Mind the Gap
Mind the Gap is a board game designed to foster intercultural awareness and understanding. Players travel through a metro-system board, answering questions based on 6 cultural dimensions. The game incorporates gamification elements, encouraging players to consider diverse perspectives. By earning points, completing route cards, and engaging with multiple-choice questions, players gain a deeper understanding of different cultures, promoting interaction and intercultural awareness.
Intercultural awareness is important in today’s globalized world. People from different cultures interact and collaborate continuously. Raising awareness on cultural differences can help bring people closer, reducing the gap between them. Gamification is a good means to address this challenge, as games have a unique ability to engage and captivate players, creating experiences that promote active learning and exploration. By incorporating the element of play into the process of raising awareness on cultural differences, we can tap into that natural curiosity and enjoyment that arises from discovery.
Therefore, I have created a boardgame called Mind the Gap. The game is based on 6 cultural dimensions, each are explored from different perspectives. Or you can say, from opposite sides of a cultural gap. Through gameplay, players are encouraged to consider these diverse perspectives, fostering intercultural understanding.
The board of Mind the Gap represents a metro-system where players will travel around the map, trying to earn points by answering questions correctly which are based around the 6 cultural dimensions. When a player lands on a main station, they will draw a game card and pick one of the multiple-choice answers. However, these questions can be answered from 2 different perspectives which depends on the players pawn colour. Each pawn has a blue and purple side and when a player crosses a certain flip tile, their pawn flips to the other color. When answering a question on a main station, they must answer it from a certain perspective on the card that matches their current pawn color. When answered correctly, they gain 2 points and can stamp off that station on their rail pass. Besides this, each player has task cards they have to complete. These cards state which stations they must pass to complete their route. To check their completion of the route card, the rail pass will be used to see if these stations were stamped off. Once one player has completed 3 route cards, the game ends, and the player with the most points has won.
By playing the game, people are brought closer as the game stimulates players by opening up to more perspectives on cultures, it stimulates interaction, and it strengthens intercultural awareness.
