Weirdly Gaming

There's a particular activity which ticks the right boxes for artistic expression, but which is not generally thought of as such. That is board game design.

In his book "Around the World in 80 Games", Marcus du Sautoy writes

...Games are also stories that we can explore with our friends.... A novel can move you to tears, but a game can make you feel guilty for your actions.

So a game can involve storytelling, acting, the artwork of board and pieces. The best games offer a multisensory, immersive, imaginative experience for their participants.

I designed my first game, OSECA, during a feverish episode back in 2010. Friends, especially Gerry Beldon, helped me publish it and bring it to market. The core idea was that each of the Big 5 personality traits - Openness, Stability, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Agreeability (hence the acronym) - had a signature move you could attach to it. Cards representing iterations of these moves could be laid in a five by ten rectangle, then played across by two pawns intent on capturing or trapping one another. As each pawn left a card, it would be flipped over, so that quickly the board closed in on itself.

It occurred to me, by the way, that one could apply the Big 5 traits to the analysis of a game of chess. Perhaps different chess players favour different pieces and plays according to their dominant personalities.

I caught myself up in designing the OSECA cards, in holding tournaments to publicise the game, and even in touting it around some of the big games companies. In the end, 300 copies were sold.

The process of design precipitated a long-running collaboration with my friend Steve Poole, which continues to this day. We meet on a Wednesday morning, thrashing out new games. Hoping to bring some of these to market, we are creating an arm of Weirdly Bay called Weirdly Gaming. In my next blog, I will introduce you to some of our plans.