top of page
SHASN
CLIENT
Memesys Culture Lab
ROLE
Product Designer
TEAM
Zain Memon, Soumik Lahiri, Nidhi Shetty, Mayuresh Paradkar, Amaan Shaikh,
Aayush Asthana
LOCATION
Mumbai, India
Designing a board game to engage youth in dialogue about politics,
power and ethics
Game design, Design research, Systems thinking, Prototyping, Manufacturing
Memesys Culture Lab wanted to create a game that imitates the real world processes of political cooperation and manipulation & complex role of politicians.
BACKGROUND
Talking about politics instantly brings about extreme emotions- of either heat and energy or dismissal and oblivion, and there's always blaming and shaming involved. In 2017, co-founders of Memesys culture lab directed a non-fiction film called 'An Insignificant Man' in which they shadowed the Indian politician, Arvind Kejriwal and his party, exposing the inner workings, thoughts, dilemmas and strategies of an Indian political party for the first time. The movie became the first step in creating an impactful dialogue surrounding politics among younger generations and they didn't want to stop there.
RESULTS
Over the span of 18 months, we developed Shasn- A multiplayer strategy board game that echoes the real world processes of political cooperation and manipulation and makes people reflect on the choices they make when given power. The game ran a successful Kickstarter campaign and is now available for purchase here.
THE PROCESS
In order to replicate the workings of the political system through a game, we began to understand
a politician's election campaign.
Election campaign & Electioneering activities
Every politician running for election develops a formal statement of the programme & objectives of their political party, with a view to attracting the largest number of voters. Their promises include guarantees to religious or linguistic minorities, judicial and financial reforms, health, education, social justice and world peace. Political parties make use of techniques like public meetings and rallies, advertising etc in order to carry their message to the voters.
DEVELOPING THE CORE STRUCTURE
In an election campaign, candidates put their thoughts, beliefs and ideologies on display and convince the public why they should be voted for. This seemed like a good start for creating the mechanism of the game.
How does a candidate win an election?
Once the political party's manifesto is created, they need to continuously work on staying true to their promises, maintaining goodwill of the public and the media. They will be able to gain supporters and followers only if they continue to take good decisions for the betterment of the country. They win the election if they gain majority number of votes.
Make a decision
Acquire Resources
Funds/Trust/Clout/Media
Gain Voter's Trust
Create Majority
Win Election
PROTOTYPING
The motto for the entire process from here was Make - Test - Fail - Learn. Learning by making made it easier to understand and visualize.
We began by using playing cards, rough sheets, components or existing games and sticky notes. As we learnt from each game and refined our ideas, we shifted to more high fidelity prototypes over time.
Scroll left to see view photos of each prototype
PLAYTESTING
A big and important part of this iterative process was to analyze player behavior and get feedback. We conducted about 500 total playtests.
Every playtest session had a different goal, depending on the stage we were at. But essentially, we testing if the Rules, System and Presentation of the game were supporting the intention and impact that we wanted to create.
Scroll left to see view photos of the range of prototypes
THE FINAL GAME
After 18 months of collaborative effort,
Shasn - the multiplayer political strategy game was introduced to the world.
Shasn (Noun)
Origin : Sanskrit
1. Governance, rule or regime
2. Throne, seat of power
Shasn is a competitive, high-octane political strategy game where each player is a politician competing for power.
As a politician campaigning for the future, you will have to make hard choices every step of the way. Clinch policies. Get voters chanting your name at the polls. Spread and solidify your influence. Unhinge your enemies and let slip the dogs of war.
Strategize. Scheme. Dominate. Prevail.
When the heat is on, what will you stand for?
Players make tough ethical or political choices by answering one of two given options. Every answer yields different resources like Funds, Clout, Media and Trust. Manage your reservoir.
Influence voters, Create majority areas and Build ideologies
Use resources to influence voters and then deploy them to capture areas and form majorities. Gerrymander voters, invest in conspiracy cards and unlock boost powers. Dominate & Win.
OFFICIAL LAUNCH TRAILER
HOW TO PLAY
LAUNCHING ON KICKSTARTER
The game was launched in 2019 on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform. In 30 days, the campaign proved to be successful with the help of around 4000 backers. The team soon went into production.
To order the game, visit www.playshasn.com
.png)
THE FOUNDER'S EDITION
I designed a premium version of the game exclusively for the Kickstarter campaign, made out of wood, metal and resin.
BIG THANKS
To Zain and the team- it has been quite an exciting journey to see Shasn grow from paper to product. I'm grateful for the mentors and friends I made at Memesys!
Helping communities rebuild their relationship with food.
bottom of page