DESIGN INTERVENTION | ACTION STRATEGY
Escalation Description
Escalation is a family board game designed around a vision of the winner being the last person standing because everyone else got so angry that they left. I scaled that vision back a bit for that sake of making a product that people might actually purchase and play, but the basis is the same. The rules and actions are derived from a list of variables that make people frustrated, particularly in the context of politics. The Design Process To figure out what Escalation might look like, I began brainstorming with a couple of friends. We asked ourselves, “What escalates games? What makes things go bad?” We also made sure to extrapolate to politics, identifying forces that make politics particularly frustrating. Here is what we came up with: I had never made a game before. It was daunting. I conducted secondary research into game design, talked to other students who had made games, and tried to co-create as much as possible with peers. Ultimately, the design for the game came after I developed a few separate elements and experimented with putting them together. From there, it was a matter of prototyping and playtesting the game.
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TEAMBUILDING AMERICA
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Disrespect Name-calling Interrupting Unfairness/power imbalance »» Time constraints »» Differing facts or rules
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Physical fighting Intractability Unwarranted agression Unpredictability Violation of norms or established rules
