I am currently working on a follow up to my class-room game, Battle for the Presidency 2016.

“Battle for the Pesidency” is a mix between a traditional boardgame and a role-playing game. The activites of the game are comparable to what goes on in traditional boardgames about elections, but the game is designed to let up to 30 students play different roles, that are all important for the outcome of the game. It teaches students about the American election process, the role of the states and the candidates and issues in the present election. The game can be run in 3-4 hours and is aimed at students in grade 9-12. 

In terms of outreach, the 2016 version clearly outperformed my expectations. In October 2016, over 200 teachers in Denmark, Norway, Faroe Islands and Greenland received the game, and presumably most of them played it with their English classes.

In the US, the game was shared via the Teachers Pay Teachers platform and was sold about a dozen times. The US was not the intended target, so even selling any games at all was a good result. Even better, the game has kept selling in a trickle ever since.

The feedback I got was singularly positive. Teachers who did not like the game would, of course, not spend the energy to write about it in most cases, so this gives no indication of how large a proportion liked the game. On the other hand, I received a large proportion of positive feedback from teachers who enjoyed playing the game with their classes, and  only a few questions concerning the actual game play, so I feel that enough people benefited from the effort to make it well worth the effort. All questions regarding gameplay will be taken into account with regards to the 2020 edition.

Now a new election looms!

The 2020 election is really too dirty and too unpredictable to correctly portray in a game – so if the game was meant as a simulation of what is to come, it would be impossible to do properly. However, the main purpose of Battle for the Presidency is to teach students about the electoral system, the states, the major parties and current issues in US politics. And this can still be done!

Furthermore, I am convinced that the American democracy is strong enough to still exist and still support this election system, even if this year’s campaign ends up making a mockery of the dreams of both founding fathers and civil rights heroes. And I believe that teaching our students about how the system is supposed to work will help them assist in upholding the system (or the democratic system of their home country) in years to come.

So, Battle for the Presidency 2020 is a thing. I am finishing the last touches to rules, new cards and state information this week and will make it as presentable as I can next week. Possibly, I can squeeze in a play test before it is launched, but since the 2016 edition was well and truly tested, we will just have to go on faith, if this does not work out. I am planning to launch the game on September 15, 2020.

I am not working as a teacher any longer, so there is no one paying my salary while I do this. For this reason, I hope that people will buy it from Teachers Pay Teachers or directly from me. I will sell a download for $10 on TPT (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Danish-Gamification) or directly via mail (malikhyltoft[at]gmail[dot]com) for 100 DKK. I won’t make a killing from it, but for an unemployed game-designer every dollar counts. 

If you are wondering about the augmented price for buying directly on mail, it is simply because I want to dissuade people from using the direct method, as I would like to build up my TPT shop and also, if there are as many requests as the last time, it would be hard to keep track of everyone. Since some Danish schools are barred from making purchases outside the EU, however, the option needs to be open.

Copyright: I am not going to copyright the product. I have no way of upholding any copyright anyway. If you want to buy a copy for every teacher who uses the game – I’d be thrilled. If you buy a copy for your school and everybody uses it, I would deem it fair. If on the other hand, you distribute it freely to everybody after purchase that would be disrespectful to the work put into the project.

Have fun – or chills. It is 2020, after all.