$ needed to complete and market a political board game regarding the Electoral Vote for 2016

[Greg Leach]

I have developed a political board game; I have titled “Politicize”.

The game has a cartogram map board, I designed specifically for this game, showing the general location of the 50 states and the # of electoral votes per state per the 2012 electoral election stats.
This game can be played on a board, like Monopoly, or on a computer and possibly online competitively.
It can be with just two players or several people (students) divided into Republicans or Democrats teams where the team could assume positions as seen in a Political Campaign Staff.

When players, Democrats or Republicans, roll a dice to go up and down the campaign trail (board) they can buy Senators, Representatives, Justices, or Districts when landing on that designated square.
The Senators and Representative names and Party are shown on a States square.
Example: R-John McCain-Senator
Naming representatives  can help the players connect names, states, party, and positions.

There are 50 open squares that when a player lands on: they receive a card from categories like, Lobbyist, Polling, Campaigning, or Earmarks resulting in that player (party) receiving campaign $ or paying fines.
The Party that receives the card, has to read out loud what the card says and follow the cards instructions.
The card might even be from the Supreme Court naming the Judge and some ruling that might have been beneficial or detrimental to a Parties position on certain issues.

Like real elections they need to raise $ to buy political campaigns advertising and essentially win the votes needed to get the 270 electoral votes to win the election.

The Party can trade or sell  States Representatives or Senators to the other Party in order to control that States Majority of Electoral Votes.  There is a score board that shows the states # of electoral votes that a Party has won (bought), how many more they need to win that State, and what % of the 270 votes that State represents.

The game does not favor either Party.  Its primary function is to learn some electoral basics and a lot of what is going on, good or bad, with their federal government through the use of this fun competitive game.  Opponents roll the dice to determine whether they will compete as a Republican or Democrat

Planer will learn a lot of things such as:

How many States, Districts, Supreme Court Justices, USPO state abbreviations, and factual information regarding earmarks, lobbyist, campaigning, polling.
I have research thousands of classical examples of real information that are printed on the cards that does tell the names of elected officials, lobbying firms, donators, etc.
(i.e. $178,000 to study shrimp on a mini thread mill)

 I feel this game can be a great educational tool made possible because it utilizes a competitive game basis of having fun.  When players read a card out loud, there will probably be a lot of discussion between all the players regarding the information on that card.  It is my belief that most of the country is under informed about what takes place in their government. I expect most student and adults will be shocked at what they learn and hopefully then will be more Politicized in our future elections.

I need funding to create the art work, buy materials, patent, and partner up whereby this game can be manufactured and marketed effectively so it can reach the public prior to the 2016 elections.

 Your reply with any help on funding or where to go for help will be greatly appreciated

[Mark Chen]

Hi,

How much playtesting have you done with this game Greg? Just from my knowledge of the board game community, which granted is for commercial games, not necessarily ones meant to teach specifics about real-world systems, I know that many designers go through months of iterations with many playtests. How many prototypes have you gone through?

To answer your question about how much money you need, though, have you looked at successful kickstarter projects for boardgames? They often break down the cost for backers and typically start at something like $20k for boardgames and $10k for card games... but these usually don't really recoup the costs... and often they already have artwork in place. You could go with something like Game Crafter to publish one-offs on demand...

hope this helps,

mark

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You see before you Mark Chen, PhD. Above his head appears the label "Director, Pepperdine Gameful Design Lab." Do you send him a tweet (@mcdanger), check out his website (markdangerchen.net), or respond to this email? He looks at you expectantly with a smile.