A Creative Game Experience
Whitebored
A Creative Game Experience Major project report by Riccardo Bardzki MA Graphic Branding and Identity London College of Communication University of the Arts London 2012
Summary INTRODUCTION Undertaking a Branding Project Research Question Objectives and Methodology
5 5 6 7
BACKGROUND
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CONTEXT The New Generations and Boredom The Importance of Play Creative Games
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PROJECT The Whitebored Project Point of Difference Naming and Big Brand Idea
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BRAND CHARACTER Vision, Mission, Values Audience, Essence, Personality Brand Positioning Visual Code Logo
22 22 23 24 25 26
PLATFORM The Whitebored Elements Website Advertising
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CONCLUSION
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Major project report - Introduction
Introduction
UNDERTAKING A BRANDING PROJECT Branding is a vast and multi-faceted discipline, in which a graphic designer is not only asked to design the face of a brand and create a coherent visual code, but also to decide the spirit of a brand, outline its points of difference from the competitors and always keep everything under control. Branders must be ready to tackle a variety of different subjects – from marketing to advertising, from product design to “simple” graphic communication – in order to create an appropriate brand experience. This kind of work is usually carried out by a group of professionals, everyone with his own skills and expertise. They receive a brief from a client and interact constantly with him. I think that one of the most difficult tasks I had to undertake during this master course was to create my own brief, research question and method, on my own. Design is about solving problems, but in the very beginning I had to face the “blank sheet complex” before finding a problem to solve. This had indeed a significant influence on the final result of my project. In this report I will explain how I got to the definition of my major project, and how I built my brand. 5
Major project report - Introduction
How can I spotlight the importance of creative boredom?
RESEARCH QUESTION The research question stated above is related to a recent theory which argues that children could benefit from experiencing boredom in their childhood, because they naturally learn how to avoid it through play. On the contrary, an overstimulating environment could create mental laziness and restrict the frontiers of imagination. “Creative boredom� is the natural ability of an individual’s imagination to fill the gaps of his existence by creating something. I think that this theory can be valid for people of every age, because the power of creativity avoids the aging of the brain, keeping it active and curious. Before going further, I think it is useful to define the base concepts of this thesis. Boredom is the feeling of being bored by something tedious. We can call tedious something so lacking of interest as to cause mental weariness. Creativity is the ability to create, that is bringing into existence. The fascinating aspect about this theory is the contrast between negative and positive connotations of words: boredom is related to uselessness and emptiness, while the act of creation itself has an absolutely positive connotation. 6
Major project report - Introduction
OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY The aim of this project is to provide people with a media to express their creativity. The brand presents itself in the form of a game that is capable of containing infinite rules and playing possibilities, allowing the users to make their own entertaining activity. These are the steps that led me to achieve this goal: Studying boredom: what is it, what generates it and how can it be avoided; how this feeling affects the individual and his creativity; how can boredom be visually represented. Defining creativity: what is creativity and when does it happen; influence of creativity on growth and learning; Exploring games: importance of the games in education; the difference between traditional and modern games; existing user-based games. Brand experience: how the user interacts with the brand and how does it communicate to people; what pushes people to be engaged with the brand. 7
Major project report - Introduction
Background
My research started from mass communication and advertising. I was interested in understanding how the repetition of certain messages could affect their perception in the minds of the customers. During this process I realized that the repetition of advertising messages, as well as that of everyday actions and gestures, could easily lead to monotony and boredom. Therefore, I left the trail of repetition to start studying the characteristics of boredom and its relationship with creativity. Doctor Richard Ralley, a psychology lecturer at Edge Hill College in Ormskirk, Lancashire, started researching on this subject in 2006. He said: “Boredom can be a good thing. In psychology we think of emotions as being functional. Fear, anger and jealousy all serve a purpose but they’re painted in a bad light even though they exist for a reason. It’s the same with boredom, which also has a bad name. We get bored because we get fed up when we have nothing to do and feel the need to be productive. We feel bad when we’re not productive and that’s what boredom is associated with.” (2006, The Guardian) 8
Major project report - Introduction
