‘That’s what girls have to think about all the time’. Board games for civic engagement and perspective-taking

This article discusses how multiplayer board game design can facilitate personal storytelling, discussion, and perspective-taking. Fifty-four participants played the original, intentionally imbalanced board game Right 2 Roam and contributed to group discussion in a series of workshops. Drawing on thematic analysis of data collected from these workshops, we examine how players recognise, respond to, and reflect on their own lived experience of walking alone. Players voluntarily disclosed lived experience, recognised real-world imbalance, and worked together to devise strategies for collaboration both in and outside of the game. We conclude that it is a combination of systems design (imbalance, uncertainty, randomness, and chance), embedded narrative, context of play (social, communication, and collaboration) and affordance for player expression that fulfil the potential of board games to (i) create critical engagement with serious and personally impacting topics and (ii) prompt meaningful exchange of perspective and lived experience.