Game-Changers

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= "a mixed cooperative and competitive area capture board game that uses roleplay and storytelling, barrier and intervention cards, wildcards, and co-optation and Trojan horse mechanics. By design, it is meant to engage players with transitions theory and transformative agency."

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Description

Rok Kranjc:

"Game-Changers is a passion project I've been tinkering with for about half a year now, and is a manifestation of my keen interest in the transformative possibilities of combining »alternatives to capitalism«, theories of change and futures outlooks and techniques, specifically by applying them in gaming and game co-design. Through six co-design and playtesting sessions in Ljubljana-Slovenia, Zagreb-Croatia and Malmö-Sweden, Game-Changers has taken the shape of a mixed cooperative and competitive area capture board game that uses roleplay and storytelling, barrier and intervention cards, wildcards, and co-optation and Trojan horse mechanics. By design, it is meant to engage players with transitions theory, transformative agency, and different discourses, imaginaries and interests underlying, producing and laying claim to an array of emerging »new economy« and »governance« concepts and initiatives."


Characteristics

Some features:

"The game pits two teams against each other: team Capitalism/ Green Growth and team Commoners/ De-growth. Players engage critically with alternatives-oriented narratives, concepts and initiatives. Per playthrough, the board accomodates 8 narratives and 2 concepts or initiatives per narrative. These are in principle plug-and-play, meaning that players themselves can choose, customize or invent content. The cards are used as prompts – claiming and securing an initiative space for a team requires from players to weave together barrier and intervention cards into context-specific transformation storylines. Players assess the plausibility/inventiveness of the storylines, which is mapped onto a dice roll. Capitalism will have chances to co-opt narratives, concepts and initiatives introduced by Commoners. On the Commoner's side is the Trojan horse theory – the notion that transformative potential of radical initiatives can (and in some cases, has no choice but to) more fully develop though co-optation."

Status

Ambitions:

"The game has taken shape, but there is a whole lot of room for improvement and polishing. And a lot of room for iteration for different contexts and purposes. Also, I suspect the game could lend itself well to digitization, and interfacing between the online and offline. This goes hand-in-hand with some of mine and Jose's ideas on generative online futures platforms, where socially transformative futures-inquiry and futures-making could take place and be taken to scale. For this game, I envision that gameplay results, and player-generated barriers, interventions, narratives, initiatives and wildcards could be openly shared and shaped into new playable materials, ideas, discussion points and scenarios."