And here we are, Project 2 has just started, this time, I'm the Science Communication Officer.
Our second challenge within the course” Explorative design”, we have to create a design game to fulfill the following constraints:
The game must (as regards the rules and procedures) be finished. (the materials must be prototypical, can submit also an existing board game, redefine, modify, …)
The game can not be an obvious modification of an existing board game.
The game must have a name
The game must have a clearly defined goal
The game should be fun !!
The core of the game should be understood between a 10-15min long test section; the game itself can then take much longer.
Play a clearly random defined role, but it must also be recognizable, that increases the winning chance clearly through good play.
The “procedural rhetoric” as well as, the related gameplay should be clearly recognizable in the documentation.
Besides, our focus is the story of our asymmetric board game which had to be about the “Panama Papers”. The design game shall serve to find out more news about the Panama topic.
05.04.2016: Group establishment
3 group members: Dominik, Philipp, Banafsheh (me;))
Illustration of the "I D E A”
At the beginning of the design process, all of us tried to come up with an idea, at the first meeting, Dominik and I have talked about the whole concept of the Panama news and discussed how we can use different angles of the issues in our game design. At this level, we had to keep thinking of the topic, subjects, situations, and constraints. That means we first thought about the possible story and roles. The idea was a field similar to chess or just one directional field where the players could move forward and backward on it . We considered every possible angle related to the crime world like Criminal, detective, crime, public, jail, detention, fine payment and etc.
Well, now is the level where we are all seemingly connected to the topic and somehow know what is the basis of our design, we came up with the idea of engaging Capitalist as players and Agent as the law presenter. The first word was “ chase and run”, as capitalists need to run from the law agent who chases them. Then we shared more familiar interesting themes to the idea and came up with the game board where the capitalists eager to hide their money to run from the low and taxes. By drawing round board game consisted of several round spots and a center of gravity that was supposed to be a Panama, we obviously found our board game, Yeeeeey. :)
I have to confess that one childhood board game also added some inspiration for our design, which is called “Fox & Chicken”, and Philipp, one of our group member explained it to us. :)
So ,as the players were set and their role were defined, 2capitalists, and one agent. the capitalists roles is to carry their money to the Panama tower, and the agent must intercept them and not let them reach the Panama tower, where they can hide money. The next step was to check the game mechanics of the idea,to find out flaws and improvements, we decided to play the concept we had so far.
It was a great boost. We found that the layouts fit perfectly to the theory, the only thing was that the game seemed a little straight forward and not so exciting, The players just roll the dice and go forward, we needed more buzz. That’s where we added some action cards. By adding the cards the theory changed, also the role of the players. Each card had an action. Players or capitalists which we call now the greedy, must pick a card each round and then roll a dice.And now the idea of collecting the money into the Panama tower changed, because when a specific card defined as “Panama news leak” was happened, the greedy must take out money back from Panama tower to their bank account. The game flow was somehow on a good level, we were all exhausted so we decided to continue the next session.
The goal of our design game is to hide money in two contrasting situations:
First: to escape tax before Panama happens
Second: after Panama happens, the goal is to bring out the money from the hidden place to escape the investigations and law
After the determination of the structure of our game board, we brainstormed the design of it. The decision contains the 52 number of suitable fields. According to the taste of all team members, the fields are linked together as a circle. There is also a bank account field in each quarter of the board, where the greedy gets to collects money. To symbolize the starting point for each player, we add a number on the field. Also, the movement directions are accordingly drawn in the field. In the inner circle field, each quarter is marked, it shows the Panama territory, where players save money.
Here are some sketches for the board game. Both sketches are drawn by Dominik, one of our group member, you can also check out his blogging about the project here: https://snozzlebertcoggleswort.wordpress.com/
Also Philipp’s blog, our third member of the team, who is drawing the final board : http://androgynouspenguinnightmare.tumblr.com/
By the previous meeting, we already came up with some conclusions:
Players play against each other
In some part of the board game players can move just in on direction which is shown on the field
The Agent can collect the money and take the money to the law firm by getting out of the Panama territory
Panama territory is in the center of the game and it goes till to the smaller round circle
Greedy money will be stashed into the Panama center
If players meet on the same field the money will be collected by the second player who just landed on the field
Greedy players cannot beat the Agent
In the second meeting, we started out reviewing all the facts and concept of the game for a specific goal, also, we played some round and changed some of the facts:
The agent can collect the money right away, the agent doesn’t need to reach to the second round field to take the money to the law firm , everywhere in the field if the agent catches any greedy player, the money will be collected and it will be returned to the law firm.
Each greedy has amount of 1million stock at the beginning of the game
some action cards apply to all players and some just the current player
At this phase, a table consisting of the money situation was designed to show the process of money cycle and game balance during each action in the game. Then we played different rounds to check out the balancing of the game. Several things came to our mind. One idea was that if a player hits the agent in the field they can jump over it but the idea was refused after some rounds as we found it hard for the agent to collect money. Another idea was to move clockwise in the field beside the mentioned direction. One idea was that if a player lands on the starting point of the other players the money goes to them. Another idea was that player without money can land on the same field. Several ideas were tested, some were chosen to be added to the rules and some were refused. The most important result of this stage was that the figures were deleted and the money itself will be set as the player, meaning that each player moves the money around the field instead of figures.
The game now is really well designed and all of the constraints are considered. The board size is perfect for facing all the rules and game strategies. It is fun and challenging, you need to keep running from the law and hide your stocks, in between you might be caught by the law agent, be careful! ;)
Here you can find the “Panama” game info sheet :
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m4M3oZ9x_AlVQabP4xQ-auJjdntDn9KhJNnIkIwURy8/edit?usp=sharing
