Matteo Menapace

Matteo Menapace is a "Co-op Games Designer and Playful Workshops Facilitator", who has worked with Matt Leacock, the creator of Pandemic, to create the game "Daybreak" which focuses on the Climate Crisis that the world is currently facing.

His talk was about his process to the game: Daybreak. It was interesting to hear what he went through during the process so that I could take what he learnt and apply it to my work.

What kind of game did they want to make? Before making the game Daybreak, Matteo reached out to Matt Leacock, American board game designer, to talk about the game "Pandemic". Leacock wrote on a blog talking about the learning process of designing the game. This gave an opportunity for Matteo to talk about his thoughts on this game as well; how it links towards the crisis that we faced during the Pandemic era. This gave pointers towards what type of game they wanted to make - nowadays, we are facing towards climate change and questions pop up like "What can we do about Climate Crisis?". They continue to share thoughts about this, and this led them to an idea on Climate Crisis.
What were the design goals? These were the goals that they wanted to implement into the game:

1) Let's People Explore the Situations

There are ways in which we can do to save the planet, such as using less electricity, saving water etc. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that it would be enough to save the world, because it is by individual action. So, it focusses on collective responsibility, that everyone has a part to play. They did not want it to be an educational game since they are usually "Preachy", as in they teach you what is right and wrong - forcing to make you to make the right choices. Therefore, no freedom in the choices you make.

2) Realistic

They wanted to make it realistic as it will have more impact in actions that each individual player will have, and that it will base from real world data so that you can make correlations (such as increase in temp in game will have similar consequences as in the real world)

3) Cooperative Game

He mentioned that some people, especially the politicians, are against climate action, and that their Politics have their own way of stopping this. However, they took a different approach, as in where the most powerful people in the world are taking climate crisis seriously. This takes a leap into the future, what it could look like. In some sense, it is quite utopian since everyone is now working together to stop a crisis.

4) Feel Empowering

They want it so that everyone has a unique role in the game, rather than everyone doing the same thing. They want it so that they come together to have a meeting, before going off to sort out their problems. It is powering as it gives knowledge about Global Warming and the ways in which they can reverse the crisis.

Why are we making this game? Obviously, it is to warn people about the Climate Crisis, what actions players can make to stop this, and potential consequences if we choose to ignore the problem. However, it is important that we know the answer to this question, otherwise we will lose the meaning for a game that we are making. Once they are clear about what game they want to make, they go into Prototyping
Where to start? There are many ways in which they can go with Prototyping, so they started off with the problem. They focused on the Carbon Cycle (being the backbone of life on Earth), and based their designs from that. From this point, they were playing around with something they could interact with. Afterwards, they will make comments about what could be changed about the prototype.

Early prototype - June 2020. Early attempts of creating a playable model of the emissions cycle.

Changes to be made? They had other people to play the prototype and to give criticism. There were some parts that needed to be changed. For instance, the thermometer originally went up to 3 Degrees Celsius (the thermometer is the change from normal temp to a new one, So if temp = 1.0 C°, then it is 1 C° above norm). Realistically, if temperature increases by 3 C°, then the planet will become inhabitable, becoming too unrealistic. So they changed it so the cap is now at 2 C°.
Redesigning the Prototype. Basically, they made more changes to the prototype and play tested it again, until they are satisfied with it. Once they are, they made the components for the game and now the game is on Kickstarter so that they raise money to print out the games.

What I learnt

They had clear design goals in which what type of game that they wanted to make. This gave them ideas of how the game should be played, as well as what mechanics should be included so that they are interesting, but also links back to the goals that they had in mind.

So for this project, I will have design goals so that I won't steer away from what I wanted to make originally.

Playtesting serves a large role in making the games. With the feedback that he received from others, he made a game in which it becomes more enjoyable for others to play with each playtest and redesigns. With this, rules became more complex and, in some way, making players think hard about the decisions they made.

I will make sure that for my project I will have people to playtest the prototype, so that I could make potential improvements.

Its clear that his ideas came from deep research about Global Warming and Climate Crisis. From this, he knew what he wanted in a design, as it served a purpose in making the prototype. From there on, it branched off into a boardgame.

I will make sure that I will include as much research that I could find in my chosen topic so that I am able to branch off ideas from it.