I am currently attending day one of the Games for Change (APAC) conference and right from the first minutes of the conference there has been so much food for thought and inspiration. One great presentation right at the beginning of the conference by Vince Siu from Press Start Academy introduced a recent game called Divergence they developed for the Hong Kong Design Centre.

Divergence is a game for 3 – 6 players that teaches design thinking through play and the best part of it all is that Divergence (digitised game kit) is available for free as a downloadable print and play game. A link can be found here in our resources page. With big thanks to the Hong Kong Design Centre and of course Press Start Academy for making it available.

I particularly loved Vince’s philosophy when discussing games for schools which focuses on the impact of learning outcomes rather than focussing on the novelty of the delivery method, which is so important. As he beautifully pointed out often schools will approach the Press Start Academy with an idea for an expensive VR project that will only provide a very limited and narrow outcome, if you have the resources available to do that fantastic go for it but the reality is that in most cases schools and other educational institutions don’t have limitless resources available and could most effectively use those resources by focusing on impact rather than novelty.

Divergence has been designed with a play first learn second approach, by playing the game players are actually learning the basics of design thinking and the four “sessions” within the game reflect the four phases of design thinking finishing with each player presenting a 1-minute elevator pitch to the other players who independently score each presentation and the winner being the player with the highest total score.

As an added bonus the game is bilingual (English and Chinese) with both the single page rules and the cards themselves provided in both languages which I think is fantastic.

If you are interested in the conference today is only day one with two to go, registration is free for the virtual conference, register here: https://g4capac.org/