Short Summary
We Didn’t Start the Fire is a song from 1989 by Billy Joel. It contains references to popular culture and newsworthy, significant events from around the world and the United States (over 100 references mentioned). In 2023, Fall Out Boy released an updated version of We Didn’t Start the Fire, with events from 1989-2023 (over 80 references mentioned).
In the game version, players answer trivia questions about history and pop culture from the time period of either song. When players answer questions correctly, they are able to move their token closer to the fiery finish line.
The purpose of this game is to make a fun reference to the songs, and also provide context and background information to some of the lyrics. It is important to be educated about both world history and culture.
Primary Audience: Billy Joel & Fall Out Boy fans, history/pop culture enthusiasts
Other than the primary audience, I feel like this game could be enjoyed by a large number of people. Trivia games have pretty mass appeal to people, so someone that enjoys a trivia game would enjoy this game.
Design Process & Thought Process
Iterative Design: For the design of this game, I kept a red, black, and white color palette. I wanted to have experimental typographic lyrics on each of the cards so that players can refer to the lyrics that the trivia question pertains to. I varied the typography by using varying weights, as well as oblique and italic type. The backs of the cards have photoshopped pictures of either Billy Joel or Fall Out Boy, in a context that I felt pertains to the game (either from the music video or pictured with fire). The fronts of the cards have a red gradient behind the lyric typography, with a black box that contains the trivia question.
For the future, I would like to continue working on the design of this game. I need to redraw the images of Fall Out Boy and Billy Joel so that it will work better for copyright purposes. This will also help me get a more unifying style for my game. I likely want to keep the same color palette, but I could also explore using blue flames as well. The typography also needs some refining, and I want to fit all of the lyrics into one unified block, keeping all of the varying weights. I would also consider having different card backs (maybe with just different pictures of the artists), just to make it a little more visually exciting.
Game Mechanics: Players pick up cards, answer trivia questions, and discard cards when they are done. The players advance their player token when they answer a question correctly.
Player Goals: In the first iteration, the players goals were to be the first player to reach the end of the board. This is accomplished by answering 5 trivia questions correctly. I would like to make this number a little bit higher in the future, or potentially have it adapt depending on the number of players. I would also consider making a game board with spaces that make you pick up the trivia cards versus picking up a trivia card on every single turn.
Gameplay Sequence: The sequence of gameplay is as follows: decide who goes first, another player picks up the card for the player whose turn it is and asks them a trivia question, if the player answers correctly they advance forward on the game board, it cycles to the next player’s turn. The first player to get to the end of the game board wins and the game ends.
Game Board & Components: In the current game board, players start at the top and move linearly down to the bottom of the board, moving one step with each card they answer correctly. In future iterations, I would like to add more tiers to this game board and consider a nonlinear path that players could potentially follow.
Rulebook and Playtesting
Rulebook Sample:
Playtesting Notes: Overall, from playtesting, I learned that this game is a feasible idea. Players enjoyed the trivia questions and learning more about history and culture. No major frustrations presented themselves throughout the game, but I feel as though I could still make the game more interesting and exciting for future players.
- What questions did your players have? The game was pretty straightforward so there weren’t a lot of questions. I think the questions were mostly about the song itself and some of the pop culture and history questions.
- How quickly did they learn to play? The players learned extremely quickly since it was a simple trivia game.
- What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players discussed the different historical and pop culture events and asked each other and answered questions.
- What confused players? The only thing that was confusing was having to keep track of your own points and keep the card that someone else asked you about.
- What made players excited? Players were excited to answer questions, get questions correct,etc.
- What did your players enjoy doing? They enjoyed answering the questions. They enjoyed the challenge of it and some of the questions provided a good discussion.
- Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? Players didn’t have any frustrations.
Game Reflections: Developing this game allowed me to learn more about history and culture myself, as I was developing the game I didn’t know a lot about the topics that were mentioned in the songs. Next time, I would probably develop this concept a little more to make it go beyond a trivia game, like including some unexpected elements or not having each player’s turn be exactly the same. I also didn’t anticipate that players would want to continue answering questions beyond the 5 card winning point, and I thought they would have gotten sick of the same format, but surprisingly, they really didn’t and wanted to continue answering the questions.