So, with those ideas in mind, I launched and experiment in February 2023 to create and play a game, using LinkedIn as the game platform.

From a recruitment perspective this has obvious advantages, as I was able to use the game platform itself to invite participants, and I did so using a LinkedIn Poll. Many of the people who answered the poll were already 1^st degree connections, but as one of the main mechanisms for running the game was the group chat facility, I then asked those who were not currently connections to connect with me, being careful to stress that disconnection is possible, and that this was not a ’fishing’ exercise.

By the time the game began, three days after the original poll was launched, 25 people were on board and had been added to a group chat, entitled simply ‘The Game’, so as not to give the game away before it started.

The idea behind the game

There were a number of intentions behind the game. The first was to act as an experiment – to see how well this subversion of a non-game platform would work, to get feedback from participants, and to act as a springboard for potential future game / learning applications.

It was also intended to be a learning game, and I spent some time deciding on appropriate learning outcomes. While this is by no means the only option, I eventually decided that an appropriate outcome for this first experiment would be for participants to learn about the platform itself. So the game was designed to  introduce the different ways of posting on LinkedIn and ideas about how to garner engagement.

Using LinkedIn as the platform inevitably meant that there would be a social element to the play. The group chat meant that a group of players was convened, but even if the players had been playing singly in some way, the game was ’about’ using LinkedIn, so another outcome was networking, either through the chat, or by sharing posts, and commenting.

Finally, I decided to get players to reveal something of their own interests, which was achieved through the ‘topics’ of the game, see below, so the hope was that there would also be subsidiary learning around things that members of the group found interesting, but which others might not have come across before.

Mechanisms used in the game

The overarching mechanism of the game was a simple overlay of a narrative ‘alternate reality’. In the group chat a message was sent to all participants to start the game. It informed them that they were part of a Resistance movement, which was opposing the actions of a totalitarian organisation ‘The Council of Erudition Purge’, which was attempting to destroy all repositories of human knowledge, and that LinkedIn posts and articles were under threat.

Inspiration for this idea was taken from such real-life events as The Cultural Revolution in China, and  continuing policies of supressing access to information and opinion, which happen across the world, and from one of my favourite novels ‘Farenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury.

Farenheit 451 is available on Amazon

They were also told that they had the opportunity to find posts or articles, and to pitch for their preservation. Because the resources of the ‘Purge Resistance’ were limited however, not all items pitched could be ’saved’, so only those which got the most public approval (measured via ‘likes and comments’), would make it into the safety of the Resistance archives at the end of each ‘mission’.

At the start of the game the only facilities available to Resistance members were the group chat, referred to during the game as ‘Resistance HQ’; and the ability to comment on a ‘Mission Post’ (an ordinary post with a single image)  – which you could imagine as being a kind of ‘noticeboard’ where the comments contained the pitches of the Resistance members for the articles and posts each one of them wanted to ’save’.

The initial briefing (posted at ‘HQ’) also hinted that it would be possible to gain more facilities throughout the game. This is actually the fundamental mechanism of ‘progress’ in the learning aspect of the game. In each ‘mission’ a new feature of LinkedIn will be introduced, which players will be encouraged to use to ‘improve’ how they present their pitches, or to attract more engagement.

The first ‘mission’ post asked players to go off and find posts on related to ‘Happiness’ and to pitch them in the comments. After three days the ‘mission debriefing’, containing details of the ‘saved’ posts and anything else of interest that had happened in the first mission was written up in an article, which I intended to add to, after each mission to maintain a full log of missions.

Mission Two – Coolhunting

Mission 2 asked players to go Cool Hunting. They were tasked with going of and finding articles and posts they perceived as ‘Cool’.

A very important part of the second mission post was that it introduced the idea of ‘R&D’ – and that instead of going and finding articles they wanted to save, players could dedicate their time to working towards increasing the capability of the Resistance by ‘inventing’ new ways of using LinkedIn.

This increase in capability had already happened between the first and second missions, without the need for players to do anything, and the ‘new technology’ which had been discovered was images with clickable links. The mission post itself used an image with a clickable link, and the link took players to a YouTube video page explaining how to create a post with an image with a clickable link.

The decision was made to not explicitly mention ‘R & D’ until Mission Two, so that the instructions to play the game were scaffolded in a similar way to the ‘learning content’, only introducing one or two ideas at a time.

So, in the second missions, players could find and pitch ‘cool’ content or spend their time in R&D. In order to take the R&D option, players would post information about the ‘research’ topic in the HQ group chat. In the case of the second mission, R & D were tasked with developing video capability – in other words, finding and sharing info, best practice and ‘how tos’ about using video on LinkedIn. Under game rules it was necessary that three people should do this, so that the development be successful.

Extended capability now meant that players had the choice to pitch as they had done before, using comments in the mission post, or they could use the new technology to create their own posts (complete with clickable image links),and reference those in the mission post comments. It was made clear that if they took this route then ALL engagement (on their own posts and on their comments on the mission) would go towards the adjudication of their success – a good strategy to potentially double their points for the mission.

Once this mission was completed. The mission debrief for mission two (scroll further down in the article) also introduced something new – medals. And the Resistance was able to award medals not only for successfully saving articles and posts, and for contributing to successful R&D development of video capability, but also recruitment! The fact that players would want to / be able to bring others on board after the game had started, was not something I had considered in the game design.

Mission Three – Problem solving

Having developed video capability, the second mission debrief was also delivered as suitably revolutionary address, which I link here for the sake of completeness but with some embarrassment, having made a bit of a hash of it. This, of course also meant that players were now able to deploy video posts as well.

If this had been a full-blown, fully tested, actual implementation of a learning game rather than a somewhat impulsive experiment, it would have run to around 15 missions, allowing time for R & D time to ’discover’ more types of LinkedIn posts and to explore things like searches, profile features and so on. It should be noted that I’m not a LinkedIn ‘expert’, so the intention was never to explore LinkedIn social marketing ‘strategy’ or similar, but simply technical reality.

The experiment needed to end at some point, not least so I could draw some conclusions and write this article. So, I decided to make Mission Three the last mission.

The Resistance were tasked with either pitching posts related to ’Problem Solving’, or working in R&D on Hashtags and Tagging Connections – to discover how those are best used to drive engagement.

What happened

The game was played over three rounds, and lasted just under two weeks.  Those that chose to get involved, got very involved, at least over the first two missions. Of those who were not so actively involved, some were still posting messages of encouragement, or other messages pertinent to the game’s narrative, indicating that they had decided to accept the alternate reality, ’the magic circle’ of the game, but not so much as to join in with active play. Others still chose to ‘lurk’, remaining in the chat, but not messaging or taking part in the missions. Some people left the chat during the game.

Mission three was a ’failure’, in that very little activity took place. But given that Mission Two was very active, I wonder if the announcement of the imminent end of the game went some way to dissuade people from playing further. I hope that sharing this article will encourage further feedback.

Intention vs reality

From the perspective of the game designer and gamemaster (both me), some aspects of the game ran as I had expected and achieved what I wanted them to, and some did not, but that is always to be expected from a very early prototype, which this was.

I expected / wanted there to be more discussion in the ‘HQ’ regarding strategy of play, sharing of existing knowledge of ‘how LI works’ and that ‘R & D’ activity in HQ would spark these kinds of interactions.

I further expected / wanted the outcomes / learning of HQ conversations to be reflected in the way that people addressed the core loop of the game.

This was because these two things represented the core ‘learning’  aspects of the game – peer learning through curation and practice of what has been curated. If this had been designed as a set of learning activities without a game overlay, the fundamental instruction would have been ‘Find out what you can about how LinkedIn features work, share it with a group of people in chat, and then use what you have found to make posts.’

So I believe that the simple action of overlaying a narrative did serve to keep people engaged for longer with this fundamentally not especially interesting instruction.

However, there is a price to pay for overlaying narrative, and that is clarity. To a greater or lesser degree, the narrative obfuscates the simple underlying instructions, and it is certainly true that some participants reported and/or displayed confusion about what they were supposed to be doing. But then again, it is unlikely that without the narrative there would been any engagement with the activities at all – so this needs to be balanced, to achieve clarity while still maintaining the integrity of the magic circle.

Time to Play?

Many participants reported lack of time as a reason for non-participation, or participation dropping off over time. In my mind, the tasks involved were not very time consuming, and were to a certain extent just asking people to do what they were already doing – finding and commenting on posts on LI. However, that is not strictly true. I was asking them to find specific kinds of posts – which would take time. Maybe this could be mitigated, by just asking them to pitch posts they have already found (interesting) recently. This in turn, would mean that there might need to be more attention paid to the narrative for each mission to make them sufficiently different from one another to maintain interest.

