40 ANSWERS
40Answers is a digital card game engaging players in debating about multiculturalism and religions.
The game has been commissioned by the foundation Hallgarten-Franchetti Centro Studi Villa Montesca as an outsourced activity supporting a WP of the Erasmus+ KA2 funded project Life Two: Learning Interculturality from Religions towards Outreach Activities.
The Challenge
The client was a foundation with consolidated experience in educational projects in the cultural field.
The project had educational objectives, linked to the promotion of knowledge on concepts, habits, and customs of different European religions and educational objectives, linked to overcoming prejudices regarding the function of religions as a political and cultural element.
Criticalities were many:
We wanted to achieve the educational and didactic objectives with a truly enjoyable activity for young people (usually not interested in the theme).
We wanted the approach to be polite since the contents are sensitive but at the same time, we wanted the players to be involved in a passionate debate and nudged into a personal interpretation of the contents.
Our Solution
The proposed solution is based on two pillars:
- Design a game focusing on socialization aesthetics that could be played in class within groups with a variable number of players.
- Leave the interpretation of the contents to the players and make it the focus of a creatively stimulating problem-solving activity.The concept developed by the game design is “to make players discover that every religion is a possible response to individual and collective human needs“.
Impact
The game proved to be a success and exceeded all expectations.
The piloting reports reported enthusiastic feedback from educators from all the countries involved to the point that the WP Lead declared “The feedback for the 40 Answer Game was unquestionably 5/5”
There was also an excellent evaluation by the evaluation commission (CE) on the activity which did not require any addition to the deliverables delivered.The most important thing is that a sincere interest emerged from the young players who gave enthusiastic feedback and spontaneously returned to play several times during the spring school hosted in Italy.
Gameplay
A party card game where players discover that every religion is a response to universal needs 40Answers is a card video game where players try to associate rituals and beliefs from various religions with abstract personal or collective needs. The correctness of the need/response association is not determined by the game but by the group of players themselves, as the most shared associations will be rewarded.
40Answers attempts to address religion as an important humanistic theme beyond its outcomes. Players are led to engage in discussions about the spiritual and philosophical meanings of beliefs that are either close to or distant from their own culture.
Most importantly, by becoming creators of meaning, players will discover that, despite different narratives and rituals, all religions are deeply united in a common goal of individual fulfillment and the support of coexistence.
About 40 Answers
Fabrizio Boldrini
General Manager – Fondazione Villa Montesca
The Villa Montesca Foundation asked WS to develop an educational project on the theme of multi-religious school inclusion. To address this dedicated theme, a game was jointly created that could allow students across Europe to reflect on the differences related to the religion they profess. It was a very positive experience that fully highlighted the professionalism of the developers and their ability to be flexible in an encounter with experts from the field, who also had diverse cultural and religious sensitivities. See the project at lifetwo.eu, the game is called “40 Answers”.
