Launching a physical card game in the middle of a global pandemic is quite a crazy idea. Our game is made for being played during a workshop with multidisciplinary teams working in one room together. Unfortunately, this will not be possible for quite a while. From the beginning of our project, we were thinking about creating a digital version of the game, but the love for real human interaction and tangible products convinced us to continue in this direction. So now, here we are selling physical cards to a world of people who are not supposed to meet each other. After all, hope for a better future is an integral part of any innovation process. 

Hybrid is the new online

Since March 2020, we all are working remotely whenever it is possible. This leads to long hours in front of a computer monitor every day. If you are used to this, you know the feeling… Yaaaaaawwwwn!

Therefore, we were asking ourselves in a typical Game of Conflicts manner: How might we reduce the “hazardous effects on the system” (i.e. the corona virus affecting us) while at the same time not increasing “loss of energy” in terms of zoom fatigue? The answer to this conflict is a version of playing our game in a hybrid way.

Step-by-step instructions for hybrid playing

In order to play Game of Conflicts in a hybrid way, you need the following things:

• 1 card deck per player
• A videoconferencing software such as Teams, Skype or Zoom.
  
• A set of playing figures 
  
• Ideally our easy playing kit printed out for documentation
• Sticky notes and markers for each player for documenting their thoughts

One person should act as the game facilitator. S/he will lead the team through the game and move the playing figure in order to keep track of who is playing. Additionally, it makes sense to have one person writing down the notes on our easy playing kit. Nevertheless, we also realized that in a remote set-up it makes sense to document your thoughts even more meticulously than in the real world.
 
Once the set-up is ready, we suggest following these steps:

• The facilitator shuffles the cards.
• The rest of the team should keep their cards in the order of the numbers in the upper right corner. The team members can either distribute all cards on the table in order to have an overview or keep the stack of cards in their hand and flip through them whenever they need a new card. 
• The facilitator “hands out” 4 cards to each player by calling out which cards s/he drew. The numbers at the top right can help the players to easily find the proper cards in their own stack.
• The hybrid version of Game of Conflicts is played openly: the facilitator assigns an area on the table for each player and puts the cards there openly. It makes sense to stick a note with the name of each player to each area and place the corresponding cards under the name.
• The other players should duplicate this game set-up on their own tables. This way, every player has an overview of all the cards that are currently in the game. You can decide, if you would rather see each other on the video screen or point your cameras towards the table so that the other players can see your table (in that case you can easily check if you are consistent). From our experience, it will  be useful to be able to see the other players’ Hearing each others voice is more important than seeing each others faces throughout the game.
• Once the game is prepared and every player has all cards open in front of him or her, the game continues just as it would in the real world. The only difference: each player has to constantly duplicate the game on his or her side of the video conference. You will find detailed instructions in the leaflet which comes with each package of Game of Conflicts. 

Tried and tested!

Of course, we immediately had to try out if this hybrid version of our game would work.

We have to say: it takes a little time to get used to a hybrid set-up, but it still is a lot of fun. It definitely is different from working on a computer screen, because every player has the cards and therefore their attention is not focused on the video image of the other players. This is a very relaxing experience in between all the zoom or Skype conferences and mural co-creation sessions. Try it!

Special offer!!!

In order for you to stay home and safe while still enjoying the fun of playing Game of Conflicts IRL with your team of innovators, we have created an offer which no one really can refuse: If you buy 3 card decks or more, you will receive a discount of 25%.  This way you can provide one card deck to each person with whom you want to play the game. Additionally you will receive a TRIZ matrix 2010 and a GoC playing figures set.