Principles behind an open data board game

Feb 2nd 2015

At our first internal board game workshop, we crowd sourced principles to guide the board game design process - what people like and what they want to avoid. These were the results:

What we want:

• It should challenge how we think about sharing data and open data.
• It should be collaborative.
• It should be fun, but with a lot at stake immediately.
• It should explain what open data is.
• It should be aimed at ages 9+. Simple enough for new players, but not so simple. Family friendly - perhaps with an 'easy' version and harder extension.
• It should be lush. It should be engaging
• It should be tactile. There should be physical things to pass around.
• There should be an element of chance/luck/randomness.
• It should be a reflection of the open data community - fun, open, random.
• It should be extendable. We should be able to add extra cards, pieces, levels of complexity.
• There should be stacking pieces.
• It should take into account things like colour blindness. But it should be colourful!
• It should involve building a data commons - constructing a data board.

It would be nice to have:

• Collaborative but with the ability to win individually!
• Support for a two player version
• Being finished in 45 minutes (once you know how to play)

What we want to avoid

• Gimmicks.
• Being shallow.
• QR codes. Obviously.
• An easily lost important game piece.
• Long complex instructions.
• Being too complex to remember/play.
• Being laborious.
• Being "UK/English centric" - culturally and linguistically.
• Being breakable.
• Being boring.
• Having a long period where it's obvious who's won, or lost, or whole game won/lost.
• Game set up that's longer than 5 minutes.
• Being too focused on data and not on impact.
• Being too 'geeky' - needs to appeal to the masses.
• Players being kicked out of gameplay.
• Maths.
• Having a long time where a player isn't doing anything/ doesn't need to pay attention.

We'll try to avoid

• Dice games (maybe)
• Having too many bits and pieces in the box

If people could only take away one message about open data, it would be:

• It's about impact - social, environmental, economic.
• Open data helps us as a society to address the big challenges.
• Open data is more valuable the more of it there is.
• Open data is a thing. The thing is good.
• Public benefits all. Private benefits only some.
• This stuff is not difficult.
• Data is not just for geeks.