Thesis



The Village was designed for Issah Toah, who needed a facilitation tool to help break the ice between participants during his seminar, African Students For Interfaith Tolerance. The Village allows players to connect with each other by encouraging collaboration, while also forcing players to occasionally act in self-interest. This dynamic creates a bond between players, opening them up for dialogue later in the seminar.

Project Goals

Main Goal: Create a game that can help introduce people to each other and encourage them to work together.

Sub Goals: Make a game that isn't strictly collaborative but heavily encourages it.

Background 

• African Students for Interfaith Tolerance (ASIF) is an organization who's mission is to build sustainable peace, interfaith harmony and development by empowering Africa’s youth and engaging religious actors for sustainable development.

Timeline

Key Takeaways

1st Intervew (getting to know Issah)

2nd Interview (begin brainstorming)

3rd Interview (final brainstorming)

4th Interview (prototyping)

• Issah mainly works with African Students For Interfaith Tolerance (ASIT)
• Participants are mostly youth.

• Breaks are important in between heavy emotional conversations

• Create an 'icebreaker' game?

• Definitely create a game.

• Focus on community and colaboration

• Focus on community and colaboration

Precedents (Tileform)

Tileform is a collaborative resource management game about overcoming differences while building a sustainable community. Each player has different goals they must complete to win. This simulates the potential collaboration, competition, and conflict that arises when stakeholders have varying motivations. Playing this game should create conversations about the complex relationships and power dynamics between communities, companies, and governments as they work together to address climate change.

Precedents

Key Precedent

Our game uses 7 wonder's

• Turn Order
• Card Style
• "Ages" mechanic

Brainstorming

Key Points for Our Game

• Players are on separate teams but still encouraged to work together.



• While teams are encouraged to collaborate with each other, individuals can win.

• A limited amount of resources are fluid and can be moved around and shared with other groups.

Game Play

• Each player gets a hand of 7-9 cards.
• Everyone plays a card, paying its resource cost if applicable, and then passes the remaining cards in their hand to the left.
• After the cards are passed, a spinner is spun to see if any disasters happen, if non do, play continues.
• Different resources are required for building and sustaining housing, and if a players population reaches 0 then they are removed from the game.

Resources required