The Brief Final

Janice Tabin

Claw Control: A two-player board game that illustrates the challenges of funding a protest by having players compete for a successful campaign, as a commentary on the struggle between advocates for gun control and gun owners.

Claw Control is a board game based on the competition for funding between protests and counter-protests, and is meant to be a metaphor for gun control campaigns. In the game, players can choose either a dog or a cat as their avatar. The dogs want to enact laws that force cats to be declawed, while the cats oppose this, arguing that claws are needed for self defense. Players take turns trying to raise money for their cause and trying to sabotage their opponents.

The game has a black-and-white aesthetic in order to emphasize the polarization of current politics. One of the unique features of this game is the Velcro die. As players raise money, they can buy more tokens to attach to the die. When players are confident of their chances, they can roll the Velcro die, and if one of their tokens is facing upwards they win. To reinforce how things can unexpectedly go wrong in campaigns, the game is designed so that even when players are ahead, they are never assured of winning.