It should also be recognised that ‘R & D’ is potentially more time consuming, so maybe the rewards for that should be greater. In this first prototype, Gamification did not feature heavily – beyond the awarding of medals, so that would be something to consider for version 2.

Missions lasted three days in this experiment, mainly because my feeling was that longer timescales would dilute engagement and because one of the major mechanisms was ‘engagement’ which on LI, apparently requires lots of interaction with a post in the first hour, never mind three days. Many people feedback that they would have like longer for each mission. This means that for a game of LinkedIn, in particular,  I would have to think carefully about which ‘algorithmic’ aspects should have an impact and which shouldn’t, and that it would probably only be appropriate to include ‘engagement’, in terms of the viral type algorithmic ‘engine’, if a game were designed to be played and completed over an hour or two, rather than over an extended time, like this one.

Other potential barriers

Although I haven’t received explicit feedback to this effect, there is another potential barrier which has long been on my mind, which may have contributed to the falling off of activity in the game, or people not engaging at all.

Of necessity, ‘playing’ in LinkedIn, means you are playing in a public space, and not just any public space, but one where you may have created a very specific ‘professional’ persona. So there may have been a reluctance, once the reality of the game was revealed, for some people to expose themselves by joining in. I also, personally, have to face the potentially awful possibility, that, given that activity dropped off so markedly after mission two, that it was my disastrous attempt to give a competent video debriefing and /or the fact that I was wearing a revolutionary style red beret and ‘Free Ferris’ badge in said video, that some people found cringeworthy enough to disengage altogether.

Lessons Learned

A (non-exhaustive) list of reflections I will take away with me to consider possible new games in LI and other ‘non-gaming’ platforms will include:

• Complexity of instructions – how to make something ‘gameful’ without too much obfuscation?
• Time available to players – what can I expect and how can I introduce ‘play’ into actions already done – to add no time at all. Maybe in this case that could mean sharing posts they already noticed, or even promoting their own posts?
• Limitations of the platform – e.g. HQ was a great idea, but linear chronological chains of messages are hard to navigate.
• Perceptions of fairness – I bent/waived the rules because they didn’t impact the learning, but some players dislike that.
• Gamification – Rewards for play/learning, and how they can be implemented on the platform.

Do You Want to Try It?

I remain encouraged, despite a drop-off in play. For a first prototype, this game did pretty well. So, what hints do I have for somebody wanting to do the same? Indeed, maybe a more fundamental question is ‘Why would you want to do this?’

The 70:20:10 model (and indeed my own OLCM) tells us that only a fraction of learning goes on in ‘formal’ learning settings. We are learning all the time, from everything we do. If you accept this idea, then it makes sense to apply deliberate design to ‘everyday’ activities to ensure that the learning derived from them is optimised, and indeed that it has desirable learning outcomes.

If you further accept that play and games provide effective pedagogies, as well as a way to engender engagement in activities,* then gameful design is a great approach to choose.

*(you may not accept this, of course, in which case stop reading now. Bit late in the day for this warning, I know,  but you’ve probably saved yourself 40secs or so).

The potential for ’non-gaming’ platforms to have ’gameful design’ applied to them is probably limited by your imagination, but here are a few general principles to get you started.

• Consider the platforms available to you and then think about them in terms of the ‘experiences’ they offer rather than the ‘tasks’ they help people to carry out. For example, LI offers the experiences of ‘gathering together’ in groups and group chat, the experience of ‘social approval’ through likes and comments, and ‘creativity’ through all the different ways you can post.
• What do you want your (learning) outcomes to be? How does a platform potentially allow ‘delivery’ of learning through e.g. peer sharing of knowledge, through activities that could be constructed from the ‘experiences’, content sharing and delivery
• Do your learners already know how to use the platform, or is there an additional learning curve. One compelling reason to widely used platforms and resources to design playful learning, is because your learners DO already know how to use them, and in fact use them all the time – e.g you could use your company email platform to run an ‘alternate reality’ game where scenarios instructions are delivered through emails – with minimal instruction, because everyone already knows how to use the email client.
• Narrative overlay is the easiest place to start. It relatively easy to make something gameful, by a simple reframe. This ’invitation to the magic circle’ can be all that is needed to make an ordinary activity into a compelling game.

Thanks to All Involved

Although I won’t mention you by name here, just in case you don’t want me too, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to all those who were involved in this little experiment with me. I couldn’t have done it without you. You can ‘out’ yourselves in the comments on LI when I share this article, if you wish.

The post Resisting the Purge – LinkedIn as a Game Platform first appeared on Ludogogy.

This session was designed to explore the potential of 1000 Blank White Cards as a game for ideation. There are two particular things about the game which made me think it could be used in learning settings. First, it encourages spontaneity and divergent (even silly) thinking. Second, each game will produce a ‘stockpile’ of cards to pass into future games – and this got me thinking about the potential of using this game to produce an organisation knowledgebase of sorts.

When you watch this video, you will see that these ideas are not yet fully formed, and you will further see that there are definite challenges with using Miro, and that your hapless facilitator manages to muck up the screen-sharing so that you miss all of the action anyway. Never mind – I have shared a link to the Miro board below (as well as screen shots), and you can listen along to the conversations. And if that contigency doesn’t do enough to alleviate my embarrasment, I can always console myself that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because the eventual heat-death of the universe is only a few billion years off.

If you want to run a play session of your own – a demo, playtest, prototyping or ideation session, or just playing for fun – please get in touch at info@ludogogy.co.uk

Games design is all about experimentation, and part of that is not only becoming comfortable with setbacks and failure. Please browse the Miro board as you watch/listen to this recording, and if this idea suggests new ideas to you – get in touch. Maybe we can work on them together – or just work on it on your own – I’d love to see a ‘learning’ version of 1000 BWC, wherever it comes from

The post 1000 Blank White Cards – Ideation Session first appeared on Ludogogy.

Sackson was prolific when it came to creating games, as well as being someone who found inspiration everywhere. He was also part of many games design groups. When looking at his legacy, we can also consider the output of those who fell under his influence. In the preface(s) of the 1982 edition of A Gamut of Games, he mentions dozens of people who have helped him with inspiration, playtesting and who have contributed games to his collection, and to the book itself.

A Gamut of Games is available on Amazon

One of the best ways that we, as games designers, can benefit from Sackson’s legacy is through his books. Acquire may have been his most famous commercial produced game, but the many ‘smaller’ games to be found in the pages of his many books, truly reveal how he was ‘intrigued by what makes a game tick’.

Acquire is available on Amazon

The spirit of Sackson’s curiosity, and the ingenuity and invention it spurred is continued today in games systems (link) that provide toys for creating games, such as Pyramid Arcade, and the communities of creators that surround them. But there is no need to move beyond the basic gameplaying components you already have if you want to partake in a Sackson-like game design experiment.

Pyramid Arcade is available on Amazon

The games in A Gamut of Games use playing cards, dice, coins, dominos, checkerboards and pencil and paper. Many of them are tweaks of existing games to provide a new experience or to expand the possibilities or circumstances in which a popular game can be played. For example, a version of Bridge for two, or two-handed Poker which does not require stakes.

Osmosis – a Game for ‘Protean pieces of Pasteboard’

Osmosis is a game created by Sackson, for 2 – 4 players, using a (partial) deck of cards, and is interesting, to me, for two main reasons. First the game itself is hard to tie down, in terms of strategy. What constitutes a good hand or a good play? That, Sackson claims, is more a matter of intuition, than logic.

It’s a game of trades. Each player takes turns offering a trade, from their hand, and the responder can trade ‘up’ – with a same suited card of higher value, ‘low’, by playing the 7 of the suit, or the highest card in a sequence containing the 7, or ‘off’, playing two cards of any value from other suits. The trade is made and players place the cards they have gained on the table in front of them.

In all but their first trade, responders must offer cards from the visible cards on the table, which creates an interesting asymmetry in access to information between asker and responder. It also means that cards in hand are gradually depleted. Once that happens, cards on the table are taken into hand and the process begins again.

The game ends when one player takes up four or fewer cards, or a player takes up eleven or more cards from the table, with the scoring favouring those with more cards in their possession.

The second reason this game is interesting is because of the brief commentary, by Sackson, that precedes it in the book, where he claims that he doesn’t know where his idea for the game came from, that ‘the ideas seemed to flow shapelessly around until, before I realized it, they had taken concrete shape.’

