before eating homemade pizza and playing board games] to discuss the possibilities.

Monopoly is an easy one. Get all the money and bankrupt all the other players. Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, Puerto Rico and others a little more subtle but in essence have some strong elements of Colonialism – landing, grabbing all the resources and building your own stuff and winning when you have the most. Scrabble is probably a little more innocent – you’re just making words right? But in the end it’s once again about doing better than the other person.

So this all started with the realisation that a lot of the games we play have really horrible underlying messages or motivations or story-telling concepts. The question being ‘Can we design a game with positive motivations or underlying story that is still a good game?’

Most of the time you don’t think about it, cos “it’s just a game”, right? But just like who gets to play who in the movies and only having access to white dolls growing up and men getting to be engineers,, doctors and architects while women have to settle for teachers and nurses [fortunately that one has long changed] there are often subtle messages being played out beyond the “it’s just a movie” or “that’s the way it’s always been” nature of things.

Don’t get me started on Nursery Rhymes [you ever had that conversation when you discovered that pretty much every nursery rhyme you were taught as a kid was about a destructive disease, awful human practice or some graphic form of death?] but that is where this all comes from. Taking a moment to sit back and look at some of the games we play and wonder if we can do better.

How to design a game

Ashley and i had a really good meeting today and the next step is to gather more people around the table and do a massive brainstorm and then make a decision about whether this thing is viable or not. But one thing is certain:

If we do this it has to be a good game!!!

We are not looking to create something that looks and feels educational and is a half-hearted lame cheesy attempt at trying to sneak a message into an activity for young people. First and foremost people have to want to play this thing cos it is good. We want the learning to be as covert and subtle as the messages that are fed to you through Monopoly etc But the hope is that the nature of the game will influence people’s thinking.

But first and foremost it needs to be a good game. People must want to play it. 

Our first thought is a card game might be better than a board game – but a somewhat heavier card game like Star Realms or Dominionesque – because it will be cheaper to produce and easier to distribute.

And the thinking was Kickstarter and it does seem like – if we get it right – this will be an easy thing to find money for because of the game and education connection. Ashley heads up the BottomUp non-profit and is doing a lot of work with education and games [from chess to Splendor to Ticket to Ride].

Our next move is to gather some people who are game and education savvy and get them to throw thoughts and this thing and maybe then make a decision about whether or not we should pursue it.

But it does feel good to be able to take some things we are passionate about – games and South Africa and education – and see if there is a way of combining them in a way that may possibly lead to positively influencing a whole lot of people if this thing happens.

Watch this space.