I decided that the aim of my project would have been that of changing people’s attitude to boredom, making them consider its implicit creative power. I needed to define better the concept of creative boredom and I found out that a lot had been written on the subject. Edward Collier, in an article called “The importance of being bored”, talks about boredom in his childhood: “Boredom opens channels. If you’re truly, stultifyingly bored and, despite desperate complaints, no one sees fit to alleviate your boredom, then you have to rectify the matter yourself. It was when I was bored beyond belief at the age of 13 that I discovered that the piano, an instrument I’d hitherto regarded as a relict of the age of Torquemada, could be induced to make sounds that chimed with my nascent musical sensibility. I began composing, something I still do to this day.” (2010, The Guardian) This was exactly what I was looking for, and I started thinking about ways to avoid boredom in everyday life, as a starting point. It must be considered that boredom is a very subjective feeling and depends on people’s attitude. Something that is extremely boring for me, can be very entertaining and exciting for someone else. For this reason, I found it very difficult to find an effective and absolute way to avoid people from being bored and, after all, the creative boredom theory is about transforming boredom in creativity rather than avoiding boredom itself. I finally realized that the crucial point of my research was the importance of play, because through play, children naturally manage to escape boredom. Consequently, I started thinking about designing a game as a final output for my project, and I finally re-formulated my research question as it is now. 9
Major project report - Context
Context
THE NEW GENERATIONS AND BOREDOM Children’s relationship with boredom is getting more and more interesting as new generations come. Mass technology has made huge progress in the last 20 years and children of the 2000s have access to hyper-stimulating fun machines since their birth and for all their early years. The more complex the game is, the lower amount of creativity is requested, to make it interesting. On the other hand, traditional games are much more likely to leave space for imagination. That’s why I think they are more educational than technological ones. Computers, consoles and mobile devices are able to provide tremendous amounts of information per second, creating entire virtual realities and partially substituting the natural imagination of a child. Why spending hours in reading a novel or trying to draw a horse, when one can fight the Third World War just sitting passively in front of a television? This is not just laziness: technology is depriving children of boredom, and, paradoxically, the risk is that people grown this way will have less capacity to create and invent. 10
fig. 1, 2: children of the 2000s playing (sources: jamadots.olhblogspace. com; rainmit.blogspot. co.uk) fig. 3: a cartoon by Scott Adams showing the generational gap in the use of technology (online. wsj.com)
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fig. 1
fig. 2
fig. 3 11
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Before the days of TV, boredom used to be a natural phenomenon. Two hundred years ago, when a child’s homework was done, chores were finished, and other family members were busy, what could he do? He learned to tap into his brain’s diversionary ability early and often. But today, the flip of a simple switch can spoon-feed him an endless supply of diversions that, while interesting, are nonetheless passive and completely dependent on someone else’s imagination. Carol Barnier, 2012, The Homeschool Magazine
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There are a series of behaviours that we’ve learnt as kids, and that turn to be quite useful to us as designers. They include exploration, which is about going for quantity; building, and thinking with your hands; and role-play, where acting it out helps both to have more empathy for the situations in which we’re designing, and to create services and experiences that are seamless and authentic. Tim Brown, 2008, TED, Tales of Creativity and Play
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fig. 4
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY Plato said: “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” I think this is the key to understanding the importance of play in the society. Playing is not just fun, it is a vital activity, that we really need, to learn how to interact with the world outside, and manifest our character. Since we are kids, through play we understand the importance of rules, we develop our behaviour, and discover how to manipulate objects. These are the main areas of development that involve play: Physical skills: Balance; hand-eye coordination Cognitive skills: Building memory Language skills: Rehearsal of language; rhythm Social skills: Face-to-face interaction Emotional skills: Enjoyment; exchanging emotions Creative skills: Engaging in play games with adults As all the animals, man has always had the instinct to play and always will. I believe that play doesn’t belong only to our childhood, it always keeps the mind active and creative, even in adult age. 14
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fig. 5
Psychologist Karl Groos (1896, p.68) stated: “The animals do not play because they are young, but they have a youth because they must play.” The same could be said about men: we don’t play because we are young; we grow mentally old because we don’t play enough. In his book, Groos explains the fundamental function of intuition as a learning tool. He believes that the acquisition of new knowledge is based on exploration and cognition, which is the ability of animals (and men) to memorize certain kinds of situations in order to react properly whenever they experience them again. I think that the real difference between physical and virtual games is in the way they work. For instance, when children play with LEGO, their entire body is involved in the game. They crawl on the floor, build constructions and make gestures to tell (themselves) their own story. Moreover, the final result of this game is a physical object they can manipulate, play with or destroy. Virtual reality - no matter how realistic - is always something illusory that is created and remains on a screen. The board games will always have their charm, because they provide something that goes beyond simple entertaining.
