Editor | On 11, Oct 2018

Kobus Cilliers

Strategy games have always been popular and essential. They prepare us for life and help us to try out risky options in a fictional situation. Now we can take the strategy game a step further.

TRIZmeta is a game inspired by TRIZ and is about changing the rules. Players introduce new rules, evaluate them, work with them or adapt them. In order to win, you have to find new ways to play; to re-invent the original; to turn around the advantage; to be resilient. It reintroduces players to an idea that in childhood was a given: that anything is possible, and there are many more ways than one to achieve a good solution.

Modern living has taken away our resilience. Fun gets banned; tree climbing is forbidden; matches are dangerous; and you mustn’t cross a road alone until you are thirty. Homes and schools discourage creative thinking. People are led by the nose from target to target, using policies, processes and flow-charts to guide them to an ordained ‘right answer’. Innovation and risk-taking are discouraged because, well, they are risky.

We need a way to celebrate risk and failure and to teach ourselves and our chidlren to try again another way; to think for ourselves; to look from a fresh perspective; to find new rules; to innovate. We need a game like TRIZmeta.

This revolutionary (in a good way!) game takes the forty innovative principles established by analysis of nine million real life innovations. These form the basis of this game, which then sits on any host game. It allows the player to play his/her favourite game, with the bonus ability to adapt its given rules.

As you play your favourite game, you can use the TRIZmeta innovation to act on vital observations: when we are losing we need to change something in order to improve our position; one rule change often leads to several more before equilibrium can be re-established; and when people work cooperatively – in order for all to share the win – rule changes stop cancelling each other out and become more useful.

A simple and inexpensive pack of 52 cards is all that is needed to adapt any game and make it literally a game-changer. The first commercial production of these decks was launched on 28th September 2018. You can buy yours today HERE

References

Mann, D., Faulkner, C., ‘A Game Of Rules For Breaking Rules’, http://trizmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Chapter-Template_Triz-Games-Book-dlm.pdf