Time-Shifted Forest

About

The objective of this project was to redesign a toy into a "next-generation" sustainable product/ service system, the same prompt for my other project ReBear, though our project team shifted a bit for this one. During the 4ish weeks, we conducted research, applyied a life cycle thinking approach to our design process, created an ideal product design with an accompanying service blueprint, and built a playable game with our design to not only teach players ideas about waste reduction, but show that the ideas represented in game mechanics translate to real-world applications.

Process

We began our project by selecting a product to redesign, and for this project our team chose Trading Card Games. Toys in general are pretty easy to write off mentally because of the cultural connotation of being "for children", but their environmental impacts are substantial.

Research

Trading cards are a particularly wasteful source of entertainment. Our research indicated that:

• About 30 billion cards are produced each year, with accompanied by global distribution.

• This is about 54,000 tons of paper, some of which is recycled, though most is virgin material

• Due to the collectible nature of these products, a very small amount are kept by collectors, and a slightly larger portion do see continuous use in play, but the majority are discarded. And because trading cards are often made of multiple materials, recycling is difficult, meaning most go to landfill.

Another often-overlooked aspect of these is the wrapper for each pack. The most frequently used material for this is a wrapping made from layering aluminum foil, printed inks, and a plastic outer layer. Trading cards are sorted into booster packs, wrapped in this material, then tops and bottoms of each pack are crimped and heat sealed. Because of the complicated material structure, these RARELY are recyclable. Most US distributors offer a menial take-back program through local game stores, but most are going straight to landfill.

Issues and Opportunities for Innovation

Mapping the traditional trading card lifecycle loosely took this shape:

With this laid out, we identified a few opportunities for us to innovate upon, namely:

The use of virgin materials, including paper, plastics and aluminum

The end-of-life scenarios for packaging

The huge transportation footprint

Secondary seller market creating accessibility issues for players

Here is where a huge design opportunity exists that requires the solving of a very interesting problem.

Because of the high collectability (and therefor monetary value), this creates a couple of issues. The first being that with limited printing, "good cards" gain value on the secondary market, sometimes becoming unattainable to players with less funds. How can we ensure that players can still enjoy the game without being punished for not being able to afford game pieces?

And secondly, there is a problem in the community where packs will be gently opened by one party, they'll remove the "good cards", reseal the packs, and then resell them as unopened to unsuspecting buyers.

The plastic/ aluminum hybrid packs offer a better deterrent for this behavior simply because they are harder to open and not show signs of tampering (but cannot be recycled in most markets). The paper packs are much more easily recycled, but extraordinarily easy to open and reseal with a heat gun and a hair straightener. Perhaps there's another point in the service system that can be changed and allow is to mitigate this issue altogether?

Our Solution

The System

Our ideal system sees a more environmentally-mindful paper production and card printing manufacturing leading to our new split printing model. The first set, and each subsequent one will have a single printed run in booster packs, similar to the current model, but will then be supplemented by our print-on-demand service. 

Then, players and retail stores, naturally collecting discarded packaging and unwanted cards can send them back to us through our collection system which will net them points which can be used in our online store for print on demand cards or merch or access to events, among other things developed as we go.

Ideally we’d like to use agricultural waste as the main source of material for our paper production. 

Not only would this be thematic to a function of the game itself, but in creating that link between game mechanics and real-world use-case, we show our players that the ideas and themes touched on within the game are possible today.

We’d love to see our manufacturing facility, or partners, supplementing their required resources with renewables, like rainwater collection used in paper production, or solar to offset draws on local electrical grids. And by using biodegradable/ materials we hope to drop the footprint of our operation even lower.

With utilizing currently established models for paper packaging as mentioned in the LCA, we considerably lessen the environmental impact as compared to the plastic/ foil. So using recycled material gained through the takeback program, we even further reduce the impact.

New Printing Model

The first printing of each new set will be released in the classic way, which means booster packs in boxes going to retail stores for players to purchase off the shelves. This is how we acknowledge the secondary market for collectors who buy and sell cards, while also limiting the amount of cards that become “unwanted” due to market saturation. 

Because all cards in this printing have a finite stock, they are all now valued as collectible and are still playable by those who choose to do so. This also curbs the amount of over-consumption simply by limiting stock, though we should acknowledge that it does not curb that fomo feeling, so it is entirely possible that collectors may still try to purchase unnecessary amounts of cards.

But this is where our printing structure differs from the current model.

