Board Game Jam

Design and share your own board game as an OER!

Gavin Willshaw Stephanie (Charlie) FarleyDigital Curator Open Education Resource Advisor

Library & University Collections Learning, Teaching and Web Services

Except where otherwise stated, this document has been licensed CC BY 4.0

Aims for today

• Learn how to run a Board Game Jam.• Be able to identify and correctly use licensed material.• Create your own fully attributable, shareable game.

By AIGA [Public domain], via Wikimedia

Your first task:

Be playful.

Create an avatar!

Jester (Design Informatics Board Game Jam 2016) by Charlie Farley, CC BY

Board Games: Not just Monopoly!• A “golden age” of board games (Duffy, The Guardian, 2014)• Increase in sales of 25% + over last four years• Move from specialist suppliers to the mainstream• Rise in games cafes / clubs• Noticeable increase in games which

tackle social issues. (see http://www.tiltfactor.org)

• Also games in teaching:• Copyright the Card Game• Curate! The digital curation boardgame

Role of the internet

• Cheap digital versions of games – “try before you buy”

• Online retailers make buying process easier

• Blogs / social media create buzz around games

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/http://geekandsundry.com/shows/tabletop/

Games are improving!• Merger of “Eurogames and Amerigames” traditions• Eurogames (e.g. Settlers of Catan): strategy, mechanics,

abstract• Amerigames (e.g. Risk): aggression / direct conflict, theme

more important than mechanics • New games coming out which combine a strong theme with

diverse game mechanics (e.g. Game of Thrones)• Board games and digital games borrowing from each other

What can games do for us?

• Allow us to interact with each other in different ways

• Create a safe space where losing can be experienced away from fear.

• Provides space for experimentation

• Can challenge, inspire, and motivate

Create a game to be shared as an OER

This will include:

• Game Name

• Theme and Setting

• End / Win conditions

• Set of rules / instructions.

• Attribution details for resources used

What is an OER?An Open Educational Resource, OER, is a freely available and openly licensed digital resource.

By applying an open licence to a copyrighted work, rights holders give permission for others to copy or change their work in ways that would otherwise infringe copyright law.

DefinitionsIntellectual property rights (IPR):Are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds (usually for a set period of time).

Image via Pixabay by geralt [Public Domain]

Is an area of IPR that covers the rights of authors of creative works.

Copyright:

Image via Pixabay by Peggy_Marco [Public Domain]

is the permission, or authorisation, to re-use a copyrighted work.

A licence:

Image via Pixabay by kartik27 [Public Domain]

A Creative Commons (CC) licence is one of several open licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.

Image via Pixabay by Kriemer [Public Domain]

By applying an open licence to a copyrighted work, rights holders give permission for others to copy or change their work in ways that would otherwise infringe copyright law.

Creative Commons licenses

For the games created today we will be using a CC BY 4.0 licence:

Except where otherwise stated, this work by [author’s names] is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Are you ready to play?

Image: Jumanji, via Giphy.com

CRC Flickr account (select 3 images – 5min)

• The Centre for Research Collections’ Flickr account is an example of an Open Educational Resource.

• It contains several hundred images from our images database

• https://www.flickr.com/photos/crcedinburgh/albums

Theme and Setting (5min)

Theme – The underlying premise or set of assumptions describe what the players are doing in the game.

Setting – This can be the geographic location, time period, and/or imaginative environment where the game is taking place.

End Conditions (5min)

What are the end or win conditions for your game?

What objective or purpose are your players working towards (or to avoid)?

Mechanics (10min)

Select 2 mechanics from the list provided.

“These are the procedures and rules of your game...how players can and cannot try to achieve it, and what happens when they try.”

Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses

Gameplay / Rules (10min)

Write out a basic set of rules on a spare sheet of paper (NOT on your game document) that will guide your players through your game mechanics towards the end/win condition of your game.

Consider what types of resources might you want to include in a game? Digital? Audio? Physical? Where might you source these?

Gameplay / Rules (10min)

Confirm your rules and write these down on your game document.

Have you listed all of the resources used to create your game? Including any you created yourself?

Congratulations! You made a board game!

Image: Robot/Android by OpenClipart-Vectors/23750, Pixabay, CC0

How could games, or game creation, be used for Peer Support?

Rock-Craft, by Workandapix (Pixabay), CC0

http://open.ed.ac.uk/run-your-own-board-game-jam/

Where to find licensed resources

http://search.creativecommons.com (Flickr / Google Images / Wikimedia Commons / YouTube / Pixabay / Sound Cloud / and more)

Freesound

Project Gutenberg or WikiSource

All across the web people are creating and sharing with open licenses.

Feedback and Follow Up

http://Open.Ed.ac.uk

@OpenEdEdinburgh