No Game’s Land

Outside of player-generated role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons and larp, we struggled to identify card and board games that position players to make sacrifices. Rarely, if ever, are we faced with an in-game dilemma of two competing goods, one of which we must sacrifice (at a costly loss) to the other. Yet such decisions dominate our own lives. Further, we see genuine sacrifices occurring in MMORPGs and larps where players have to make difficult choices about who to send into battle, how to distribute the rewards of battles amongst multiple players, and if the storyline calls for it, what friendships or allies to put on the line. So why are there no board games that tap into this fundamental aspect of human life? In the following essay, we detail the creation and empirical research behind an original board game that positions players to make genuine sacrifices from start to finish.