| Instructional Objective | Learners & Context | Object of Game | Game Materials |

The objective of Culture Savvy is to gain a better understanding of how people of different cultures and regions behave in business situations-their behavior, appearance and communication techniques. Players will learn about five different cultural regions including Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America.

The target audiences for this game are international business travelers, high school or college age students, or anyone interested in gaining knowledge and understanding of different cultures. As the game increases in difficulty, players have the option of expanding their knowledge of Geert Hofstede's Five Cultural Dimensions in version #2 of this game. 

The goal of the game is to be the first player to collect all five Cultural Pavilion cards to fill his/her Passport booklet. To collect a card, the player must land on one of the five colored hatch-mark boxes representing Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America and answer the question correctly.

To win in version #2, a player must be the first to fill her/his passport with a card from each of the five Culture Dimension Cards representing Identity, Gender, Uncertainty, Power, and Time.

Game Materials

Version #1: Passport to the World

1. Each player rolls the die. The highest roll goes first. The player to the left of the highest roller goes next.

2. When it is your turn, roll the die and move the same number of spaces shown on the die in any direction from the starting point on the board.

3. When you land on a box, have the next player choose a card from the stack of regional cards that correspond with the color of the box. Each box on the board represents a region, a wild card or a cultural pavilion:

2. Review all the five Cultural Dimension Debriefing Cards before starting the game. Keep the concepts in mind while playing the game.

3. Roll the die and answer questions relating to one of the five cultural dimensions.

4. Answer the question correctly and roll the die again. Each player can roll two times max. You may move in any direction you wish, but you may not move both forward and backward in the same move. You may also pass through the "start" box to travel across the board.

5. If you answer the question incorrectly, play passes to the player on your left.

6. If you land on the hatch marked square and answer the question correctly, collect the coresponding culture dimension debriefing card. Place the card in passport booklet.

7. Player with the most Cultural Dimension Debriefing Cards wins.

Both of us wanted to design a game that would reflect our love of learning about different cultures. Initially, we wanted it to be based on customs, traditions and rules of communication for business travelers. Once we thought about our target audience though, we realized it would be beneficial to both business travelers and any student of culture and decided to alter the focus of the game so a wider audience could appreciate it. This also allowed us to create a few different levels of difficulty between version one and two. No other games out there we reseached dealt specifically with this concept.

The actual board game design reflects the circular shape of the earth. Players travel around the globe to different regions or Cultural Pavilions. We liked the concept of collecting cards from each region for each player's passport as if gaining knowledge (and stamps) while traveling the world. Instead of cards, we thought of using a stamp to show the gaining of knowledge for each region but let the idea go because of the cost involved. To tie the game more to the concept, we also thought it might be an interesting idea to have the game pieces display flags with numbers. But between the abbreviations, the colored boxes, the numbers, and the letters on the cards, we didn't want it to confuse the player more.

The entire content of the game was designed around Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimension model. For years, Dr. Hofstede collected and analyzed information from more than 100,000 people living in 40 different countries. For version #1 of the game, we decided to focus on questions that related to appearance, behavior, and communication of five different regions of the world. For version #2 of the game, we focused our questions for the international business student based around Hofstede's five cultural dimensions which are broken up by: Identity, Power Distance, Gender, Time, and Uncertainty. The Wild Cards were designed to throw in uncertainties and unexpected events (both good and bad) that could happen to each player along the way.

After testing the game, we decided to change the rules so that a player could only roll the die a maximum of two times. We found that some of the general game questions were too easy and made them harder. We also initially had the General Question cards and the Cultural Dimension cards rolled into one deck. To make it more simpler, we broke it up into two different stacks, one for each version of the game.

See above Games Pieces section for larger print pieces shown below.