FailState: International Relations Board Game
- Sierramatice Karras
- Nov 30, 2018
- 2 min read
Welcome to FailState. In this world, four countries struggle to maintain stability in the face of disaster. You will lead one of these countries to greatness — or doom. Solve disasters and complete events to protect and strengthen your government, and compete or cooperate with other countries as you maneuver to come out on top.
Our goal in designing this game was to give middle school students a knowledge base on the interworkings of international relations in a fantasy setting to allow them to use what they learn to form their own opinions on current events. We researched the needs and wants of our target users, ideated both with them and as a team, and then iterated through 3 prototypes of the game.
The basis of the project was a pitch from the board game club at Seattle Academy.
“Words like democracy, fascism, dictatorship, and communism are thrown around a lot, but we only learn about it through CNN / FOX and history books, we don’t actually get to see them in play and figure out the pros and cons on our own”
They wanted a game that would be a fun way to help them learn for themselves.
Phase 1: Research
Our first step was to identify the stakeholders in this project: Middle School Students, Parents, and Teachers.
Next, we determined the questions we wanted to answer with our research:
What makes a board game fun and engaging for students?
What are effective mechanics for board games?
How can we help students learn as effectively as possible?
What information is it important for kids to know about government?
Do kids have an interest in politics?
Do kids already discuss and participate in politics?
To answer these we did competitive analysis of existing board games aimed at our target population, surveyed parents of middle schoolers on their political involvement (because they are easier to reach online than the middle schoolers themselves), interviewed political experts and reviewed the student’s pitch video.
Phase 2: Ideation
Based on the findings of our research we began brainstorming our game. We did part of our brainstorming in conjunction with the group of middle school students that had given us the initial pitch. During this process, we refined our ideas of the format the game would take and the mechanics it would utilize.
Phase 3: Prototyping and Evaluation
This was the longest phase of our process. We went through at least 3 iterations of the 8 or 9 different components of the game. Between each iteration, we got feedback through playtests and other reviews leading to the updates we made between versions.
“This is amazing”- Middle School Student
Next Steps
If we were to continue work on this project we would do more through playtesting and balancing of the game and continue to polish our prototype
Check out the rest of the team!
Zoe Escalona: linkedin.com/in/zescalona/
Nikita Morozov: nikmo.pro
Jonathan Cole: jonathancoledesign.com
Originally published at https://sierramatice.wixsite.com.
Comentários