Using Game Design to Challange Traditional Hallmarks of Success
A few years ago, I stumbled across the work of Nicky Case, a game designer who creates web games which they dub “playable explorations”. Case’s work revolutionized the way that I viewed games and play in general. I grew up in a “no video games” house so to see someone who was creating ways to teach people about social science, race, politics, and make it all fun was wild to me. Now as a media arts student, I see games as a valuable medium and a great way to experiment with different forms of storytelling.
I was assigned to create a game the promoted a specific value. I worked with a group of my peers to develop a tabletop board game during which we learned more about the process of game design as well as how to incorporate learning into play.
We decided to examine capitalism and, more specifically, common hallmarks of success within our society. We wanted to explore these concepts because we saw an interesting opportunity to play with common conventions of gameplay and game mechanics. From the very beginning of our brainstorming process, we knew that we wanted to create a game that refuted the basic structures of traditional gameplay. We came up with the idea of a physical tower that players could climb. We liked the comparisons to corporate culture (having to climb over people to reach the top) and we liked the idea that players would initially be drawn to try to climb the tower without questioning why.
Initially, we had a lot of issues in establishing the format of our game. Working remotely, we initially felt like a web-based game would be the most practical option, however, we ended up turning to a board game format because it allowed us to explore conventions of games in a way that we all understood a lot better (since not everyone was as familiar with video games).
The next largest task was establishing some sort of secondary point system. We determined that we would use floors in a building to represent the “main” form of gameplay, but we needed to establish a secondary metric the players could use to factor into their decision-making. We created the idea of value tokens that a player could accumulate based on action cards. These values would allow players to trade for a higher status on the board. We soon modified this and used our action cards to move the gameplay forward. We looked a lot at mini-games in web and console-based gameplay as cues for how to make our game more engaging.
What we came up with are three separate types of levels within our main game. Initially, players are asked to work collaboratively. Action cards prompt players to engage in simple games with each other. The second tier introduces value cards and creates dilemmas where players are allowed to choose whether they want to prioritize the accumulation of values or climb the tower to further their professional careers. The third level introduced more cut-throat aspects of the game in which players could choose to betray one another in order to climb the tower. We structured this progression in order to first build community then add stress to those relationships as players continued to play. A big source of inspiration for this with the pressures that come with trying to climb the corporate ladder. We wanted to emulate a competitive working environment so we used the action cards to create increasingly intense competition between players. We were able to then take aspects of this corporate culture and combine them with the value cards to inject humor into the game. We use tongue and cheek prompts with absurd and outrageous value dilemmas in order to keep the game light-hearted even when players had to make difficult decisions. This process allowed us to push players further than they may go normally while keeping the game fun and engaging.
In playtesting, one of the largest issues we encountered was determining what incentivized players to “climb” the tower versus trying to accumulate values. In the first tier, there really is no option to stay put. It’s only once players reached the second and third tiers that they have to make important decisions about how they want to play the game. We were very unsure about how this aspect of gameplay would be received, however, we found that players embrace the story of the game and took every action card on a case-by-case basis, thinking about their decisions based on the situation that the action card gave them rather than choosing to either exclusively climb the tower or accumulate action cards.
To subvert typical game conventions, we decided that our game would not have a traditional win state. We wanted players to have a moment of realization at the conclusion of the game where they realized that their preconceived notions about what determines success had been motivating them rather than any specific instructions from the game itself. We determined the best way to go about this would be to give players a limited amount of guidelines based on which stage in the game they were. We gave players a brief overview of the game before they started playing, information on value cards after the conclusion of tier one, and information about betraying players after the completion of tier 2. Then, after 15 rounds of gameplay, once the players completed the game, a final card is revealed which explains that there is no “winning” the game. Instead, the card asks players to look at their position on the tower and total their value cards to figure out how they think they did. By placing the onus on the players to determine what constitutes success (and guiding players with discussion questions available through a QR code on the final card) we were able to inspire conversation about what it means to be successful.
I was in charge of designing the physical look of our game board. I looked to the traditional corporate structure to create locations and job titles that would push players to try to climb the tower. The goal (aside from making the board look aesthetically pleasing) was to play upon the same factors that motivate individuals to climb the corporate ladder: Wealth, influence, and power.
Ultimately, this experience in critical play allowed us to deconstruct both the game design process as well as preconceived notions of success.