Sackson’s books are full of commentary like this, reflecting, I believe, how he ‘primed’ himself to receive inspiration as an ongoing practice.

Knight’s Chase – a Riff on the Knight’s Move

Osmosis appears in a chapter entitled ’Protean Pieces of Pasteboard’, and Sackson explored the possibilities of playing cards prolifically. Other game components are well represented too. The game ‘Knight Chase’, was contributed to A Gamut of Games by Alex Randolph, the winner of the 1982 Spiel de Jahres for Enchanted Forest, and who worked with Sackson on TwixT.

Twixt (vintage collectible) is available on Amazon

Enchanted Forest is available on Amazon

It uses a chessboard and one knight of each colour. A classic chase, this game reflects the tendency of Sackson, and his associates, of taking some aspects of a game without change, but then adding or adapting others to make a totally new game experience.

In this case, the knight’s move is retained, but also added are markers which block movement to spaces that have already been visited, and those chosen strategically, by players.

Hints to Think and Design like Sackson

Sackson designed 100s of games during his career. Not all of them became massive commercial successes, but some definitely did. Even the one which ‘only’ made it into his own books, though, glitter with innovation and inventiveness, so how can we, as designers, channel some of that great stuff?

1. Just Do it? Much like ‘Writers write’, games designers have to design. Build regular practice into your routine. That doesn’t have to mean that you are always working on a large-scale project. In fact, it may very well be more effective to adopt small exercises but more regularly – every day or every week for example. The really essential thing is to class this practice as SOMETHING IMPORTANT (not to push it aside until everything else is done), and to set aside dedicated time to do it. For ideas of the kinds of practice you could adopt, see below.
2. Play games – lots of them. The more games you play, the more different experiences, mechanics, toys and so you will be exposed to, and any one of these could be the trigger for that killer idea – the one that provides the perfect solution for your latest games-based learning client, or turns into the commercial game that makes your name. Seek out games, genres and mechanics that are new to you to gain maximum benefit from this practice.
3. ‘Reskin’ well-known games. There are good reasons that some games become classics and persist, sometimes for centuries. What can you take from say Chess, Poker or even Snakes and Ladders, that already works well? What can you then add to make the game totally different, playable in a different way or make it applicable to a different setting – games-based learning, for example. This practice could be a full-blown design exercise resulting in an actual game, or equally, it could be a five-minute thought experiment that starts with a simple question, e.g. ‘If I replaced a chess piece with one I created, what would it be called, and how would it move/work?’
4. Consider everything you see / hear /experience as fodder for games. There are lots of ways you could do this. Set a time (alarm on your phone) and when that happens, look around through a playful lens and see what occurs. Alternatively, just go about your day, and when you remember that is what you are doing, reflect on the inspirations surrounding you at that moment. Or, deliberately play a ‘game’ to find inspiration – stick pins in a book, shuffle and select image cards, play The Exquisite Corpse with some colleagues…..

5. Increase your exposure to novel experiences. Alongside playing more games try to introduce more variety generally. Take different routes when you travel, listen to a new podcast. Try a new author or newspaper, new food, a new language, new music – you get the idea.
6. Play with others. Playing more games is obviously one way to bring new people into your life, so why stop at playing. Bounce your ideas off others, do design challenges together. Create a regular playing/designing group meeting. Find time just to talk about games and play – what others have made and played. The alliances that Sackson formed throughout his life inspired everybody involved to better work. Use other people for accountability and make a habit of sending each other snippets of inspiration.
7. Play with toys. Many of the game Sackson created used playing cards and other common components. Take a pack of cards, or dice, or chessboard or whatever, and just start to play. ‘Aimless’ play (just picking things up, moving pieces, dealing cards, balancing objects etc.) can spur all sorts of ideas, but by all means, be more purposeful if you wish. Take components from two or more existing games and reflect for a few minutes on how they could work together and what a new game that uses them might look like.
8. Think about ‘what makes games tick’. I promise that this does not ‘take the fun out’ of playing. Far from it. But when playing, reflect on the mechanics of the game, the experiences they create, which work well, and which don’t. Think about how the mechanics of the game you are playing might look if they were ‘dressed up’ with a different theme. E.g. How might the hidden roles in Secret Hitler work in a game about crime detection?

It is often difficult when working in the ‘serious’ grown-up world of Workplace Learning (even when it is games-based) to find the time, or justify finding the time, to play. That is a shame because play can only improve the quality of the products and services we produce for our clients. The adoption therefore of a small, but regular practice, can help, by exercising play and design muscles, without taking too much time. Please share, in the comments, any of your own practices or tips, which you think could add to the above.

See Titles by Sid Sackson on Amazon

The post Eight Playful Practices to Model Sid Sackson first appeared on Ludogogy.

In 1992, the word ‘metaverse’ first appeared in the novel ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson, an American SF writer. It combines the words ‘meta’ meaning ‘beyond’ or ‘transcending’, and  ‘universe’. Normal, real, life is extended into virtual spaces, with multiple different implementations, making it possible to carry out activities that would be impossible in real life. Activities in this imaginary arena can be realized in the virtual world, and the immersion blurs the lines between real and virtual worlds.

One characteristic of games based in the metaverse is that players participate in co-creation. In the traditional concept of games deign, the roles of developers and gamers are separate. However, everyone can participate in creative work in the metaverse, and share the output with each other. Free movement in the virtual world and creation at any time by gamers are defining features of games in the metaverse.

Gamer and also Developer

A Metaverse game offers the space and resource to freely express the gamers’ imagination. Now, the gamer’s role is beyond simple play inside games, environments and content pre-defined by developers.

The platform, DITOLAND, which combines the metaverse with the game, consists of UCC (User Created Content). This means that everybody can freely make and upload games. This is different from the typical concept of game development where, ‘If the developers make the game, gamers just play’. People interact here as both gamers and developers.

Co-creation in the metaverse is mainly achieved through coding. Coding provides the necessary tools for creating, modifying, and combining objects that are the basic elements in the virtual world, as well as  making more complex entities such as characters or buildings.

Even gamers who initially do not have the ability to code can participate. They can utilize templates and code created by other users. They can easily participate in the process of game development using ready-made materials without the need for complexity.

Also for the beginner, there are tutorial guides provided by the development company. If they use these, people can learn coding step by step, and make their own content.

The Core of Co-creation is Community

Let’s assume the the player wants to create a simple platformer game. A simple summary of the steps needed to create the game would be:

1. Set the game concept
2. Set the style and texture of objects
3. Make the background, and arrange the buildings
4. Define the presets (jump pad, score coins in case of win, obstacles with game over on collision)
5. Arrange the characters, and set their abilities (speed, number or range of jumps, etc.)
6. Register the game

The first two steps; setting game concept and setting the style and texture of objects is easily done by beginners. The basic structure choices such as ‘What kind of buildings will be made?’ and ‘What kind of materials will be used?’ is also not that hard. The simple arrangement of stable objects is not difficult. The challenge comes when adding interaction between objects and with the player. If the character cannot be moved, or certain items cannot be utilized as being intended, the power of community to help the beginner coder becomes really important.

Gamer communities are very active in the metaverse platforms. If people encounter difficulty in creating any aspect of their game, the community is more than happy to help and share opinions. Community is more than simple Q&A or the updating of a notice board. There are various features including discussions about education or research, bug reporting about the platform, co-planning on projects, and feedback on each others work, etc.

This type of ‘Co-creation’ is transformed into learning, which is linked to the education program. Because of this, DITOLAND is included in the curriculum of Game Studies in universities, and utilized in  Game Jams to help teenagers to learn to code. Through game development with many people, people naturally learn how to code.

Practising coding is the process of learning a new language. This means that learning is not easy, and people can lose interest. However, if the game is linked to this process, and people can learn how to participate in free group discussions, almost all students are able to accept this process as a game-making play, not as an educational course. It is not ‘learn the language’, but ‘make the game’. So, the overall satisfaction level in the courses is high.

Movement and Separation of Powers

In the still-evolving metaverse, co-creation is more than simple technology, know-how, ideas, and discussions. We need to look at what may evolve in the future. The traditional concept that a small group of developers who created content has almost all rights, and gamers just provide feedback, can be expected to change dramatically.

The powers previously held by developers are gradually moving to gamers and communities who participate in the virtual world. The metaverse is still mostly used in the field of games, but it will develop and be expanded into various commercial areas. Beyond games, co-creation in the extended metaverse will change into creating virtual structures and utilizing the knowledge of industry, education, and other commercial entities.

