Float is a semi collaborative game centered around grief therapeutic strategies such as storytelling, empathy, and managing loss.
Life Aboard the Menagerie
How to Play
You can buy float here and play at home!
Where is the Therapeutic Resource?
Griffin symbolizes someone who is grieving. A player can see Griffin as themselves, a close friend, or a family member. This allows each player to give the game the context that they need. However, no one plays as Griffin. The players are charged with saving him. This gives a griever the power to help themselves or visualize the goal of helping others. By understanding that help might be needed, the game can strip a player of pride or false independence that often gets in the way of truly processing grief.
The challenge cards are compiled of common stressors I learned both from secondary research and from various interviews. They represent authorities that want to help and protect, friends that misunderstand, environments that are less than comfortable, and internal obstacles (the crawlers are there to spice up the world and add a sense of danger and adventure to the play environment). The players’ characters have advantage and disadvantage to some of these challenges as is the case with any given individual. For example: while someone may be able to stay active and exercise daily, they may lack the personal discipline to do the internal work grief requires. The players are also equipped with four skills:
+ Moxy: inner and outer strength, determination, and bravery
+ Knowhow: intelligence and real life experience.
+ Pliancy: mental, emotional, and social flexibility.
+ Empathy: the ability to synthesize another’s position
based on inference and personal experience.
These are four traits I have found that are required to move through the grief process.
+ Knowhow: intelligence and real life experience.
+ Pliancy: mental, emotional, and social flexibility.
+ Empathy: the ability to synthesize another’s position
based on inference and personal experience.
These are four traits I have found that are required to move through the grief process.
The item cards are inspired by the many coping mechanisms that I was able to glean from my research. Often physical items remind us of who we want to be or the things we want to do. They can also be tools that accomplish tasks we normally wouldn’t be able to do on our own.
The secret rule cards have two purposes. To make the game play more interesting and they are made from other therapeutic practices that did not originate from grievers without the help of a professional.
Overall, the game can be played by anyone, but the content of this website is available
in the rule book to guide a grief experience to make this an accessible resource.
in the rule book to guide a grief experience to make this an accessible resource.
What are we up against?
Not long ago I had an experience with intense and sudden loss. There were obvious resources I had access to like therapy, and medication, that I used to adjust my life to what had happened. However, every book I read, every video I watched, every account I heard, had to be translated to apply to me, a young adult (not a child or elderly adult) who hadn’t lost a child of my own, or a spouse. While it wasn’t hard to glean the core of what each resource had to offer, I began to question why young adults did not have access to therapeutic grief resources made especially for them.
Moving forward I had to ask several questions before I could make a resource of my own.
+ What is Grief: how is it defined?
+ How does one grieve successfully?
+ What makes young adults unique in grief?
+ What resources are young adults likely to use?
+ What kind of environment supports grievers the best?
A game that would be played by a group, in person, with tangible materials was essentially my first and most ambitious solution to the questions at hand.
+ What is Grief: how is it defined?
+ How does one grieve successfully?
+ What makes young adults unique in grief?
+ What resources are young adults likely to use?
+ What kind of environment supports grievers the best?
A game that would be played by a group, in person, with tangible materials was essentially my first and most ambitious solution to the questions at hand.
Research: Games
The Making of
A game needs to go through multiple iterations, and be viewed through different filters. Because a game itself is a complex system, each time it gets play-tested the maker should view it from a different angle considering elements like: the physical components, the challenges, the rules, the players, their avatars, the narrative, the purpose, and many more. An immersive experience requires a world, with characters, and these two complicated pieces serve as the foundation for the players to stand on.
Mechanics are tools players use to navigate the game world and often reflect real world qualities. Choice, for example, is incorporated in many games to free the players’ actions but is not a natural element of every game. The element of choice can be activated through weighted mechanics, like a character’s statistics. Once the player has their own set of skills then the game can begin to balance with chance. Most importantly mechanics should offer the chance to be rewarded and punished.
Rules
Why do rules need to exist in a game? Ultimately it’s the rules that encourage a player to continue and provide intrigue in the process; like running down your street versus running through an obstacle course. Without rules, there is no game. Rules limit player action, are unquestionable, shared by each player, repeatable, and do not shift. There are three tiers of rules.
+ Constitutive rules are the mathematical logic at the very core of the game.
+ Operational rules are the “rules of play” that players come into direct contact with: the sequence of actions and restrictions.
+ Implicit rules are the unwritten rules usually pertaining to how the players should act and treat each other.
