First question: Which of these cards from your hand best fits the descriptor “darkness?”

Next question: Can you identify the card for which the active player chose that descriptor from a group of decoys?

Final question: If so, did you provide a sufficiently convincing match for the active player’s description to get other players’ votes and thus, bonus points?

This is Dixit, a game we played while visiting family. We tend to fill spare (or stolen) time with board games when we get together. I knew I would come home with a subject for my next play journal, and the trip did not disappoint. We particularly enjoyed the art and open-endedness of this game. 

The role of “active player” rotates around the group, as each player has the opportunity to choose a card out of their hand of six cards, describe it well enough to get some votes, but hopefully not so well that everyone guesses it, and lays their card, art side down, in the middle of the table. We used single-word descriptions, but the instructions leave room for interpretation on that point. When I looked online to verify rules, I noticed that one source refers to the active player as the “storyteller,” and suggests telling a one-sentence story about the image, which would add significant challenge.

After hearing the clue, other players choose a card of their own to match the description, and pile theirs with the active player’s card. Once everyone has contributed, the active player lays the images face up alongside the score board, aligning images to voting numbers. 

Players vote by submitting a number tile face down. Each player’s number tiles are a different color, to match their rabbit-shaped play marker. Number tokens are flipped to reveal votes. 

Scoring depends primarily on the active player’s success in description. If either no players or all the players correctly choose the active player’s card, the active player gets 0 points and all others receive 2 points. If nobody guesses correctly, other players also receive 1 point for each incorrect vote for their image. If some, but not all, of the other players correctly choose the active player’s image, the active player gets three points and only the players that guess correctly receive an additional point for every incorrect guess for their image. Score is tracked by moving the rabbit tokens along the score board, which includes a handy scoring guide. Players draw a replacement card and play continues until someone reaches 30 points.

The game accommodates 3-6 players and gives a target age of 8+. We played with three adults, plus an 8-, a 10-, and a 13-year-old. The overall design of the game is elegant and robust. Most of us were novices to the game, and everybody mastered gameplay rapidly. We had so much fun that I don’t actually remember who won. This was the type of game for which the fun of playing far outweighed the actual outcome. It appeals to different interests for varying reasons. Art enthusiasts can enjoy the vivid, surreal pictures. Wordsmiths will revel in the challenge of picking exactly the right descriptive word or phrase. Players that like the challenge of misleading opponents will relish the opportunity to supplant the active player’s card with their alternative offering. 

As we played Dixit, I thought about the ways in which it would be accessible to a broad audience, and audiences for whom it is not accessible. (Salen, 2008) With a completely pictorial basis, the game requires no reading, and could even be played across languages. Players only need a way to communicate descriptions to each other, including even a common language at a rudimentary level. Players without a shared language could use a phone app or bilingual dictionary to translate words or phrases. An obvious limitation would be that the game is not presently accessible to people with visual impairments. All the cards and tiles feel identical. On the other hand, Dixit is an interesting candidate for the Build a Better Book (BBB) project, a UC-Boulder project that creates multi-modal media items like picture books and games. 

Last summer, my library hosted a series of teen programs to create 26 tactile-accessible alphabet tiles after attending a BBB workshop. The ingenuity that young people can demonstrate in creating finger-friendly pictures was quite inspiring. The cards could be re-created with Swell Touch Paper in a setting that owns appropriate equipment, then enhanced with further texturing or Braille descriptions. Tiles could also be recreated or enhanced with Braille numbers. For a version we could create in my library makerspace, we could use our CNC router on uniformly shaped wooden tiles to create outlines, then use an assortment of textured materials to enhance the pictures and create a story on each tile. We could base the pictures on the original game, or create an entirely novel set of “cards” to play with, and the goal of the BBB project is to make the items equally accessible to sighted and visually-impaired users. Creating pictures that are appealing and interpretable both visually and through touch results in fascinating products.

The process of creating this new interpretation of the game could be a natural demonstration of the topics explored by Horst, Herr-Stephenson, and Robinson (2010) and Gee (2005) in their explorations of how young people engage with learning and hobbies. Participants may become involved in the project from an interest in one or more of the technologies involved in the creation process, a desire to help their community or friends and loved ones that may benefit from the end products, a need for community service hours to fulfill a set of external requirements, or simply because the project interests them. Various members of the group may have facility or knowledge of some parts of the process, and the group can learn from each others’ areas of expertise or ingenuity. Participants that know 3D modeling or the CNC router may have ideas to streamline creation processes with those machines. Group members that have a loved one with visual impairments may have insight on characteristics that make tactile representations more effective. All members may create novel uses for provided materials or equipment, especially through continued exploration and interactions.

In addition to the technical learning that takes place through re-interpretation of Dixit as described above, the original game provides several natural opportunities for formal or informal learning. In a foreign language class, even introductory classes could use the game to practice vocabulary as students describe their cards and attempt to understand the descriptions of others. Descriptions could be given verbally, written, or in both formats, depending on the skills being practiced. If writing, a mini-whiteboard and marker might be valuable to pass to the active player so they can write the word large enough for everyone to easily see. In an English class, or another class learning parts of speech, the game could be used to practice by restricting possible descriptions to a single part of speech, either rotating among them, or limited to the current area of study. I could see nouns, adjectives, and verbs all being good descriptors, though prepositions or adverbs might be more difficult. In a creative writing class, students could write entire short stories about either a single card or a selection of cards. I have minimal knowledge of art concepts from a teaching standpoint, but it seems likely this game could be enjoyable and valuable in an art classroom. For social-emotional skills, this is a way to explore how the people around you think, as you see what facets of a card you and they notice or choose to describe. Most of the images are sufficiently complicated to leave plenty of room for interpretation. Dixit is a fun way to connect with people, and has plenty of opportunity for further discussion about the pictures, how players see them, and how best to capture them in minimalist form. I suspect the game will be a perennial favorite on future visits.  

References

Gee, J. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: From The Age of Mythology to today’s schools. In D. Barton & K. Tusting (Eds.), Beyond Communities of Practice: Language Power and Social Context (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives, pp. 214-232). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511610554.012

Horst, H. A., Herr-Stephenson, B., and Robinson, L. (2010). Media Ecologies. In M. Ito, Hanging out, messing around, geeking out (pp. 29-78). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Retrieved from: mitp-content-server.mit.edu:18180/books/content/sectbyfn  

Salen, K. (2008). Toward an ecology of gaming. In K. Salen (Ed.)The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 1-20). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Retrieved from: lorishyba.pbworks.com/f/salen_ecology.pdf