Knowledge and information has previously been monopolized by individuals or small groups. And now, that situation has changed into a more open and cooperative structure which people can freely access. The participants in co-creation rapidly share and reflect on the process. Through this, unnecessary processes and wasted resources can be streamlined, and the cycle of development and innovation is shortened. This democratization will give power for the next generation of creators.

In the future, co-creation in the metaverse will not be just about simple cooperation and creation. It will be about a shift in the balance of power, to be distributed across all participants in the virtual world.

The post Co-creation in the Metaverse first appeared on Ludogogy.

The only materials required for the game are pens and a pile of blank white cards – and you don’t need anywhere near 1000 for a single game – around 5 or so per player are sufficient. If you have played before you’ll add 20 – 30 cards from your stockpile; cards surviving from previous games. If not, you’ll need an extra 20 – 30 blank cards.

This also makes this game an interesting one from a facilitation perspective, as it is so easy and inexpensive to set up and play.

Boxes of Blank White Cards are available from Amazon

A (Brief) Description of the Rules and Gameplay

A fuller description of the rules of 1000 Blank White Cards (along with some example cards) has been made available by Riff Conner.

Before the game proper begins, each player takes 5 or 6 blank cards, depending on the number of players, Players will then spend some time creating new cards from the blank ones in front of them.
All ‘rules’ of this game are purely guidelines and can be flouted at will, but a popular convention is that cards should have three parts; a title, a drawing, and an effect.

After the pooling and shuffling of the cards, players are dealt five cards and they will be a mixture of blank and already created cards.

On their turn a player takes a card from the deck and plays one from hand, either on themselves, on another player or to the centre of the table where they will affect all players. Cards which have an immediate, but no lasting effect, are then discarded. Cards with lasting effects or points values remain where they are until the end of the game or until some other effect removes, nullifies or destroys them.
Blank cards in your hand can be turned into playable cards at any point by simply writing/drawing on them.

The game ends when the deck, and all playable cards in hand, are exhausted.

Creating Cards to Play With

As mentioned above, there is a popular convention which results in three-part cards, consisting of title, illustration and action. The action could be an increment (or decrement) of points or any other game-type action e.g. take another turn, discard your hand etc., or any other action ‘do a happy dance’, ‘eat this card’ Adhering strictly to this convention, might, over time, lead to a certain ‘sameyness’, but you are not limited by these conventions. Cards can be far broader in scope, containing or referencing non-card objects, being modified in shape or colour, or containing real world data. Cards can contain references to other games and activities, or even parts or the entirety of other games and activities. They can even encode algorithms.

‘Winning’ at 1000 Blank White Cards

One way of winning at 1000 Blank White Cards is to have the greatest number of points when the game ends. But as it is by no means certain that any of the cards created will have a points scoring action, it may well be that this option for winning is not available in the game.

Many seasoned players of the game consider that the best ‘win’ at 1000 Blank White Cards is having one’s card creation reused from game to game – that one’s ideas and creativity are considered worthy keeping by the group. This ‘win’ therefore occurs after the playing part is over, during the Epilogue

Epilogue – Reusing the Stockpile

During the Epilogue, players collectively decide on the best cards, which will be saved and taken forward into subsequent games. This stockpile itself is likely to grow as you play more games, as more ‘good’ cards will be created. So on your first game you may create a stockpile of say, 30 cards, and as an ongoing play group, you may maintain one of around 90 cards.
On starting your next game, some or all of your stockpile will be added to some new blank cards.
Cards which do not make the cut can be destroyed or archived.

Interesting features

Initially, it looks like players could easily ‘win’, and just as easily, spoil the game, by say, creating a card that awards a billion points and playing on themselves, but that kind of aggressive play is only likely to inspire other players to create other cards which make you eat or otherwise destroy your million points. It is almost impossible to win intentionally.

Given this, most players will play the game for the reward of having their cards appreciated, either during play, or during the Epilogue. They will want to create interesting gameplay and interaction with the other players. Or they may wish to be rewarded by the admiration of their artworks or the jokes on their cards.

The Epilogue is a democratic process and works in much the same way as dot-voting in a facilitated situation, and could be used to produce similar interactions.

Because cards will be created during play, and very often as a response to other cards that have been previously played, the play of 1000 White cards is adaptive and emergent, and is also very good for demonstrating and exploring the concepts of adaptation and emergence themselves.

Rule modification is both the central mechanic and the purpose of the game, creating a chaotic gameworld of action and reaction, in which it is impossible to settle on a strategy for success.

Similar Games

Nomic – Because the rules for 1000 Blank White Cards are (almost) entirely held on the cards themselves, it is often compared to Nomic. In Nomic, the main action that a player takes is to propose a rule change. All players then vote on whether that rule should be adopted or not. This game demonstrates the concept that in system where rule changes are possible, situations my arise where it is no longer possible to interpret what is legal and what is not, or even that rules may come to be contradictory.

Fluxx – Probably the most well-known commercially produced rule-changing game, Fluxx now has many flavours from Adventure Time Fluxx to Zombie Fluxx, but all work by constantly changing the rules and also the goals that players are striving for to win the game. Not only does this constantly shift the win-state, but also the means by which they can achieve that end.

Dvorak – containing aspects of both 1000 Blank White Cards and Nomic, Dvorak uses cards created by players – which can be of two kinds, Things or Actions. When a new card is proposed, players vote on whether it should be shuffled into, or excluded from the deck.

Bartok – A ‘shedding’ card game (where one wins by getting rid of all cards in hand), Bartok is similar to the other games mentioned her, as the winner of each round gets to create a new rule, which then applies for the rest of the game. A game will thus get more complex with each round. It also allows for vetoes of new rules, if all players but the rule proposer choose to do so.

Baba Is You – An innovative puzzle game where players complete a level by getting the Baba character to an exit point. This can only be achieved by changing the rules about how Baba interacts with the world and vice versa, or indeed changing what or who Baba is, hence the name of the game.

Transferable Play Concepts

There are a number of play concepts which could be taken from 1000 Blank White Cards (and the other games mentioned here), and applied to games-based learning practice.

• Creation of materials on the fly, both removes the burden on the facilitator to create materials beforehand, but, more importantly, ensures absolute relevance to the learning cohort.
• The chaotic gameworld created by the changing of rules as the game proceeds provides an ideal environment for learning around uncertainty, risk and situations of less-than-perfect knowledge.
• The flexibility of the opportunities for materials creation means that appropriate materials can be created for any learning topic, and create experiences completely inside the game ‘magic circle’ or which permeate the barrier between that and the real world.
• The Stockpile can represent a transferable storehouse of knowledge or practices to pass from one learning session /cohort to many more in the future.
• The principle of democratic rule-making can ensure all voices are heard

Some Applications in Organisational Learning

While the somewhat anarchistic ethos of 1000 Blank White Cards can make it difficult to apply, as is, to learning in an organisational setting – except perhaps, in the context of creativity play – the elements which make it up have a lot to offer.

When a cohort of learners creates a set of cards with which they will play, they are creating a ‘system’ to explore whatever learning they intend. While the original game revels in its near-total absence of rules, it will not take too much of a starting rule set to steer the material creation towards a specific focus – the desired ‘to-be’ state of an organisation (with its ideal processes, and people, and a scoring mechanism to measure its success), or its undesirable ‘as-is’ counterpart, or an innovation engine – or any other number of systems.

Changing the rules can engender chaos, or it can have focus – reaching a goal, creating a better functioning system. And a democratic process for allowing or disallowing elements into the new better system can allow for deep reflection on whose voices are heard, and whose are not in organisational change processes

The transferability of the stockpile presents a number of opportunities in organisational learning. For example, it could enshrine valued knowledge, culture or process, or take the output from one learning session into a diametrically opposed second session – creating a problem first and then seeking solutions. It could create a record of progress through a learning process.

I hope you enjoy playing with some of the ideas discussed above. Please share anything it brings up for you or any designs you work up.

Boxes of Blank White Cards are available from Amazon

The post Rule Co-creation in Play -1000 Blank White Cards first appeared on Ludogogy.

The recent trend for Co-Creation means that companies can work through the direct participation of users in product design or projects. This is a little different from ‘crowd-sourcing’ which substitutes the company’s manpower with that of the general public. Instead of a monetary benefit to users, co-creation can steer the the characteristics of products or project development in a more beneficial direction for end-users through their participation in the process.

