We had a brainstorming session and an idea of a board game came up. Then a card game followed and it seemed interesting enough to be explored in detail because of the low cost prototype that we could make.
The idea is that the player would gather cards by talking to the stakeholders that are involved in whatever issue the game is about. The end of the game would be a player vs computer card game. Every card can have 5 parameters, each parameter can affect positively or negatively or be neutral to a certain facet of the issue.
Yet to be determined is how the card game will be structured and played-out.
Also, it seems feasible to build an interface that could make it easy for the newsroom to enter values for each card and the questions associated to it.
Another option would be to explore the possibility of creating a large pool of cards, and forcing the player to pick a limited number of cards that can be played in the final battle.
We thought that limiting the number of cards might add to the re-playability of the game and make the end game a little different. There could be two approaches to the collecting the cards aspect: one would be to able the player to collect all the cards through asking all the questions. The other would be to limit the number of questions that can be asked to a character. The latest would definitely improve re-playability but it can limit the access to information.
The next step for me is to research two players card games in which the cards have different parameters. I also need to find how to make this card game intriguing with a minimum level of complexity. The mechanics shouldn’t be too complicated because of the nature of our game targeted to the occasional video-game players or non-players at all.