These lines can be blurred and played with by game makers to make something unique, but they will define every game. The more elegant the rules, the less players have to think about them (Salen 2010).
The Player
The player is ideally the most important component of the game. One needs to know who the player might be in order to compose a story around their experiences and capabilities. Age, gender, and background can be considered to shape the theoretical “player”(Schell 2010). Research shows that men and women appreciate some types of challenges and puzzles more than others, so it is best to incorporate all types especially when encouraging a team dynamic (Salen 2010).
The social and cultural dynamics of a game can bring players in, but also provide them with the tools they need in the outside world. These dynamics are opportunities to experience something a player would not interact with without the game. Safety and trust (or even lack thereof) are often used in adventuring games (Schell 2010). A game environment can also encourage the phenomenon of “forbidden play” where players can behave in taboo ways that they are not permitted to do in the real world. They also experience the consequences of these actions and, hopefully, their own real world feelings about these acts. Cultural play is when the game interacts with the world and its cultures at large. Games can be both performative and private acts (Salen 2010).
Communities in games allow for more hours of play and fill a social need. This makes communities a powerful influence in the gaming world. The game should present opportunities to bond with friends as well as make new connections through play. These bonds are helpful for continuing the game experience even after the box is closed. Creating community can be done through multiple strategies: emotional conflicts, player expression, allowing players to defend one another, and create events to look forward to and celebrate (Schell 2010).
Narrative
Narrative immerses the players in an experience that can generate real emotions, reflections of their core values, and goals. Narrative can be defined in three separate ingredients: situation, character, and form. The embedded narrative is pre-written, predetermined. It is often the starting point of a game to describe the embedded world and characters. Emergent narratives develop through the game play. This can be by the intention of the game maker or the players themselves. Dungeons and Dragons is almost purely emergent narratives.
Uncertainty is an unavoidable factor in games. It occurs at a micro and macro level. If the outcome of a game is fully certain then it is predetermined. If there is a risky outcome, then the goal of the game can be accomplished or not. An uncertain outcome is completely obscured from the player. Most games use a combination of these outcomes to make an interesting experience. Interest can come by the “randomness” or at least perceived randomness of a game. This is where chance, probability, and other uncontrollable mechanics come in handy.
Game Night
To gain valuable information about game play and the communities tabletop games create, I held a handful of game nights. I am lucky enough to know several people who routinely buy the highest rated board and card games. One of the game nights’ purposes was to learn about how various games are made and played. Experiencing everyone learning the rules and assembling the pieces showed me a lot of benefits and pitfalls. During play, I learned that groups had a hard time keeping casual conversation while playing complicated games. That is no good if you want to curate community and togetherness. Many of the players had a preference for collaborative or competitive games. If there was never a clear cut winner some would become disinterested. I fell in love with Photosynthesis: a board game where you earned points from your trees gaining energy from the sun and then completing its life cycle. The subjectivity was perfect, but more so the slot cut components and various cards and tokens had my design mind racing.
While we played, my guests and I spoke about why we play games as adults and how it is different from playing as children or with our families. The consensus was that there is nothing too strategic about “family games” i.e.... Uno, Phase 10, or Dominos. They are all low stakes enough that it won’t shake the family dynamics. As adults we play games with families we have chosen. Usually while we are in college or fresh out. Intellect is key in groups like these. Strategy games are a time to flex and demonstrate to each other how we have grown and adapted on our own.
All in all this research only solidified my fascination with creating a game as a therapeutic resource
Research: Grief
What is Grief?
The definition of grief is flexible. For the context of this project, grief is the point after initial loss: beyond the period of acute bereavement (Neimeyer, 2016). Grief is a form of love and a state of being that doesn’t necessarily end (McInerny 2018).
How does one grieve successfully?
Due to its continuing nature, grief is a hard thing to assess. Each circumstance of loss contains its own parameters to answer this question. Is the patient a widow? A veteran? How does stress play into the severity of grief? The expectations of successful grief change as the time line progresses. In the first weeks or months one just needs to avoid the suicidal window. However, not all are prone to failing at this stage (Neimeyer, 2016). Choosing to be in the world is a massive step. Then, returning to regular life practices within a year of the incident. This is often the goal grievers need the most help with as it takes discipline and a complete understanding of one’s emotions. In the coming years the most beneficial quality of grief forms in the desire to help others with theirs (Neimeyer, 2016).
What kind of Environment supports grievers the best?