fig. 4: the image shows that the game of dice is as old as the Egyptians (source: www. historyforkids.org) fig. 5: even the most neutral material can be made interesting with the imagination of a child (source: 2.bp.blogspot. com) 15
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fig. 6
fig. 7
CREATIVE GAMES I decided to analyse four different games as study cases. They have different characteristics and game mechanics but they are all based on the creative interaction with the user. A toy that really changed the history of games is without any doubt LEGO. Its modular structure made of interlocking bricks gives huge building possibilities to the user. The Danish factory, that has been producing LEGO since 1949 and is still very popular, has released during its history a huge quantity of different sets of bricks. Although some of these collections - especially the newest - are so characterised to seem quite limiting for imagination, the incredibly smart patent of LEGO always allows to disassemble the constructions and build different ones, giving a lot of free space to creativity. Tangram is a very old Chinese game (more than 1000 years), based on a series of pieces that united form a square, and that can be put in a great number of different configurations to make bigger and more complex shapes. The interesting thing about 16
fig. 8
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fig. 9
Tangram’s resulting shapes is that, even though they are always geometrical, they can represent human silhouettes, animals and objects. The brain of the observer just fills the gaps bringing those shapes back to a meaning. Dixit is the demonstration that card games don’t need to include necessarily numbers and symbols. Every card has a different surrealistic drawing that can be interpreted in infinite ways according to the player’s fantasy and background. The storyteller draws a card and gives a definition for it. The other players have to select a card that best matches to the given definition and, in the end guess what is the storyteller’s one. This game is basically all about imagination: the cards have no other value than the one given by the player. Plus and Minus is a visual game created in 1970 by Bruno Munari. It includes a set of 72 cards with different shapes, that can be overlapped (48 of them are printed on transparent acetate) to create more complex images. This game was particularly designed to stimulate the imagination of children.
fig. 6: some of the shapes you can make with Tangram (source: safvisuals.files.wordpress. com) fig. 7: Dixit cards (source: costastaliadoros. wordpress.com) fig. 8: a reproduction of the Burg Khalifa Tower made with LEGO (source: pix.alaporte.net) fig. 9: composition of an image with Munari’s Plus and Minus (pictures by Stefano Bardzki) 17
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Project
THE WHITEBORED PROJECT The Whitebored brand commercializes the objects to create your very own, personalized board game. These objects are inspired to the typical elements that are included in most board games, such as cards, dice and pawns. The difference between the Whitebored elements and the ones you can find in a normal board game box is that they are blank and customizable, and can be bought separately, depending on the user’s need. In this perspective, Whitebored can be seen as a user-defined brand, because it exclusively works with the people’s imagination, giving them just the tools to express their creativity. In my previous research I studied the importance of traditional games for the correct development of social and practical skills. The physical dimension of play is fundamental for generating a more spontaneous and pure creativity. For this reason, Whitebored could have never been a video game. One of the brand’s purposes is that of re-evaluating the bigger learning and creative potential of practical games compared to the virtual ones. 18
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The rules of Whitebored, as well as the game mechanics and look, are determined by the user. This means that everybody can decide the suitable age range for their game and the number of players, that can even be just one. There is simply no restriction, as there is no limit for imagination. Whitebored is not a simple pastime. It shifts the role of board games from recreative to creative, making the user face a white and boring space that can be made interesting only with his intervention. Through the on-line Whitebored community, users can share their creations and game modes, so that everybody can get access to them. The community is destined to become a database of games based on the Whitebored elements, in which everybody can upload their own, share their ideas, comment on other people’s posts, or simply choose the one they want to play. Whitebored is a game that is capable of containing a potentially infinite range of game options. Not to mention that with the elements provided it is also possible to reproduce (and reinterpret as you wish) games like Monopoly, Uno and Visual Game. 19