As it stands, the secondary market has become a major roadblock for players who just want to play the game because scalpers will buy up all available retail stock before players can get to the cards. This issue causes card prices to be potentially unaffordable to players.

By implementing a print-on-demand model as secondary printing, anybody now has access to the cards they want to play with and they don’t need to over-purchase random booster packs for the chance at getting the cards. So we’re increasing playability by lowering the barrier to entry for players and steering away from the essentially gambling model of purchasing random packs of cards. 

To denote the difference between the first printing and the print-on-demand cards, each variant will be clearly marked with respective symbols and notation, and the first printing will feature unique art and card designs to make them more special to players and collectors.

And finally, before we get into explaining the game, we have the takeback system. By offering to collect our customers discarded materials in exchange for points, we retain those materials in our own production loop. When our customers have product that they no longer have use for, including packaging, they can send it to us in exchange for “points” on our website. These points can be spent in lieu of currency to order print-on-demand cards that they’ll want in the future.

When we receive the unwanted cards or discarded packaging we can either recycle it for future product, or bundle them together into kits to be donated to places like schools to help teach kids some of the ideas involved in the game.

The Game!

Time Shifted Forest is a trading card game about regenerative stewardship.

Players race to achieve harmony with the world around them by recruiting stewards, building infrastructure, and implementing effects that have ripple effects into future turns creating waste that can hinder everyone in play if not utilized.

You can choose to act quickly, potentially to the detriment of yourself, or slowly, making plans that pay off big as the game progresses. 

But be very careful, both players can lose if too many effects create an overshoot in global boundaries.

Like current trading card games, ours teaches simple math skills and systems thinking, while our theme eases players into considering waste as a resource, how their plans can impact the future of the world and how small local actions can create ripples on a larger scale.

Al players need to get started are:

• Some cards, available soon as boosters packs, print-on-demand, and starter decks.

• Some dice for keeping track of things like your harmony scores, amount of waste, and overshoot boundaries.

• And though not required, a playmat of some kind will aid players in understanding where their cards go, especially as the flow of time progresses.

On a high level, players begin by drawing from their decks and play cards from their hand using the resources available to them. Cards will denote how far into the future they arrive, some occurring sooner, and others requiring time before the benefits of their effects can be felt. After a few turns, an Era Shift occurs, this moves cards in each timeline towards the present.

Play progresses until either player achieves 30 Harmony points first, or if their actions cause an overshoot, making both players lose the game. Remember, our actions have consequences, and no one can survive on an uninhabitable planet.

Our first play set launches with two starter decks, over 200 cards, and lore-rich rule book to allow players to dive deep into the world we’ve built.

Addressing Gaps

It needs to be stressed that design sprints like this one often contain gaps in research or places where an ideal design simply may not function as it is intended. So as we wrap or projects, it's important to look back over our process and find where gaps may exist and take those learnings to drive the success of future projects.

Limited LCA

Though we did perform a Lifecycle Analysis through Sustainable Minds, we made a lot of assumptions about logistics surrounding print-on-demand services vs traditional distribution methods as well as the efficacy of and benefit of utilizing agricultural waste as our paper sourcing. Not all "waste" feedstocks are created equally, and some may be more destructive in their collection and processing than virgin paper.

Take-back Logistics

Even a good take-back scheme struggles with customer usage. Our hope here is that the incentive of turning unwanted stock into useful gamepieces will create more opt-in to the service, but at the very least we hope that having the door open will see decent circularity with our own production stock.

Potential for Improvement

If we were to pursue this project further, we'd also like to incorporate:

1. Significant playtesting and improvement of game systems. As it stands, the gameplay is fairly minimal and we'd like the game to be as engaging as possible. No on wants to play a boring game!

2. I mentioned this in the Epistemic Disclosure at the top, but the use of human-created art is a top priority for us. Utilizing AI-generated imagery was a means to accommodating a short deadline, so even before playtesting we'd like to work with some artists in co-designing the visuals for our game.

3. Defining our intended learning outcomes and then testing them before and after playtesting may actually yield some surprising and supporting data as well. If we can show that players have learned how to explain planetary boundaries outside of the metaphor of the game or can identify potential "waste-to-resource" loops in their own lives, that could lend legitimacy to our efforts!

Conclusions

What we wanted to show with this project is that, with a little innovation and circular thinking, positive change in this space is possible. There are tinges of these efforts scattered around the industry, but it will take one of the leaders to make a bold step towards lessening waste for the rest of the industry to follow. Hopefully these ideas can inspire movement towards a more circular trading card game.