Board Game Jam run for the Edinburgh University Student Association (EUSA)'s Peer Support & Learning volunteer students. This session was run over two hours and included a one hour Board Game Jam, game creation challenge.

1. Board Game Jam
Design and share your own board game as an OER!
Gavin Willshaw Stephanie (Charlie) Farley
Digital 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

2. 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

3. Your first task:
Be playful.
Create an avatar!
Jester (Design Informatics Board Game Jam 2016) by Charlie Farley, CC BY

4. 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

5. 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/

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. Definitions
Intellectual 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]

11. Is an area of IPR that covers the rights of authors
of creative works.
Copyright:
Image via Pixabay by Peggy_Marco [Public Domain]

12. is the permission,
or authorisation,
to re-use a
copyrighted work.
A licence:
Image via Pixabay by kartik27 [Public Domain]

13. 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]

14. 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.

15. Creative Commons licenses

16. 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

17. Are you ready to play?
Image: Jumanji, via Giphy.com

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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)?

21. 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

22. 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?

23. 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?

24. Congratulations! You made
a board game!
Image: Robot/Android by OpenClipart-Vectors/23750, Pixabay, CC0

25. How could games, or game creation, be
used for Peer Support?
Rock-Craft, by Workandapix (Pixabay), CC0

28. 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.

29. Feedback and Follow Up
http://Open.Ed.ac.uk
@OpenEdEdinburgh