I really appreciated how our group had a clear vision of building a simple system game. I often get overwhelmed with board games, and I just knew that trying to replicate a system for a board game would start off with tons of rules. But the fact that we were all inspired by Mapmaker helped align our intention for the group project.
Aiming for a systems game on gentrification started out feeling like a long shot. I could tell we were in over our heads with trying to find out how to educate or replicate the process as a board game. I think we certainly fell into the trap of lots of rules early on. Figuring out whether we wanted competitive or collaborative play was, in my opinion, one of the more pivotal decisions to figure out. Deciding whether to make all players compete, or to have some on a team against another, was one of the earlier choices that shaped how we were thinking about the process. I wish we had stuck further with each player having a role in occupying land, because I feel that more accurately captures how pervasive gentrification really can be.
That said, I’m incredibly proud of how the game came out! I think the best decision we made was to lean into adjacency. Once we were urged to move away from hexagons and into squares for our board design, we took inspiration from another game for a capture-and-push mechanic, and it was like the game came together all at once! Suddenly, it was a fun, strategic competitive 3 v 1 game, and decisions snowballed together into the final version.
My favorite part was seeing how players would enact gentrification processes through gameplay. In our earlier versions, residents were occupying land aggressively against the developer, essentially gentrifying territory before the developers could. In our final version, the developer and the residents are reacting both offensively and defensively to each other’s moves, in a way that I feel really captures the spirit of communities trying to team up against wealthier developers buying and selling land.
I’d love to keep the game and continue playing it with other people. I think there’s lots of potential for adding narrative to the design, or editing the rules to make it even more simple and adaptive. I’m excited to see how the project continues evolving!
