P3 Reflection — Helicopter Parent

Helicopter Parent wasn’t the first game our group attempted to create. Our first game concept was Addendum, a game about pork barrel politics and the ways that endless small additions to legislation often both damage the public interest and make it possible for legislation to pass. While I’m convinced that there is still a game to be found in that system, we really weren’t finding the fun in playtests, and moreover found ourselves in a bunch of cursed design problems. Essentially, the game needed to prevent the formation of stable coalitions to be fun, but the real-world system we were trying to model is defined by the presence of stable coalitions. Moreover, the fundamental gameplay wasn’t especially interesting: just vote for the things that are in your interest. We got some good emotional responses, but they were all from the humor of the cards more than anything else.

So, we decided to pivot. I’m quite happy that we did so, because the result was the most fun game I’ve created in this class. After a mediocre playtest, we were resignedly brainstorming alternatives when Grace (I think) suggested a game about college admissions. As soon as I heard that, I knew I could find something to love in the concept: I’ve been a huge fan of the worker placement genre of board games for some time now, and making children the ‘workers’ perfectly encapsulates the lack of agency children today experience. I didn’t have helicopter parents myself.*  Still, I had friends with helicopter parents, and even from the outside, the experience looked soul-shattering.

I’m very happy with how the final product turned out, but it took some time to get there. Unusually, the initial prototype started out too simple and needed additional complexity to be added to be interesting. In particular, players were making most of the same choices every single round. I had failed to appreciate the way that most worker placement games regularly change the board and options on offer to present new choices to the players — playing Agricola in class and taking a closer look at the design of other worker-placement games I’d loved (like Stone Age) helped me to realize what was wrong and fix it. The final version heavily features ever-rotating ‘shops’ of cards, creating a level of strategic variety I’m very proud of. Paired with the exciting tension of dice rolls to complete Opportunity cards and silly, pretentious exclusive activity names to laugh at, the final project feels remarkably close to a complete, publishable package.

* In fact, my parents let me and my sister leave school on our own and walk two blocks to the local library to hang out after elementary. Plus, I started practicing (under supervision) with a carving knife at 5 or 6, and an adze at 7. Other parents were horrified that a young child was being subjected to such terrible dangers. Somehow, I managed to survive and write this blog post.