‘Coca-Cola’ and the band ‘Maroon 5’ created the new song, “Is There Anybody Out There?” by gathering user opinion through SNS for 24 hours. The high numbers of downloads of this song led to income for a social welfare business in Africa. This was the case of co-creation between the company and users.
This article describes my previous experience of co-creation within a small group, and relates to editorial design rather than product development.

Co-creation in editorial design between designers and writers

In my previous three years of graphic design experience, I was an editorial designer, involved in publishing newspapers and magazines for several local communities in Toronto and Calgary. I suggest that this type of work is matched with the basic co-creation.

This type of work in printing and publishment is very simple and intuitive. The intention of editors or proprietors determine rhe direction of publications, and the content of articles and columns will fit these. Advertising also has an important role to provide income, but the interests of advertisers are not always the same as those of the publication.

The co-creation of designers and readers in design editing has a long history, and this is a simpler and primitive concept than the more recent co-creation concept of ‘the consumer is the company itself’.
Usually, editorial designers create the layout by considering the focus of the publication, and complete the design by matching content to layout concept. However, the designer rarely creates article or other written content. Except in very special cases, audiences or writers usually write the articles, and the designer adds the design elements to prepare the writing for publication.

Personal Development through Co-creation

In this process, the designer interprets the article in his or her own way and adds an appropriate design. Sometimes, designers can discuss design with writers. Written contents are often created entirely separately, however, and this process is very basic co-creation.

Also, consumers who participate in this co-creation, by creating user-generated content (UGC) derive reputation and self-satisfaction through displaying their identities and interests to other consumers. Design and media companies can expand their consumer base through facilitating publication of UGC. This process can be the basis for the continuous development of publications and other media properties.

Co-creation in design editing consists of multiple contributions by various participants. It can be challenging for designers to have to think of the new designs on an ongoing basis, but that is part of the pleasure in creativity.

The ‘Novel Relay’ Project

The ‘Novel Relay’ project grew out of a conversation with a colleague who also worked in local media, We discussed how to attract participation from the local community to increase profitability, which was decreasing. After serious discussions, we undertook the ‘Novel Relay’ project with participating writers and readers during the specified period. I worked on this project as a guest designer, and we recruited participants in advance, regardless of previous experience.

The project worked like this. Initially, we sent a request to write an article with a designated keyword to a specific participant. In turn, another keyword was selected from this article, and we relayed that to another participant, and so on, for a number of weeks. So, these serial articles took the form of a longer continuous article.

The Challenge of of Writing to Keywords

Normally, prior to this project, writers would send articles with their own choice of topics to the publication, but participants in this project found difficulty in writing articles to fit with the unpredictable topic. For example, writer A who usually wrote poetry about flowers, was given an unfamiliar science and technology topic, and instructed to write in prose story form rather than poetry. Writer B who usually wrote travel stories was given an unfamiliar cultural keyword, with which to write the column-type article rather than a travel story.

The process of making one big story from various serial articles was a very different direction for the writers. Additionally, this direction was not always what we originally wanted. From the designer’s perspective, I wanted to create an editorial design for this project representing a sort of ‘puzzle’ to decompose and assemble the specific theme. However, the unexpected changes of direction in the writing each week was more like a ragged patchwork, rather than a cogent interlocking puzzle.

Capabilities of Writers

From another perspective, this project gave new experience to designers or writers which broke them out of their habitual work. The unexpected co-creation with users and designers, resulted in the making of unstructured ‘raw’ contents.

When started the project as we ignored the level of competence of different participants. There was a capability difference in story development between professional and non-professional writers, so participants often did not make the connection between each story well. This led to a disorganized project process.

Although the larger project suffered from lack of structure, and was without a unified topic or genre, participants did benefit from the new experience of co-creation. Moreover, the interest and participation in media by local community users was high through this project, and one intent of the project – to increase profitability – succeeded to a certain extent.

New Direction

For designers, the ‘Relay novel’ project offered another opportunity to try different ideas beyond stereotypical designs.

In review, the results of this project didn’t meet our original objectives. Project progress which was forecast by myself and the publication, did not match closely the way that the real participants actually worked. In particular, cooperation to deliver the keyword among users did not work well. Nevertheless, I think that this primitive and unstructured co-creation has more positive points than negative ones. So, for better co-creation, I suggest the following.

1. Designers and participants should define project objectives clearly: My colleague and I didn’t clearly define the objectives of the ‘Relay novel’ project.
2. The right users should be identified for process participation: For example, if the writers were writing in genres and topics they were comfortable with, in the ‘Relay novel’ project, we could have made much better designs.
3. We should identify Customers’ (participants’) needs around the project or product. Unfortunately, we didn’t correctly identify the work trend and characteristics of writers.

Co-creation of the Learner’s Perspective

We need to look at co-creation as a new experience beyond the habitual work. Writers participating in the project were accustomed to working with one genre and subject. From the perspectives of writers A and B, dealing with ‘science technology’ and ‘culture’ requires learning something new. The process of learning new things can be more effectively achieved in cooperation and team building situations – benefitting from social learning approaches.

How could a beginner approach the ’Relay Novel’? If organisers fixed the previously mentioned shortcomings, they couse use this approach well in an organization or education environment. In particular, creative projects could facilitate intrinsic motivation and cooperation among participants. It’s like a game.

Let’s take an RPG (Role-Playing Game) example for structuring the organization of the project. In an RPG, there are various classes of players who participate as fighter, magic user, healer, etc. Members of the party share information about their characteristics and skills, and they set the party’s objective such as retrieving a precious item through cooperation or killing monsters.

Facilitation of Co-creation through Gamification

Setting the priority to be meaningful and measuring it (leaderboard, milestones etc.) is important, if the objectives of party members (in terms of the publication, completed contents) is not to be wasted. They should more specific than simply setting objectives like ‘just participating in’ or ‘playing my part well’. By understanding the classes and skills of members and cooperating, they can defeat strong ‘monsters’. This shows just one example of how gamification can facilitate co-creation efforts.

This approach alters the relationship between educator and learner, and moves beyond motivation by reward or punishment. If co-creation works like a game, people can share their knowledge and learning methods and voluntarily cooperate. And like online RPGs, it’s likely that experienced players will mentor beginners.

In the case of this particular project, this process couldn’t continue because of short-term objectives (deadlines). However, in long-term projects including education or training, continuous co-creation can facilitate mutual supportive learning. Moreover, if we accept and learn from the above mistakes and failures, and carefully design the motivational aspects of participation and cooperation, it is likely that the prospect of participation will be very attractive.

Looking back to this project from the perspective of the business, our co-creation results are just ‘raw’ ones, but the designers, writers, and users used the experience to learn, expanding their own areas of expertise. If the ‘Relay novel’ project had continued for a longer period, knowledge about each other’s areas of practice, and the process of cooperation itself, would surely have developed. If we had had time to level up the process, the publication could by now contain more fresh content. Through this process, unstructured though it was, the writers’ capabilities were increased, and greater user participation was attracted.

The post A Co-Creation Experience in Editorial Design first appeared on Ludogogy.

For example, if you’re working by yourself you’ll have complete control over your project and are able to work on this on your own time.

However, when you co-design, you’ll have someone else to bounce ideas off, you’ll be accountable to each other, and you will be able to incorporate ideas that you may never have thought of on your own. You’ll also be able to split the workload and keep pushing each other to make the game better (and potentially develop it much faster).

When it comes to co-designing a game, one plus one can be greater than two.

But it’s not just a matter of whether or not you should co-design, but more importantly, who you would best work with, should you choose this path.

Games design with Friends

While it may seem like a great idea and a lot of fun to work on a game with a friend, there are some potential pitfalls you’ll need to be aware of. Just like that time in university or college when you decided to room with your best friend, you may find out that spending too much time together, especially working on a project together, can strain a friendship.

It may also be a little bit of trial and error. You may try working with someone and it just doesn’t click. But don’t let that dissuade you from trying to co-design with others. It’s all a matter of finding the right partner or partners to work with. And it doesn’t have to be the same person you work with on all your games. Different designers may be better suited to working with you on different styles of games.

You can also choose to work on some projects on your own while co-designing other games. It’s all about figuring out what system works best for you.

Also, while you can design a game with a team of three or more, this is fairly rare, so I will focus this article on working with one other co-designer. However, much of this would still apply to a larger team.

I’ve come up with four key elements of successfully co-designing a game that will help you in deciding who to partner with.

1. Make Sure You’re on the Same Page

You’ll want to be sure that the game you’re working on excites both you and your co-designer. This has to be something you’re both passionate about and will see through to the end.

