Week 5

Most of the challenges this week were related to the hack. I decided to redesign a childhood board game, Ludo. Finalizing the idea for the hack took a long time, and I started several different ones before landing on this. One challenge designing the hack was to figure out the amount of changes I could make to the game without losing all identity of the original game. I did not want to redesign every aspect of it and create a new board game entirely, but rather to reuse existing gameplay mechanics to support my critique. Research about the history of the game showed that most versions of the game have been surprisingly consistent across countless adaptations and variations, so i decided to keep the original format of the game, the cross design (an unfortunate resemblance with a swastika, as one student pointed out). I also decided to retain the original color scheme, as it offers a good contrast to the seriousness of the theme. 

Another challenge while designing was to balance the gameplay such that the majority demographics (neurotypical, american) did not become the target of the critique. My goal was not to pit students against each other, or call out certain groups for having more privileges, but rather to highlight the challenges faced by minority groups in order to challenge authorities, like college administrations, faculty, etc., who often overlook such challenges and assume that the majority demographics represent the standard college pathway, and any students with extenuating circumstances need to prove they are not lazy (guilty until proven innocent), and show evidence of adversity through ridiculous procedures before being trusted and given access to whichever accommodations, medical support, and flexibility in academic pathways that they need to succeed. Of course, the design inevitably brings other students’ attention to the specific obstacles faced by minority groups, but I had to cautiously restructure the gameplay to direct the overall critique away from some toxic narrative, like  neurotypical vs neurodivergent. 

Creating the physical board for the game was actually much harder than the digital design, even though the former took much longer. Mainly because I did not have a large enough piece of cardboard to do the job, and kept missing the Maker Space hours due to scheduling conflicts. I decided to cut through a TV box i had, which ended up working well, but required some tedious craftwork to make it look presentation worthy. It was also a challenge to print the huge design onto multiple papers without damaging the symmetry of the design. Plus, I sadly misjudged the center of the board when gluing the first piece, and then again, and again, somehow, which is why the final board may have seemed annoyingly off-center. Although, I like how the design turned out on paper.