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POINT OF DIFFERENCE Compared to the other creative games studied in the context - LEGO, Tangram, Dixit and Plus and Minus Whitebored gives the user an even wider range of possibilities. You can simply do whatever you like. It is also true that some of the features of those games have inspired the Whitebored project. Both LEGO and Tangram are based on pieces of a certain size and form, and allow the user to make a huge number of different constructions, letting the imagination run free. Nevertheless, the pieces of the game are already given, while Whitebored’s elements are designed to be customizable: instead of building a wall made of LEGO bricks, the players can even decide the shape of the bricks. Dixit is a very imaginative game indeed, because is based on an intangible and personal thing such as mental associations (that form the definitions of the cards), but in this case the deck of cards has a limited number of illustrated cards, so once the user has played it a few times, his mind will automatically tend to link those illustrations to already given definitions. With Whitebored the user can just buy another deck of white cards and start creating again. What differentiates Whitebored from Plus and Minus is the narrowness of the target audience. Munari’s board game is particularly addressed to infants, and the visual code - materials, illustrations and visual exercitations - is especially designed for being immediately recognized by a child. On the opposite, Whitebored can be suitable both for children and adults, because they are the ones who make the rules and the visuals. Therefore, what makes Whitebored a special brand is its being “invisible” and the fact that it gives the users nothing else than a means for creation, a blank canvas they need to interact with, in order to transform it in a game. 20
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NAMING AND BIG BRAND IDEA The name of the brand comes from the fusion of two words - “white” and “bored” - that represent the core of the entire project. Nothing is more customizable and free than a white space. Nothing is whiter than white. The word “bored” is related to the creative boredom theory, that is the conceptual basis of the project: people feel the need to avoid boredom, thus they play. United, the two words make the name of the brand and sound like “whiteboard”, that is also a very relevant word, for a whiteboard is nothing else than a blank medium, unless you write or draw on it. Which is just what Whitebored is. The big brand idea could be crystallized in the catch-phrase “You Got Game”. The literal meaning of these three words underlines the close relationship between the user (“you”) and the game, and implies a partial separation between the role of the brand, that provides the medium, and that of the player, who makes it work. As an expression, “you got game” means that you are able and good at doing something. It is a friendly and direct incitement to believe in your creative skills. 21
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Brand Character
VISION Whitebored is going to be the first brand to commercialize under its name a whole set of blank playing tools, and will therefore provide the users with a completely new gaming experience. MISSION With its visual neutrality and versatility, Whitebored will be a very recognizable and unique brand and, thanks to the on-line community, a whole movement of fans will create around it. People will be interested in joining the community because they will need to find new games to play, see how their own game is received by the other members and, in general, to share their creations with the web. VALUES The belief on which the brand is based is that everyone has the capability of creating and playing, and that these activities are not only an escape from boredom, but also a necessary step to form people’s character and develop their practical skills. The game must not set boundaries for imagination. On the contrary, it should set it free. 22
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AUDIENCE The brand is not necessarily directed to people of a certain age range, as the suitable age for the games is decided by the users. Realistically, the minimum age to enjoy Whitebored is 3 years, because that is when children start to explore the space that surrounds them, creating their own stories and manipulating objects (without swallowing them). People of every nationality and culture can play with Whitebored, as there are almost no words to read (just some small English text in the instructions and on the back of the boxes), and because play is a human activity that exists regardless of geographical boundaries. The N-users of my brand are creative, playful and curious people. They like to spend time in playing with friends and are interested in challenging them on the field of creativity. ESSENCE What I want the users to feel, as soon as they get in touch with the brand, is that they are free to customize it totally. After having played with Whitebored, the user will also understand that the game is not only playing, but also creating the game itself. And this could actually be the funniest part. PERSONALITY - Blank - Clear - Free - Imaginative - Limitless - Instructive - Encouraging - Social - Challenging - Entertaining - One-of-a-kind 23
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based on LUCK Dungeons & Dragons
Risk
Whitebored
Monopoly based on RULES
based on CREATIVITY
Carcassonne
Dixit
Uno
Plus and Minus LEGO Tangram based on ABILITY
BRAND POSITIONING The graph above shows the positioning of the Whitebored brand compared to other games on the market. The horizontal axis indicates the type of playing experience, the vertical one is about the game mechanics. “Creativity�, in this scheme, must be intended also as strategy and, in general, freedom of choice. Whitebored has no given rule and could be based either on ability and/or luck, depending on the mechanics the user devises. 24
Clue
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Reviews of
Gotham
identity
focus on its as something both American and
specific to New
York City.
According to David Dunlap of The New York Times, Gotham “deliberately evokes the blocky unselfconscious architectural lettering that dominated the [New York] streetscape from the 1930’s through the 1960’s”. Andrew Romano of Newsweek concurs. “Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it’s not German, it’s not French, it’s not Swiss,” he said. “It’s very American.”
