Assist Me in Designing a Board Game - Part 1

I've been picking away at a new board game for a few years now. I made some progress early on but got stalled with other priorities. I'm now going to push to get the game done.

I think it might be a fun experiment to share my design progress online — and create a better game with live feedback from you — where you can influence the design.

If people choose to follow and post feedback in the comments, I will take your direction with the design of the game, continue to post my progress with gameplay refinements and design sketches, and continue to ask for your feedback.

About The Game

This will be an educational board game to help players learn personal finance — but more broadly about life, money, and happiness.

I know what you are thinking — The Game of Life!

Wikipedia says this game was created in 1860 with the more modern version in 1960. The game has an iconic three-dimensional board with a colorful spinner in the middle.

This game is exciting to look at and nicely tactile. It's a vivid childhood memory for many of us.

But, to be honest, in IMO, it's not a great game to play. The gameplay is dated.

I have no intention of duplicating any part of this game. Our game will have a fresh start (as I try to do with all of my games).

I have already designed board games and software games and simulations for personal finance, so I have a good foundation for our new game. I want this game to be like a simulation that recreates realistic decisions people make in the real world.

Player & Customer Profile

The primary target customers will be schools. But if we can attract home users that will be great too. Designing a product for education first, instead of entertainment, is particularly challenging.

It's even more challenging to design a game that crosses over from schools to homes. But we'll give it a shot! (I've written about this here — Using Entertainment Games for Education).

Knowing your customer is super important when designing a product. To refine the player profile further, the target age range is likely to be 13 to adult. This encompasses middle schools and high schools.

The game may also play well for 11 and 12-year-olds, but here's an interesting fact — we can save thousands of dollars in production costs by setting the minimum age to 13.

Why? Because toys and games for ages 12 and under require comprehensive materials testing for child safety. Of course, we always source and use safe materials for our games, but when costly double-testing is not necessary, then we should consider our options.

Goals

The first step — choosing the goals of the game.

This is an interesting challenge with personal finance — because there are no clear right and wrong answers — everyone has their own path in life. Some may choose to pursue financial wealth over everything else, while others focus on personal lifestyle or relationships with friends and family. Some may try to have it all.

Our game goals must reflect this reality of personal choice. We must refrain from applying our own biases in an educational product.

With this in mind, here is what I'm currently thinking —

The overall goal should be Happiness. I feel like this is a good term that can be applied on a personal level regardless of individual life goals. The player with the most Happiness Points (HP) wins the game — although "win" may not be the right term here as we still have to decide if this will be a cooperative or competitive game or something in between.

Reminder — the educational objective of the game is to help you gain the personal finance knowledge and skills to achieve your definition of happiness.

Next, we have to define Happiness — my current thinking is that it should be made up of three metrics — Financial Wealth + Lifestyle + Friends & Family.

Each player may put more or less emphasis on any combination of these three metrics.

BTW, our brains like to work in threes. Fours become too complicated. Two is even better but may be too restrictive for the gameplay we want to design.

You will see the word "Relationship" in my graphic above because I don't like that "Friends & Family" uses two words, so I'm thinking about alternatives.

Where is Health? I carefully considered whether health should be one of the three metrics since it is perhaps the single most important influence on happiness. But I decided not to include in the three metrics because:

• Everyone wants good health (even if they may not make healthy choices).
• Health influences all of our life goals.
• Adding a fourth metric breaks our 3-metric rule.

So, the best way to include health is to have it applied throughout the game as various choices and events, such as personal care, nutrition, fitness, routine checkups, health insurance, etc.

There you have it ... that's where we are so far. I have more to share in the next post. My direction will be influenced by the feedback you provide.

Share Your Thoughts In the Comments

Am I on track?

Am I missing something?

Do you have any suggestions?

Should I keep posting about this game?

PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.