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What is GeoSwapGame?
The goal of the game is to geoswap knowledge with other players (this means they will have to answer thematic questions about other categories successfully). GeoSwapGame is a “soft-competitive” game in which the board is divided in 6 categories and each player is assigned to a category and has to answer questions about other sectors in order to geoswap knowledge, win the game and learn about geospatial concepts along the way.
What GeoSwapGame offers you?
• Learning new concepts about the geospatial domain in a fun and engaging way.
• Playing and experiment with geospatial concepts in a way that can benefit your work in the future.
• Collaborating with colleagues throughout the game and improve communication skills about technical and complex subjects.
Get started
The board game is played in an environment called "Geoland", which represents an European city with the aim of improving its public services by taking advantage of innovative solutions enabled by location data and technology. To do so, the advisory of experts (players) is required.
In this context, each of the players is an advisor in a particular topic:
“European Policy”, “Digital Government”; “Geospatial data”, “Geospatial technology”, “Innovative solutions” and “Interoperability”. However, each of them is in a silo of expertise which must change as soon as possible.
To make Geoland a location-enabled digital government, players must exchange information. Each “silo” represents an enabler or component of digital transformation. For knowledge to converge, as in real life, it is necessary to exchange, consolidate and adopt new ideas. This way “alliances” are created!
What are “alliances” in practical terms? Alliances occur when two advisors exchange each other tokens (“geoswap”) after both have answered their questions correctly.
The winner is the first player that creates alliances with all five other advisors. When this happens, Geoland is on the right path to becoming a Location-enabled Digital Government!
Geoland can be any city and can be scaled at any administrative level. It could also be a business or project that needs to make its workflows more efficient, by applying the spatial dimension of data and technology.
Game materials
Materials included in the game pack:
- Boardgame: Divided into 6 categories that will be assigned to each player/team. Each category has 6 placeholders tokens for geoswapping.
- Category booklets: 6 category booklets with 12 questions and 1 insight per question.
- Insight cards :72 cards, 12 questions per category (4 questions per difficulty level)
- Tokens: 36 tokens, 6 colours.
- Rulebook: Contains all the rules to start playing the game and secondary information to consult during the game.
- Printing manual: Contains all instructions to print and distribute the game and materials.
- Feedback template: After the game players should submit it to establish a communication channel.
- Onboarding presentation: A set of slides to explain the 3 phases of the game to all the participants.
The game is divided in 3 phases
1. Setup
Print the necessary game materials by following the rules present in the Printing Manual within the Game Pack. Prepare the game and engage the players.
2. Game
Follow the step-by-step mechanics, engage with the geospatial domain together with your colleagues and find a winner!
The Rulebook can be consulted throughout the game.
3. Debrief
Reflect on the lessons learned and how the newfound knowledge can impact your work. Once the winner gathers 5 tokens from other categories, all players may share their thoughts and identify the most relevant outcomes they got from the game. In the end, you can fill in the template and communicate to the game designers your input about the game experience.
Have fun! The game is designed to be a learning and fun experience.
Apply this materials to any topic of your interest! Build your own game with the reusable game toolkit