Trash Towkay
- Boon Siang Leok
- Apr 28
- 9 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Problem Outline
To commemorate MSO’s 10th anniversary, MSO co-organised the OGCC 2024 with Temasek Polytechnic (TP) to partner the community to conceptualise and design games to promote considerate behaviours for a better living environment in Singapore.
The objectives of OGCC 2024 are:
To design and develop games to encourage residents to adopt considerate behaviours to improve their neighbourhoods; and
To make use of games to reach out to residents and raise their awareness of municipal issues in their neighbourhoods and how to tackle them.
The Challenge:
Every year, our public agencies and town councils receive a high volume of feedback on municipal issues from residents and the members of the public. While some of these issues can be resolved by the relevant public agency or town council, there is potential for residents and the community to play their part, take the lead, and be responsible to upkeep their neighbourhood and improve their living environment. How might you develop fun and engaging physical games that raise the community’s awareness to adopt considerate behaviours to address municipal issues on the ground?
Role: Game Designer
Team Size: 7 Members
Brainstorming
Initially, we wanted to create a co-operative game where we tackled all municipal issues at the same time. However, after much discussion, we decided to focus on one key municipal issue, as that would help to streamline the gameplay that we have. We decided to focus on recycling because one of our team members has created an art exhibition about recycling and thus has a wealth of recycling information. I had been spring cleaning recently as well and realised that there are some actions that I had used, like using the town council to get rid of my bulky waste. It was an apt move as it helped garner attention from the judges for making such references.
Inspirations
We took some time to search BoardGameGeek to look for ideas and came across Recycle Right, R-Eco and Trash Pandas. Recycle right and R-Eco are matching games where the players are given a list of random items to sort through, and they have to place them in the right categories. This became our base as we came up with a list of paper, metal and plastic items for us to sort through. Trash Pandas is a test-your-luck game where the player tries to match their dice to the center of the board and collect trash along the way.
Mao's Method
Mao is an evolving shedding card game. The rules not being explained are an allusion to the laws in China at the time, which were in constant flux, leading to many people being arrested for laws they did not know were in place. I suggested using this method to brainstorm because it allows everyone to throw out ideas they have at the moment.
We set up the base game of collecting Sets with some basic rules where the player has to draw a set number of item cards we created earlier and play them at our field. The goal is to be the first to match a few sets of items together. Using the rules of Mao, we continued playing the game, enabling players to create whatever rules they wanted at the moment. We had a set of blank cards where we enabled players to create new actions on the spot as well. This gave us a quick base of action cards to balance in the 2nd round as we continued iterating over the next few hours.
Design Choices
Adding Prosocial actions whilst removing anti-social actions
We liked the idea of sabotaging one another, destroying each other's sets of cards and stealing cards from players because it increased the social interactions with the game. However, one of the mentors mentioned that these behaviours are not what OneService would promote, and it might cost us the competition despite the game being "fun." We then thought of ways we can promote recycling and help each other to win the game, like barter trading.
Tokens
We liked the idea of having tokens and giving players additional choices for the things that they do. Having tokens gives us an avenue to reward the players for taking part in prosocial behaviours. When earning these tokens we realized that we do get this internal satisfaction as well. This method of promoting prosocial behaviour was something that we learnt from our psychology class back in school called operant conditioning where rewards and punishments are given to reinforce positive behaviour.
Economy
Having tokens would mean that the game would start to feel very different and we had to balance the number of action cards we have in game while finding ways for players to spend these tokens.
We introduced recycling actions as a sink for the tokens. Rationale being that before anyone recycle an object, they have to clean the bottles, wash the cans, etc. Failure to do so would cause the entire recycling bag to be contaminate,d which will render the entire bag non-recyclable. We wanted to emphasize on the importance of these pre-recyclable steps to raise awareness of these consequences when recycling.
Another sink we introduced was to enable the player to draw cards with their tokens. This significantly increased the speed of the game and also increased the decision complexity of the player. This would then lead us to rebalance the cards to ensure that there is no net action for all the players' moves that would create an emergent dynamic.
Negative Events
We then referenced Exploding Kitten, where the players want to avoid drawing cards to avoid the "exploding kittens." We would have negative events that would cause the player to lose their sets. We wanted to incorporate that to reduce certain negative behaviours, such as hoarding. This helps us to reference another municipal issue (cluttered corridors) and also acts as a deterrent for players to keep drawing cards to propel their game. This adds layer of test your luck into the gameplay as well.
Recycling Groups
Having just cleared my house recently, I was familiar with various disposal methodologies and wanted to shed some light into the non-common disposal practices.
Thus I suggested that we have cards like Olio which was an app that gave away 2nd hand items to others for free, town council for removing bulky items, charity drives because I was involved with the donation drive of flood of Selangor in 2021 and realized that that these tiny efforts help to conserve our environments while being prosocial as well. Dumpster diving was an activity that some of my friends had done before, Sometimes, the items just need to be repaired rather than thrown away, like badminton rackets. Karang Guni was also something that we wanted to put into the game because all of us had fond memories of collecting newspapers from our households.
Composting
We wanted to incorporate other ways that a person can do their part in reusing products. Composting is one good way to reuse the organic materials that we do not use anymore. By making some of the trash items compostable, we want to drive home the idea that not all trash is "trash." Some can be repurposed as well. We reward the players with tokens for composting as well to promote this behaviour.
