We’re working on a game where a group of 3-7 players compete in a game of lifestyle board game to win the United States presidential election. They are assigned a candidate archetype at the beginning and must compete with their candidate’s strengths and weaknesses in mind. Throughout the game, the players can challenge each other to live debates to gain support.
Will the players be interested in competing in debates throughout a board-game-like experience? If not, why?
Importance: this is an aspect of the game that differentiates it from other board games and possibly makes it much more interesting. I am not familiar with any other formal games that have to use debate skills around a silly topic to help them win the game. To me, this sounds really fun but I have no idea if it actually would be.
Type of Prototype: Implementation – I think that there will be some sort of way to get the debate part right but we will have to work out the right mechanics to do this. For example, maybe we have a set of 12 topics to debate about and we provide cards about which types of debate techniques or arguments to use to make the process easier for players who aren’t debate experts. We will have to come up with an initial set of mechanics for players to try in order to test this question.
Prediction: I think that debates will be a core, super fun part of the game because the players are going to get super passionate about defending their topic. Additionally, it will create social tension and drama, expanding the magic circle of the game, because not only do two players have to argue with one another about a silly topic, but one or more other players of the game have to decide who won the debate.
How real is too real?
Importance: since the game is political and political topics can be sensitive, we have to make sure to strike the following balance: the game is real enough so that the political metaphors hit home and relate to the real political world, but the political details can’t be too realistic to the point that they offend any of the players. Essentially, the game has to be political orientation agnostic.
Type of prototype: This would require a prototype that’s somewhere between look and feel and implementation because perhaps to some extent we can scale up and down the political realism, but simultaneously we may have to change around some of the mechanics and procedures to make sure the ~political~ dynamics are optimal. To prototype this, we can rebrand game of life and have players try it and see how they react to its political nature.
Prediction: I think that we will strike the right balance of political realism if we create diverse cartoon archetypes that very loosely represent combinations of real, well-known political figures of the present and past and have some sort of comedic twist.
Is a board game the right fit for the presidential candidacy game?
Importance: we initially assumed that this game kind of resembles the game of LIFE which is a board game. It is entirely possible since we haven’t worked out the details and mechanics of the game yet, that a board game just won’t be a good fit for this presidential candidacy game.
Type of Prototype: to test this we need to create a role prototype where the look and feel and political realism of the game don’t really matter but we simply map out the different statuses and stages that players switch between, decide how players gain votes, decide how the election part works, etc. This would be like a physical wireframe of the board game.
Prediction: I’m unsure if a board game is the right fit for this but if I had to guess, I think that it is since from the outside it seems to follow the same structure as the game of LIFE.
