CECO Hub Game

Type: Board game
Application: Planning business hubs
Role: Game designer, content prodcuer
Website: http://cecoproject.aalto.fi/
Available: here (game material in Finnish)

CECO Hub Game is a game for thinking about and planning hubs that act as a meeting point for large and small companies looking to network and create new business opportunities. It is based on the ATLAS game and uses the same key mechanics with a more streamlined beginning and a summarizing end card.

The content of the Hub Game are based on the CECO research project at Aalto University SimLab. CECO - Creative Ecosystems and Collaborative Operators - studied the functions and requirements of establishing co-working spaces for small companies and entrepreneurs who could collaborate and provide more value for each other than merely occupying their own micro office.

When we facilitated the game for industry professionals we found out that while the contents of the ATLAS game were new to most players and hence discussion had to be encouraged to keep the game going, the opposite took place in the Hub Game. Players were so knowledgeable about domestic and international examples of hubs that the game was used to document and guide the discussion, rather than igniting it.

My role in the Hub Game was to design the whole game experience from writing out the rules to adapting the layout form the ATLAS game to distilling research into the card texts. In running the game, we also used a hub diagram that you can see in the pictures, which was used to help players explain to each other the relationships between the hub and different actors.