As well, you’ll want to ensure you’re working towards a common goal. If one of you is serious about the game and the other just wants to make it for fun, there could be a conflict. In addition, perhaps your partner wants to crowdfund this through Kickstarter, whereas you have no interest in running a business and would prefer to pitch this to established publishers.

A misalignment between co-designers on the goals and vision for your project could make working with a partner a serious challenge. So, make sure you both want the same thing out of this partnership.

2. Blend Your Skills for Successful Co-design

One of the great things about working with a co-designer is being able to utilize both of your skill sets to the max. If you both have the same background and talents, there could be a lot of other gaps that are difficult to fill.

Say, like me, you’re great at coming up with game ideas and quickly getting a rough prototype (link to prototyping and playtesting event recordings) to the table to test and you’re really good with numbers, but you don’t have the same interest or skill when it comes to graphic design and making your prototype look good. In this case, it may be to your benefit to work with someone who enjoys the aspect of crafting a game and making it look visually appealing, but who can also offer a lot of insights into making the game design better.

This is something that has worked exceptionally well for me, particularly with one co-designer I work with frequently, Sylvain Plante. He loves the crafting aspect of making a game the most but is also an exceptionally talented game designer. However, he has no interest in pitching games, which I have no problem with, and I’m a numbers guy so I can also figure out economies and balance fairly quickly, so I often take the lead on this part of the design. I have to say that this partnership has improved the quality of my games as well as the table presence immensely, which really helps in getting players interested in playtesting your game (as well as getting publishers to look at your game).

There are a lot of other aspects to designing and publishing your game where you might have strengths and weaknesses. Finding a partner that is strong in areas you are weak, and vice versa can pay tremendous dividends. Ultimately though, you should both also be very interested in designing games, particularly ones you are both interested in.

3. You Need a Similar Work Ethic if you are to Co-design

Do you remember when you were in school and had to do a project? Were you ever randomly assigned to a group where you ended up taking on more than your fair share of the workload? Maybe one member contributed little or nothing, and you had to pick up the slack (no pun intended).

This is something you want to avoid repeating when it comes to designing a game (and fortunately, you’ll be able to pick your partner rather than having them assigned to you!). When you’re working with another designer, you’ll want to be clear about roles and responsibilities, along with ensuring that all parties pull their weight and work toward all agreed-upon timelines.

If the game is your idea, you’re really gung-ho about it, and you have a lot of time to put into developing the game into something special, whereas your partner only contributes a little here and there, you may end up feeling some resentment.

You’ll definitely start to re-think whether you want to co-design a game again if you end up doing 90% of the work on a project and only getting 50% of the credit. That’s not to say that you have to become a taskmaster and count the exact number of hours you each contribute. That would be way too hard to do and would take a lot of the fun out of designing a game together. You want to both feel that you’ve made significant contributions and feel good about what you’ve accomplished together. So, it’s crucial to work with someone who’s just as eager as you and is willing to put in the effort.

One suggestion would be to work on two projects together, one that was your idea, and one that was your partner’s idea. It may not always be an equal 50-50 split of work, but between the two projects, if you both feel you are contributing reasonably equally, this can be a good method to pursue.

4. Communication and Expectations

As with every relationship, communication is vital.

You want to be clear about exactly what your expectations are of each other at all stages of the project. This will help you to avoid duplicating work or branching off in completely different directions.

When you outline your roles and responsibilities, it’s easier to determine who will do what. This of course will likely change in some ways throughout the development of the game as different needs are determined, but so long as you’re communicating and discussing who’s working on what at different points, you will run into far fewer problems.

Keep each other informed of where you’re at with the different aspects of your game, any issues with timelines, and any challenges you are facing. You’re there to help each other out, so get together in person, over the phone, or using whatever communication tool works for you, and deal with any problems that may arise.

If you decide to self-publish, you’ll want to be clear about what role each of you is playing, and what other support you will need to outsource for the campaign. You can divide up times of day to reply to Kickstarter comments, decide who’s in charge of updating your campaign page, and all the other small tasks that go along with crowdfunding a game.

If you’re going to pitch your game to publishers, decide which one of you will be the voice for your game and the main contact person, which is usually easier when working with a publisher. Just make sure to keep each other in the loop about recent developments and discuss any major decisions that need to be decided upon.

It’s Your Decision

Of course, it’s your decision whether you want to create a game on your own or with a co-designer. And this may change between one project and the next. Some of your games may be straightforward for you to complete on your own, whereas others may truly benefit from working with someone else and having a second person to bounce ideas off of.

It doesn’t always have to be the same co-designer either. Try not to let one bad experience determine all your future choices when it comes to working with others on a game. Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right partner to work with.

There are so many great benefits to working with the right co-designer that it’s at least worthy of your consideration.

Have you had success working with other designers? What has made this a good or bad experience for you?

The post 4 Ways Co-design will Make or Break your Game first appeared on Ludogogy.

You can also read more about Utopoly at his website.

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently” David Graeber

The world is facing catastrophes of pandemics, ecosystem collapse and climate change. The dominant economic ideology endorses individualism and greed over society and community whilst consumerism, perpetual growth and inequality are promoted with damaging consequences for the majority of people and the planet. It should be clear that a new economy is needed together with societal and cultural change. Utopoly is a method to explore and reinvigorate the radical imagination where people can re-imagine a different society where values, forms of exchange and social relations can be reconsidered and reconfigured.

A ‘hack’ of Monopoly

Utopoly started out as a ‘hack’ of Monopoly but has evolved to become much more.

Monopoly in its original form The Landlords Game (1904), was an early form of games-based learning, its inventor Elizabeth Magie intended to show how landlords accumulate wealth and impoverish society. Magie was later airbrushed out of history by the games manufacturer preferring the version adapted by Charles Darrow who claimed it as his own invention. This version is what most people know, and Monopoly has since become a cultural artefact that provides a subtle propaganda reinforcing dominant cultural norms. It celebrates some of the worst aspects of our economy and normalises activities, such as competitive property accumulation and rentier behaviour – teaching value extraction rather than value creation. In hacking Monopoly, we challenge the narrative it propagates and reprise Magie’s pedagogic function. However, Utopoly is not primarily about game-based learning (although knowledge is created through the process) but rather game-based creativity and game-based utopian-practice. Each time Utopoly is played players collectively take part in the hacking via a Future Workshop to produce utopia.

Robert Jungk developed the Future Workshop (1962) in response to concerns that cultural conditioning through education, work and consumerism meant people had become receivers of the ideology of the elites, and their natural creativity was suppressed. There was also clear democratic deficiency in public policy making. He had a fundamental belief that all people had the potential for genius, a creative imagination that he believed would be necessary to solve some of the world’s problems, and that this should be directed towards social and humane goals.

Populating the Board

Utopoly starts with a Future Workshop to collectively develop and conceptualise utopian values, ideas and desires and populate the Utopoly board. Through the process many discussions, stories and hopeful narratives of the future emerge. In the Critique phase participants are invited to question and critique a situation, the features of an economy or society that troubles them and this process opens the possibility of change. Items and concerns are written as notes, and these drive the direction of the next phases. The Fantasy phase is about responding to these critiques with imaginative solutions. It is the utopian space where the magic happens, where the creative radical imagination can play out producing fantasies of a utopian nature, unconstrained by whether they can be realized or not. The final phase is Implementation where the utopian ideas are transcribed onto the Utopoly board (with the property spaces now termed domains). The game part of the method is then ready to begin.

A feature of Utopoly is that participants can invent their own rules for the game stage. The rules that participants develop are predicated on the discussions from the Future Workshop, such that the ideas and values produced can find expression and be interpreted into the rules of play. However, understanding that playable rules are not easily formed a set of guidelines are used as a starting point. They are framed as guidelines, being optional and changeable rather than fixed rules – much like cultural norms and laws of a society. Utopoly is an encouragement to move beyond the fixed ideology of the status-quo and to anticipate cultural change. This concept of utopian-practice is not to produce a fixed flawless blue-print but recognises that the future holds possibilities and different requirements, it is a horizon that is moved towards but never reached, however in the process life is improved.

Beginning at the End

The game proceeds much like Monopoly with features that have been introduced to encourage certain behaviours and alternative economic thinking. The game begins at the normal end-point of Monopoly where a majority of domains are already controlled and players enter the game in a state of monopoly control. This monopoly is held by an oppositional entity (often a corporate or financial entity – that can be an autonomous or played by one of the participants). Their role is to act as reactionary force preventing utopian ideas from being realised by keeping and extending control of domains. The utopian players then collaborate with the aim to release their utopian ideas (domains). The oppositional entity and the utopian players make up two sides who are differentiated in several ways and one of these is their use of different currencies.

