Play the game

Wednesday evening saw me at a card game. Normally, such words would conjure up visions of a circle of light on a table supporting piles of money and encircled chain-smoking coves with a glass at spirits at the elbow while the night was gambled away. This impression couldn’t be further from the truth.

The room was in community centre in Bart Nil (for Bristolians; Barton Hill for the outside world), within whose hallowed portals smoking is not permitted, the drinks were tea and coffee and we were only due to be there for 2 hours, with no shirts or other property lost when it all came to an end.

Sample Digital Challenge game cards

The card game in question was the ‘Digital Challenge Game’ developed by Drew Mackie and David Wilcox for the Government’s £7 mn. Digital Challenge and this was the first time it had been played. It goes roughly like this: take a table of 6-8 people. Hand them 2 sets of cards: one with projects that could be implemented under the Digital Challenge; and the other with additional ideas you may like to consider and add to these some blank notelets for the group around the table to use for their own ideas. Design a project using any mix of cards plus any of the group’s own ideas. Done that?

Good. Here comes phase 2. Divide into smaller groups – say 3-4. Now you’re introduced to a set of half a dozen or so characters of all shapes and sizes. As a group pick one character. Now comes the creative part: your group has to plot out the life of the character through involvement with the project over the next four years. No matter you did, real life will intervene on the way. At random times in the group’s storyboard, Drew Mackie turns up unexpectedly to slap down a crisis or event – crime, birth, illness – those things that make life unpredictable. Afterwards, we all read each others’ tales. The interesting point is that they’re all plausible. Two groups have taken the same character, an aspiring unemployed musician: one – despite two of Drew’s ‘googlies’ – leads to international artiste status, the other to family life but still playing music. Fairy tales do occasionally happen in real life instead of childrens’ books.

Drew and David found the evening useful too and we didn’t mind being guinea pigs. They’ll be tweaking the game for future outings in Manchester and elsewhere.

David has chronicled this event on his blog and more details of the game are on Drew and David’s Usefulgames site.