A game I designed was just released: #DiskiSkills

I completely realise that the headline is a bit unwieldy.

I didn’t release the game, it is not my game.

I didn’t make the whole game, I did the game design (only). It actually feels completely weird to not have anything to do with how a thing I contributed to looks, since I’m so used to playing the art and/or design role.

Simphiwe Xulu, in collaboration with the Johannesburg Goethe Institute, was making a card game that was themed around the local South African one-on-one “Freestyling” soccer culture (also called “Diski”), and also have an app component of showing videos  of how Diski moves looked through AR.

They were having trouble with the game design (their first iterations were basically a version of Top Trumps, remember that from your playground days?), and so they consulted with me to improve on the game design, while keeping the same elements. We went through a process of interrogating what Diski was all about, and ended up with the current game design for #DiskilSkills, where two players take turns attacking with various Diski moves, and where skills were equal, the player with more swag (“style” in the local vernacular) would win the point. “thematic af” was the goal of the design, and I daresay we did pretty well with it.

The game was launched on Oct 27 at the Goethe Institute at an event with actual Freestylers and kids showing off their real #DiskiSkills. I got to watch people play the game without me having to give any input - watching people read your rules and play the game without your help is a really awesome feeling! Further, watching people laughing as they kick each other’s ass, learning to get better at it, was fantastic.

Thanks to the Goethe Institute Johannesburg, Simphiwe (Mr Media X) and everyone involved in bringing this to life!

Designing for #EnterAfrica: a pan-African boardgame collaboration spanning 15 countries.

The Goethe Institute has been doing a mega project called EnterAfrica, which has two parts: Part one involves each of the 15 African countries involved creating location-based mobile games in their 15 cities that tell a story about the past and future of their city, and part two is the creation of a mega analogue game (tabletop game) by a collaboration of all 15 countries.

I was fortunate to have experience both in graphic design and tabletop games design, and I was involved in part one of EnterAfrica, and so was serendipitously brought in to help bring this ambitious game design project to life.

It was a tall order: the goal was to synthesise the voices, experiences and cultures of 15 diverse countries to create a united vision and expression as one game. The project was led by Christoph Deeg, a German gamification and digital/analogue strategy specialist, and various members of the Addis Ababa Goethe Institute. We had a one week workshop in Addis Ababa to get to know each other and home in on a game design which will then be crafted and designed further.

And what a week it was! We worked hard, exchanging and talking about everything from the principles of game design to cultural ideas and ideals, to individual and group experiences. I knocked out prototypes in record time and wrote and re-wrote rules. We learned from one another, laughed with one another, and had our eyes on the ball - the culmination of a single game that will represent both the diversity and the unity of the participating group of African countries.

I’m super grateful to the Goethe Institute for such an amazing, ambitious and expansive initiative, not only is the vision for such inclusivity astounding, the sensitivity with which the whole project was handled was inspiring and something I’ve learned a ton from <3

The week-long workshop is over, and we have a game design that’s all about trading resources in order to achieve one’s nation’s goals. The game is far from done yet, but we have the core values and rules that will take it to the finishing line. The game is planned to show in 2019 at A MAZE Berlin and Gamescom, so if you’re gonna be there, look out for the game. And with some luck, maybe I’ll see you there?