The act of “dramaturgy” is a combination of theatrical and therapeutic activities. It can be used as a tool for the patient to understand how they feel about life and its meaning. Patients find the answers they need in the narratives they are telling. Internet Based Writing (historically used for PTSD, and pathological grief) is a system that uses the act of writing as actively learning about grief and how it can be handled (Neimeyer, 2016). This is similar to researching grief to make some kind of game to help others.
An environment where a subject can tell stories to a trusted community is one of the most beneficial resources for any grieving party. This is also an effective tool for those who are not grieving or maybe grieving less intensely to find common ground with those who in need of support.
Griever Interviews
Grief can be experienced in a myriad of ways. Loss is the most inevitable event someone can encounter, but each experience is unique. I spread the word that I was looking for interviews and anonymous grief stories. To my surprise, people were very willing to open up and talk to me face to face. Some of whom I had never met before.
Common denominators included items and symbols that people associated with their loss. A TV show. An animal. A song. What was more interesting was seeing that people who were early in their grief process had revelations about their feelings and experiences while speaking with me. I wasn’t there to therapize, or challenge their thinking: only to listen and record. But still while articulating what they had gone though they gained a better, more clear understanding of their grief and loss.
Mental Health Professional
By the time I was able to schedule a meeting to interview a therapist, I felt like I had already learned a lot. What could have been a three hour conversation had to be conducted in half the time.
The Doctor was able to tell me (anonymously) about patients of his, what difficulties come with helping grievers, and some of the core pillars of grief therapy; namely, primary and secondary losses. Due to the nature of loss, people are influenced by the domino effect of change that occurs after a loss event. The example he gave was graduating from high school (the primary loss). The graduate also loses a routine schedule, trusted authority figures, friends, and the freedom to not have to plan the next step. So, while graduating is perceived as a happy accomplishment, students often feel overwhelmed by the secondary losses and can fall
into a state of grief for a short period of time.
into a state of grief for a short period of time.
We also spoke of a person’s ability to manage grief more successfully after achieving this goal once. That makes the first loss in a person’s life an important chance to dictate future experiences. A common response to death is to close one’s self off so they aren’t vulnerable with anyone else to feel that pain again. When the reality is, if the one grieving can process and feel to their full extent, they will be better equipped when they need to grieve again. Additionally, when someone does not allow themselves to grieve they are more susceptible to smaller losses. Less consequential events will impact more severely than those events are worth.
What makes young adults unique in grief?
There are also factors everyone experiences in or out of grief that need to be aligned in order for one to heal efficiently and healthily. Bio-genic, personal-agenic, dyadic-relational (various types of relationships), and cultural-linguistic factors all need to be addressed and connected to each other in order for a patient to easily live with their grief (Neimeyer, 2016).
Those grieving often feel pressure from two types of stressors: loss oriented, and restorative oriented. A patient might feel so overwhelmed with a sense of loss they are stunted in their progress. Alternatively one could be so intent on not stumbling over this incentive they could be ignoring their feelings leading to stress, anxiety, and depression. It takes a balance of loss and restoration stressors to fully overcome the more crippling stages of grief and move on to the more interactive and developed stages (Neimeyer, 2016).
All that to say: young adults sit in a unique set of circumstances that differentiate them from more common grieving groups such as children and elderly adults. A young adult developmentally has all the assets they need to process grief. However, the figures they are likely to lose (young friends, spouses, children, authority figures) rewrites the factors they live with and increases the intensity at which they experience the grief (McInerny 2018 & McElroy 2019).
Play Tests & Quarantine
Going Black and White
A critical part of any new game is play testing. This is where players are observed so any knots can be identified and untangled for the best player experience possible. Initially I had a very specific schedule of who would play with whom based on stages of grief informed by interviews. And then the Covid 19 pandemic shut down everyone and everything. Since it wasn’t safe for me to travel around from house to house I petitioned friends, family, and co-workers to print and play the game I adapted to be in black and white and formatted on standard 8.5”x11” PDFs. Then I was able to call in and turn off my mic and camera. I couldn’t have orchestrated a more ideal fly-on-the-wall scenario. Players forgot I was there — they stopped trying to ask me questions (not that I would answer in the first place) — and began to make assumptions and work harder to understand the rules and game play.
This process showed me that my board was too long of a journey, so I adapted the inward spiral to a zig zag on a skinnier layout. That also solved the complaint that getting started was a chore: if a player fails a challenge they are forced backwards. With a shorter board and fewer steps, that challenge seems less hopeless so players don’t lose their ambition. I also adapted the rules so players could start with three Item cards to jump start their progress.
The last thing to change was the various linguistic issues. It is not easy to build a world and give clear concise instructions. The Challenge and Item cards are only so big.