Memes and inside jokes
Some key stuff that we deliberately wanted to have would firstly be the meme of having Wood Veneers, Galvanized square steel and Screws, this was trending during that period and we thought it might be funny to have that inside the game.
Rules
Objective
Complete 3 proper disposal methods, of the required quantity each
Types of Disposal Methods
Trash: Have 3 items and 1 token
Recyclables: 3 items (may use tokens as items)
Reusables: 3 Items (can only be placed during charity drive or when given by another player)
Bulky Items: (Can only be placed when the Town Council is in effect)
E Wastes: 3 items per set
Set Up
Give out 5 cards to each player
Give 3 Effort tokens to each player
Place the Draw deck at the center of the table
The player who recycled the most recent starts first
Turn Order
Player draws 1 card from the Deck, or they can forfeit their draw to gain 1 token.
Likewise, a Player may use 1 token to draw an additional card from the Deck.
A player may place as many items into the different bins
Players may play as many action cards as they please
Turn ends when the player says they are done
Presentations
We employed Xiao Xuan's methodology for the presentations. Namely, a stacked deck presentation where a presenter would have the perfect set of cards to illustrate the key elements of our game swiftly and concisely. Employing this methodology helped to garner interest from the presenters because we introduced an element of visualisation where the judges can imagine how the game is being played.
Playtesting
Before heading to production, we felt that there were still various things that we needed to work on thus we decided to run the playtests physically and online within our group first. We then collated all our new ideas, pain points, frustrations and worked up new changes.
Internal Playtest - Tabletop Simulator
Feedback
Does not feel like there is enough tokens at the start > Start with 3 tokens instead of 2
Needs more compost cards > Have 3 compost cards instead of 1
Some new ideas for cards
Take from Discard pile
Look at the top of deck
Search the Deck
Free Market: Take 1 Token and draw 1 card
Economy feels a bit slow > Changed the mechanic to be able to discard to get a token (might be promoting throwing rubbish/consumerism thematically)
Add Symbols to the cards
Need to differentiate E-waste more (Still thinking of ideas)
Production
Timeline and Budget
We were given a budget of 200 dollars for printing and production and we there were many factors that we considered before making the final purchase. We are also given until 1st October to work on the entire production. Some things that we need to take into consideration like Card Design, Sourcing, 3D modelling and printing, Delivery time.
Card Design
We wanted the cards to feel informative, thus for every item, we tried to find some fun facts about it and we added that as flavour texts.
When designing the cards, we were considering what art style we wanted to have. Xiao Xuan managed to source our main artist, who decided to add eyes to items that she drew. She also suggested that we use Raccoons because Raccoons are creatures that have an affinity with Trash. They are also furry and cute as well which helped in developing the art style that she was developing.
Printing of the Cards
We were looking into the various types of printing that was available for the cards and we decided to go for the recycled paper printing because we felt that it matches the theme of the game we we are going for. We bought one pack in advance, however the cards was delayed and it was due to arrive around 25 sept to 2 Oct. Being unsure when it would arrive, we printed an extra set of cards and ordered for express shipping which will arrive in a week.
Tokens Production
We were considering various tokens which can be bought at a cheap price. Below shows the research which I had done for the various designs of tokens which we could have opted for. From left to right, Plastic leaves, Plastic gems, Plastic pebbles, Glow-in-the-dark pebbles and finally 3D printed tokens.
But after much consideration, we felt that we should try using the 3d printing services that were provided by Temasek Poly. Having the theme of recycling in mind, I searched for various inspirations for the type of tokens to create. I then used 3ds Max to create the token for printing.
3D modelling and Printing
I looked online for various inspirations before finally deciding to work on the recycling symbol. I decided to go for a more angular design as I felt that it was slightly easier to model compared to a fully rounded one. After choosing the design, Temasek Poly gave us a choice on the colour which we wanted our tokens to be. We decided to go with the brighter green because it was visually more appealing, and we felt that it would be easier to find if someone were to drop the token due to its bright colour.
We printed 50 tokens in total which fit nicely inside the packaging that we created. Being a service that was provided by Temasek polytechnic called Makerspace+ we didn't have to use our budget for the manufacturing of these tokens.
Card Box Production
We looked around for a printing shop that provided the cardboard boxes. We decided to list them down and vote for our preference first before looking at the prices.
Marketing Materials
A1 Poster
Winning 2nd place in OGCC
Workshop with Living Theories
With permission from MSO, we conducted a workshop with Living Theories to receive feedback from a group of gamification specialists and board game enthusiasts. Through their feedback, we came up with a list of good design and rule changes.
Workshop With the Public
Teaming up with GMO X (a volunteer-led group supported by the National Library Board) and MSO, we ran a workshop that promoted Trash Towkay. GMO X booked a space with Chua Chu Kang Library (the first sustainable library) to conduct our first workshop with the public.
Production Issues and Improvements
Due to it being our first time producing this cardgame, We realized that we had various issues that were caused by our negligence. And through the workshops with Thus we collated a list of errors we noticed to change on our side. We also collated a list of improvements that was provided by Living theories and our workshop with the public on how the game can be made better as well. We listed them on this word document below.
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