Most modern economies use a debt-based mono-currency which is a basic flaw. This causes multiple problems such as artificial scarcity and therefore competition which skews societal values towards individualism and creates an economy that only values what can be priced in the market. It creates periods of boom and bust with the resulting economic depression preventing economies from functioning effectively. Whereas having multiple currencies available at levels of sufficiency allows economies to flourish. There is also a general misconception of how money is created (i.e. it is not reliant on people depositing money in banks). Private banks can effectively create money at will by simultaneously expanding both sides of their balance sheets with assets and liabilities. They therefore effectively have a magic-money tree (also available for national banks as ‘fiat’ money). This feature is present in the game, so the oppositional figure has limitless access to credit and each time this is a used debt is also created which the utopian players must deal with. The utopian players use different currencies, these are suggested as Time, Wellbeing, Knowledge and Creativity (although players can choose others). Domains are then controlled by the placing one of each currency type on them, setting up an ecosystem of value exchange and suggestion that different economies both exist and can be possible.

Different Economic Modes

The two sides also have distinctly different modes of economic behaviour. The oppositional entity represents a financialised and fossil-fuel based market economy based on extraction, exploitation, and growth. Landing on their domains requires rent to be paid but also creates Carbon (this is indicated by blocks placed in the middle of the board). The utopian players have an alternative economic process based on regeneration, recycling, and natural abundance. This is facilitated by the concept of the commons (or another economic sphere). When they land on their domains instead of rent being charged value is created for the commons. The utopian players have a reciprocal and regenerative relationship with the commons – they access value from it and return value to it.

There is a major flaw in traditional economic theory which considers human behaviour to be selfish, individualistic, and rational (homo-economicus). This is a false conception of human qualities, and we now know that people cooperate not just for self-interest but out of genuine concern for others’ wellbeing, even beyond members of their own family. The natural and socially-constructed environments in which our ancestors evolved produced a prosocial nature that promotes positive feelings of satisfaction, pride and elation when engaged in cooperative projects. Collaboration is a common feature of human experience and in Utopoly features are included to reactivate these qualities. Firstly, the utopian players work together against the oppositional entity. Then there is a ‘wicked’ problem of complex, interwoven social, political and economic interests posed by the current status-quo resulting in catastrophic climate change and unsustainable debt (via constant growth). A limit or tipping point is set (players decide) to the amount of carbon and debt that is allowed to build up on the board – if this is reached the players lose. This provides a sense of urgency and further incentive for cooperation to ensure the utopian economy (as a stable symbiotic regenerative ecosystem) is formed.

Creating Temporary Utopias

Whilst the end point of Utopoly is to create and play an entertaining game the real purpose of to bring people together to discuss and explore their utopian thoughts, engage them in utopian practice and, in doing so educate their utopian desires – creating temporary utopians. The participants engage with and express their desires, discuss issues, and form new hopeful narratives of the future. In so doing there is a transformative aspect relating to Ernst Bloch’s autopoietic utopia, whereby engaging in the process of utopian-practice creates utopia and utopians. The games philosopher Christopher Yorke interprets the last chapter of Bernard Suits’ work The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (2014) as a ‘utopian game design thesis’ where utopian game-play could be purposed to transform people into more fully realised utopian individuals. Suggesting such games would be played “not as a pastime, but as a means for individual (and ultimately cultural) transformation – the Suitsian formulation of ludic alchemy. The right kind of gameplay, for Suits, terraforms Earth into Utopia“ (2018, p. 11).

My thesis titled Utopoly – a utopian research method is waiting to be examined and so is not yet available for public readership (hopefully in a few months). The thesis is an account of how the method was developed and played over several iterations and now includes a condensed 2 page set of guidelines. I have just touched on some of the content of the thesis however, for further reading there are two articles which explain Utopoly in its earlier iterations:

http://publicseminar.org/2017/12/utopoly/

When this article was written, Neil was still completing his PhD thesis. This is now complete. It contains guidance on how to run a session of Utopoly, and can be read at 16 November 2021 Economics edition: Utopoly – Game and Utopian Research Method

You can also read more about Utopoly at his website.

The post Utopoly – Game and Utopian Research Method first appeared on Ludogogy.

As many of you already know, I work as an Agile Coach for a large organisation, and I am a creator of agile serious games. In fact, I deeply believe that playing a game can be often more effective than a classical lecture or presentation, particularly when we are talking about a soft skill (which an agile mindset definitely is).

Creating games is also a way to apply the agile approach in different contexts. If you are thinking if agile is just for IT, you are wrong!

I already successfully applied agile in marketing, HR, finance and, obviously, in game creation. If you are wondering what agile is; this is too long to summarise here. Just to give a clue – agile is a way of building great products in uncertain scenarios: based on values, principles and practices. This successful (and fun) way of working requires a different mindset, and this is why you (or your company) need coaching (and not training). For more details Google is your friend, on the web you can find zillion of articles, or maybe you can follow me on Linkedin because I often write article on agile topics.

In this article, I will try to describe the process of creating a game, using agile. In the next three chapters I will introduce a basic agile process (Design, Build, Improve) and I will present in each of the sections one practice directly derived from agile practices, showing also a specific real example.

Keep in mind, that today, there are hundreds of agile practices, and very probably all of them could fit in your work. However remember that applying a practice without the proper mindset (values and principles) is only a mechanic and is not really effective.

To help in this r-evolution Agile Game Factory is working on a specific game on the connection between Mindset/Principles/Practices in agile. Stay tuned!.

Update : You can see this game in action in Corrado’s live playsession of The Agile Mind

Designing a game

When you start designing a new game you have to keep in mind very clearly WHY you are building the game. To help in this process, I have developed a Game Vision Board. This is directly derived from the  Product Vision Board by Roman Pichler and is adapted to the specific context of game design.
This canvas is composed by 5 areas where creators can put main the attributes of the game and, at the end, the Vision statement that will guide them in all decisions. These attributes are:
1) TARGET: who are the players? (think of personas, how many, interactions, …)
2) NEEDS: why players want to play it? (think of what is motivating players to play it)
3) FEATURE: what makes the game stand out? (think of unique/new and imported/improved mechanics, components,… you would like to have)
4) GOAL: why this is useful for us? (think of what is motivating us to build it)
4+) How do we MEASURE success? (think of some metrics and how to measure them)
5) VISION in a sentence (think of a tweet)

FOR EXAMPLE, recently, I worked with a team of serious game designers on a possible new game about sustainability. We spent a couple of sessions to understand and share our ideas around this game and we put everything in the canvas below

Clearly we could have had an open conversation, but the canvas gave us a few rules and helped us to have a well-defined outcome to be used in the future.

Building a game

To build a game you can use Kanban or Scrum. These are the most used agile frameworks which are also PERFECT for gaming. First, you have to identify the parts of the game to build; then organise them into small pieces and prioritise them. Later you can build starting from the most relevant piece. Prioritisation is very important because this lets you create MVPs (Minimal Viable Product) of the game at different levels and test them following an iterative and incremental approach, collecting more and more information around your game.

Note that you can use this approach also for more complex activities like designing a mechanic or writing an instruction manual / rulebook. Furthermore, the fact that you have designed the game starting with a vision, helps you to keep the right direction. Finally agile frameworks are great if you are working alone, but they are much better if you are a team.

FOR EXAMPLE, I am currently working together with a team of six people distributed across Europe to build a new narrative RPG. The image below is a section of the scrum board.

The board is a visualisation of the process to build stuff, and each stage has “cards” that represent activities, mostly directly related to the players’ experience.

Improving a game

To understand if a game is working or maybe how you could improve it, you need to collect feedback.
Feedback is one of the core attributes of the agile mindset and, for a game, comes mainly in two modes: from play-testers and from actual players.

To collect feedback for a game, I have created a dedicated model called TARGET from the initial letters of the six dimensions:

• Theme: Is the theme enjoyable and close to reality? Is information on which the game is based  realistic? Is the goal of the game consistent with the theme?
• Aesthetics: How are the materials of the game? How is the iconography of the artefacts? What about readability of the information (cards, rulebook,…)?
• Replay-ability: How can knowledge of the game change the game experience? How many variants can you play? How many player combinations can be used?
• Game length: Is the game length consistent with theme? Are there some moments where some players are only watching? Is the flow of the mechanic fluent or start & stop?
• Ease of play: Are rules clear and straightforward? Are there some weird exceptions to normal flow? Is  there support to explain the game?
• Tactics & strategy: What is the role of luck? Can players predict, monitor and control different phases of the games? Are players able to adopt different working behaviours?