VISUAL CODE The font family used for the logo and for all the physical applications of the brand is Gotham - Ultra for the logo (just slightly edited) and Bold for the rest. On the website, the Book version will also be used. The logo has to represent the neutrality of the Whitebored brand and making it recognizable, yet without including graphic elements that could influence and limit the imagination of the user. Hence, the choice of a sans serif font. Moreover, Gotham Ultra perfectly matches the visual requirements of Whitebored: it is wide, heavy and capacious, suggesting both the feeling of boredom and emptiness. In most applications, to stress even more these concepts, the logo will have no colour. The brand logo will always (whenever is possible and reasonably expensive) be printed glossy white on white matte paper, recalling the sleek surface of a whiteboard. The only graphic element other than the logo within the whole project is an evanescent grey texture (C:5 - M:4 - Y:4 - K:4) made of the two letters “w” and “b”. This pattern indicates the few parts of the Whitebored elements which, for usability reasons, is not recommended to draw on. 25
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1 1/3
You Got Game
scheme: in red, optical correction made on the original font to create the logo; in blue, the minimum allowance space to use when putting other text (like a catchphrase) close to the logo.
readability: thanks to the boldness of its lettering the logo can be read even when very small. 27
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Platform
THE WHITEBORED ELEMENTS What is Whitebored on the market? The brand is a producer of gaming elements, and therefore its platform consists mainly in a series of separate board game pieces, each one with its own packaging and characteristics. These elements are meant to be sold separately, so that the users can buy just the ones they need for their own game. Every box carries the name of the element written behind. Moreover, they can be used as substitutive parts for previously created games. In fact, we have to consider that the Whitebored elements are disposable: once you have customized them, you can play the same game forever, but you may need to add some cards to the deck or simply make another game. In few words, Whitebored brand stands for complete freedom of choice even in the selling mode. Obviously, not every user (and game-maker) knows exactly what game is he going to create. In this case he could buy the Whitebored box, which is a ready-to-use starting kit that contains a deck of cards, a set of dice, a bag of pawns, one sand timer, a block of sheets, plasticine, a spinner disk and includes also pencils and permanent markers. 28
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cards: every deck includes 60 white playing cards, that are laminated and textured on the back, to make their use and recognizability easier. 30
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dice: every box contains 5 six-sided white plastic dice. The users can customize them with permanent markers. 31
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pawns: the pawns are made of white plastic. They are not sold as a set of a certain number of units, but individually. 32
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sand timer: every box includes one 30 seconds hourglass. This item is more a gaming tool than a customizable object. 33
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sheets: in every block there are 30 detachable paper sheets . 34
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plasticine: is made of a particular modeling clay that never dries out. The plasticine comes in bricks of approximately 300 g. 35
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spinner: the spinner disk is 13 cm wide and made of cardboard. 36
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board: its dimensions are 75 cm x 48 cm, and 37 cm x 24 cm when closed. It can be used on both sides (the user can draw also on the logo, which is white). 37
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instructions: the inside of the booklet is divided in different sections to help the user write the instructions in an orderly way. In the first page it is also possible to write the name of the game (under “Whitebored�) and specify the age range and the number of people that can play it. 38
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box: in addition to the separate Whitebored elements, the users can also have a box that contains all of them (with a bag of 12 pawns). In the box, 2 black markers and a set of 6 pencils are also included. Obviously the pieces can be used, customized and coloured using any other means. The elements are allocated into a series of cardboard layers that can also be used as playing materials. 39
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home page about info
videos
community
download
commercials news
buy
app
other
android
buy on-line iOS
retailers
gallery game rules new
elements new
liked upload
liked upload
download/print instructions
WEBSITE As for every existing brand that aspires to a widespread reputation, also Whitebored will be present on the internet. The website does not stand as a virtual transposition of the game, nor of its dynamics. Yet, it aims indeed to communicate the brand experience, expanding the game dimension to a wider social sphere. Therefore, the site must not be intended as a collateral articulation of the project, but as an integral part of it. Besides providing information about the products, the retailers and the brand itself, whitebored.com will host an on-line community of players that can share their creations and games challenging each others on the field of creativity. The members will have the possibility to upload pictures of their customized Whitebored elements, express their opinion about those of the others and rate them. To make the image capturing process easier and faster the site will also be formatted for mobile devices and made accessible through an application. As mentioned before, a very important function of the site will also be that of sharing the game instructions, making them available to everyone. 40
above: the map shows the basic structure of the website and the importance of the section dedicated to the community
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home: the home page of the website includes videos, pictures and news. Pages with additional information about the brand and the products can be accessed through the menu bar (“about” and “videos” sections), as well as the Whitebored community and the download section.
