DiscrimiNation is a persuasive boardgame about the marginalised groups of our society. It intends to stimulate mutual comprehension to defeat the discrimination instincts that more or less consciously populate our daily lives. It pushes its players to interact and communicate, personally testing the most common justifications that have been used in the human history to legitimise the discriminatory ideologies.
Asking the players to wear the shoes of historically discriminated groups such as women, Blacks, atheists and homosexuals, DiscrimiNation covers topics of diversity, mechanisms of social hatred and prejudices, aiming at struggling biases and unconscious detrimental behaviours among citizens.
Players act to protect their in-game rights from discriminatory actions, both from other players and the government (lead by game system) in a climate of rising hatred. In particular, the game highlights the human tendency to interact with the unknown or not-understood pouring hate on it, thus leading everyone to lose.
The box is handcrafted, made in black painted wood. The idea was to create something solid and disturbing, recalling the idea of blood and darknes brought by the dictatorship and hatred.
The board represents the capital city of Discrimi (the nation of the setting) and has three active areas:
- the Hatred Scale: tracking the population's hate against the discriminated minorities;
- the Shared Knowledge: a pool of knowledge to lower the hatred of the population;
- the turn counter.
- the Hatred Scale: tracking the population's hate against the discriminated minorities;
- the Shared Knowledge: a pool of knowledge to lower the hatred of the population;
- the turn counter.
There are 5 sheets, 4 for the players, 1 for the animals category, a non-playing character.
The sheets are composed of:
- the description of the character and his social group to defend;
- the description of the character and his social group to defend;
- the human rights he could lose during the game;
- the 3 N counter, tracking the reinforcement of the justification of the group discrimination through the words Natural, Normal, Necessary. Higher they are, less rights the group will maintain.
- the 3 N counter, tracking the reinforcement of the justification of the group discrimination through the words Natural, Normal, Necessary. Higher they are, less rights the group will maintain.
he boardgame has 5 card decks.
1. The 2 Justification Decks: Science and Religion. The players can use them to reinforce or to weaken the 3 N of another player by giving a speech (with religious or scientific content) using the three key words reported on the card, with the purpose to convince the other players about his reasons.
1. The 2 Justification Decks: Science and Religion. The players can use them to reinforce or to weaken the 3 N of another player by giving a speech (with religious or scientific content) using the three key words reported on the card, with the purpose to convince the other players about his reasons.
2. The Government Deck: these cards are used every round by the dictarorship (alias the game itself) to rise or lower the N of the player and consequently the hatred of the citizens.
3. The News Deck: at the beginning of every round the players have to read one News Card which effect will apply to all players.
4. The Propaganda Deck: these cards can be bought by the players to be used on themself to lower the 3 N.
- D-coins: the currency of the nation Discrimi;
- Knowledge tokens: can be used to lower the hatred or to buy Justification Cards.
A project by Eleonora Alberello
Illustrations by Luca Carnevale
A project for Eleonora Alberello's degree thesis at Politecnico di Milano, 2015
Professor: Maresa Bertolo
TA: Ilaria Mariani