Note. The TARGET model has been presented in this article.

You can measure each of these with a score 1 to 5 (or stars) and with open text to ask the players how you might improve the actual score.

As you can imagine, this can be easily automated using an online form.

FOR EXAMPLE, at the following link you can find the Google form I have created for Agile Game Factory’s customers.

Here a link to an article showing how impactful feedback from real players can be.

Final thoughts

Sometimes, you may want to check if a hypothesis can work in a multi-layer context.

I can show an example strongly related to this connection between agile and games. At the moment, I am working in agile on a agile serious game on the core concepts of the agile mindset. This is a three-time spiralling logic and it is probably a tough use case to check an idea. however apparently it is working. So the final thought is that agile works.

The post Applying Agile Practices to Create an Agile Serious Game first appeared on Ludogogy.

0: Here we go

Day Number Zero

It all started one day with one of our corporate clients asking us, “Can you do something different next month?” There was vagueness in the request and desperation in the tone.

They had done enough PowerPoint-driven sessions. L&D was frustrated, business managers were bored and participants were mutinous. They were all at the end of their tether. All they wanted was something different. Anything different. We had an idea.

Game-based Learning is what we felt we should try. We thought we could design a quick game to facilitate a session on Change Management. This is the story of how it came to life – from Idea to Prototype and finally to Finished Product.

1, 2, 3, 4: The Storm before the Calm

One office. Two people. Three hours a day. Four days.

All we did was brainstorm ideas and eat pizzas – lots of both. Beyond the discussions at the office, we were on calls throughout these four days.

Some themes that stand out in my memory involved space travel, sailing across a pirate-infested sea, building a settlement on an island, war prep against a tyrant, building a startup, running a restaurant, and a race to the North Pole.

Somewhere there, we had thought of a game about Running an Organic Farm too. In all fairness, it felt like a very (how do you say) “uninspiring” game. All the other theme ideas seemed much more epic in their scope as well as meaning. I still have no idea why, then, we were drawn to the Farming theme.

In hindsight, I am glad we were. The idea provided so many possibilities and so many real-life inspirations. I can’t think of any of the other themes which could have given us so many facets to work with.

5, 6, 7, 8: Let’s dance

To the tunes of every constraint

The next four days went in interviewing a wide variety of people and making tons of notes. We spoke to L&D and IT departments. We spoke to potential participants and their managers. We spoke to game designers and graphic artists. We spoke to coders and database designers.

Each conversation took us farther from any form of consensus. There were new constraints, contradictions and conflicts unearthed at each step. We had to keep in mind, among other things, the requirements put forth by L&D, participant interest (or sometimes lack thereof), shortcomings of the platforms approved by IT, and worst of all, Internet bandwidth issues due to participants spread all across the world during the pandemic.

This is what the requirement document looked like. (It was enough to make grownups cry):

1. The game has to be played collaboratively – but must have some competitive elements
2. The game has to be played strategically – but must have some elements of chance
3. The game must include all participants who are present – but not mandate their presence
4. There must be clearly assigned roles – but the game shouldn’t stop if someone drops out

9 to 11: Run away? Or run with it?

In India, 9-2-11 is a colloquialism that literally means to run away. Don’t ask why!

For a while, we seriously considered declining the project. After investing so much time and energy in it, the roadblocks seemed too many to deliver anything worthwhile. We agree that “Creativity stems from Constraints”, but surely there has to be a limit after which they just become a hindrance and not worthwhile anymore.

Good sense prevailed though. A little because it was a long term relationship with this client, and a little because we had come to love the hundreds of hand-sketches and notes enough to want to see the game in action. But, mostly because we got on board a wonderful game designer. Shoutout to Psy Sai.

With her creative input and long hours of discussion, we found an answer to pretty much every question that was troubling us.

12, 13, 14, 15: The Grind

The days are a blur, but the game becomes clearer

After much discussion, making, testing, breaking, remaking, here’s how our erstwhile hopeless requirement document had become. Some aspect of the game addressed every constraint and turned it into a strength.

1. A team of 4-5 people will manage a farm each. There will be multiple teams simultaneously managing their own farms. They’ll play collaboratively within their farm, while competing with other teams. Collaborative & Competitive: Check
2. The game has decisions to make about cost of sowing, duration of harvest, revenue from the yield, matching vegetables to soil types – all strategic decisions. Investment decisions are to be made to improve profits, protect against disasters, get intel about weather and general consultation/advice – still very much strategic. Market demands fluctuate, and weather and other disasters wreak havoc – all of which depend on chance/randomness. Some you can plan to mitigate, others are out of your control. Strategy & Chance: Check
3. Due to obvious internet bandwidth issues, we decided to not make the game turn-based. Instead the game time keeps running in the background. Every 10 seconds represent one game day, and if even one player in the team is online, the clock keeps ticking (and the calendar keeps flipping). Everyone can play, but no one is missed if they are missing. The game goes on. Everyone Involved & Everyone Not Mandatory: Check
4. Everyone can discuss and decide. Everyone can sow and harvest. Everyone can invest and liaise. Clear roles can be picked from a list and adhered to as an agreement between the teammates. But the game puts no restrictions on who can do what. Roles are suggested, even encouraged, but never imposed. That way, if someone with a specific role drops out, the game doesn’t come to a standstill awaiting that person to join back. Role & No role: Check

 A game was born. Those four days of work had created a game so well-rounded that even after nine months of continuous tinkering, it has retained much of its original essence.

16: Bittersweet emotional day

You win some, you lose some

One of our big advantages is that we have a solid tech background as I have run a software development company for a decade. Our prototypes aren’t built on Miro or Google Docs or other collaborative tools. Instead, we code them as standalone software. The benefit here is that when the game is done, it’s done. Nowhere else to go. No one else to talk to. Nothing else to do.

The prototype is ready to use – pretty much right away. In the past, this approach used to take us a little longer than using publicly available platforms, but now we have enough pieces of the puzzle ready that we can assemble our software in days and weeks, rather than months.

Anyway, we present the product to the client. They absolutely love it: the attention to detail, the turnaround time, the debrief possibilities. They love everything about the game. We have a deal.

This felt too good to be true. And, it was.

Last week, their IT department decided to ban Zoom. Unfortunately, MS Teams didn’t have breakout rooms (at that time). How the hell do you play this game without putting people into breakout rooms? We felt… well I can’t put in words what we felt – not in print at least.

17, 18, 19, 20: The Grind (Again)

Communication is the Lock!

The most amazing game we had created to date could potentially not get used by the client who commissioned (and loved) it because their IT department made some decision. In hindsight, 20/20 as it is, I can’t thank the IT department enough for their contribution in the form of this new constraint. While it pushed us to our limits, it made the product that much better.

Our two-week timeline was now shot to smithereens. We were back to the drawing table. We tried and tested dozens of options, while the most obvious solution to the “No Breakout Rooms Allowed” problem patiently awaited discovery right under our noses.

Two days later, after discarding one hare-brained idea after the other, we finally saw it. We had to create our own chat system – deeply integrated into the game. The actual work itself was pretty simple – once the idea was approved. We added text and voice chat into the game. People could now communicate with their own team as well as with the facilitator using it.

We tested it over the next few days, and found it worked like a charm. Due to a few other IT constraints, we have now put audio chat on hold, but the text chat has proven adequate to scale the last, seemingly insurmountable mountain.

21, …, Today: Here we are

The Home Stretch and WIP forever

We have a game that is fun for the players to play, even more fun for the facilitators to facilitate and different (and more impactful) for the L&D Department. We have a win-win-win product which is creating quite a buzz wherever it goes, and we can’t be prouder of it.

This is how the Player View looks with some portions trimmed for brevity.

There is also a robust back-end Facilitator View to manage the game. It can be used to change market demands, bring disasters on demand, see everyone’s chat, move people around in teams, allow/block investments, pause/speed up/slow down the game and many more things.

More changes are on the way, the next one is code-named The Four Seasons and deals with automations relevant to Seasons. So Farm So Good (SFSG)  is an agile game – not just in the way it is played or facilitated – but also in the continuous improvements we are making to it.

Creativity does stem from Constraints. The more the better. Also, #WIPForever

A live play session of So Farm So Good featured in our Make and Break sessions. Watch it there.

The post So Farm So Good – from zero to ‘done’ in 21 days first appeared on Ludogogy.