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community: when the user clicks on the “community” button, another small bar appears, with the “upload game” button and the sorting options. The community main page shows all the material uploaded by the community members. The white tabs are for the Whitebored elements, while the grey ones contain the instructions for the games. In each tab is possible to “like” the content, leave a comment, add to the favourites and share on facebook or twitter. By clicking on the nickname, it is also possible to access the profile of the contributor in order to view other works made by the same person. On the grey tabs, characteristics of the game the following information game are visible at first glance: number of players that can play the game; suitable age of the players; Whitebored elements necessary to play; the object of the game.
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Name of the game: profile
community
Lost Bananas Element: Plasticine Element: The monkeys must catch the pirate bananas. One of them has a reward inside. Wins the player that first finds it.
share
upload (top): to upload images or instructions, users must be members of the community and login. The upload page allows the members to save their work on their profile, download it and print it.
mobile app (above): site formatting for iPhone5. The Whitebored community mobile app allows the users to capture and upload pictures easily and quickly directly from their mobile phone. 43
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ADVERTISING
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left and right pages: the adverts will reflect the style of the brand. 45
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Conclusion
A range of products like the Whitebored elements would be cost-effective in terms of production, as they rely on already existing and tested industrial technologies, and make use of low-cost materials. Thus, these products will also be affordable for the customers. The selling price, in fact, is an important factor and has to be taken into account, especially considering that - as already stated - most of the elements of Whitebored can be customized only once, and that the brand aims to encourage people to create always new games, using (and buying) always new pieces. Obviously, the starting up of the brand implies an investment, and the preparation of a whole chain of production and distribution. Consequentially, the natural clients for my project would be toys and board games manufacturers (such as Hasbro, Mattel, Parker Brothers), publishers or even big game shops. These companies already have the structures, the suppliers and the expertise to produce games, and they may be interested in creating a whole new branch of their brand (obviously called “Whitebored�). I want to underline the fact that the board game manufacturers I mentioned cannot be consid46
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ered as my competitors: Hasbro - for example - produces at the same time games that are completely different from each other - like Clue, Risk and Monopoly. Hasbro itself, as a brand, does not provide the users with a univocal gaming experience - you don’t play Hasbro, you play either Clue, Risk or Monopoly. As it is now, Whitebored is sufficiently defined as a brand, but in order to debut on the board game market, there are some practical issues that must be resolved. First of all, the products, the game-creating dynamics and the on-line sharing system must be tested on real users, to find any defects and, in case, address them. Then, the name and the characteristics of the brand have to be deposited, the web domain must be acquired (whitebored.com is now owned, but is left inactive) and the site programmed. It is already possible to foresee some implementations of the project: Whitebored aims to go beyond the use of typical board game pieces and expand towards an even wider range of gaming possibilities, thus becoming a comprehensive brand to be associated with the concept of creative play itself. New elements can be added - like dominoes, marbles and 47
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building kits, just to name a few - and better producing techniques can be used: for example, the ton-surton effect I adopted to label the boxes could have been better achieved through typographic printing processes rather than through the use of stickers. It must be considered, in fact, that the Whitebored box prototype I built, for how well crafted it could be when it comes to industrial-like precision of finishes, is obviously not perfect. In conclusion, I really believe in the marketability of the Whitebored brand, and in the achievability of its aspirations. Working on this project has been a very exciting and hard journey, and honestly in some moments I just wanted to stop designing and finally play Whitebored. In dealing with such a project it is actually very difficult to separate the aspect of work from that of play, and I really had to walk in the player’s shoes in order to properly define the dynamics and the usability of the game. Designing a game turned to be much more complex than what I expected and my industrial design background was fundamental to conceive a project that does not only have a visual dimension, but also a physical one. 48
Bibliography
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Note on Figures and Illustrations: The source for the figures I took from external links are indicated in the captions, page by page. All other figures and illustrations were produced by me.
Riccardo Bardzki rbardzki@yahoo.it
Finished printing on the 5th of November 2012 London College of Communication. A special thanks to all those who have supported me and helped me. You know who you are.