Expert game

Use

One thing that will most certainly change in the future is language. In the first round of this game the basic idea is to invent new words. In the second round players are asked to pretend they know what these new terms mean. The game provides a playful and somewhat absurd way to develop the imagination around possible futures.

Moreover it's always a good rhetorical exercise to talk total nonsense while pretending to make sense.

Protocol

The Expert Game is played in 2 rounds. In our experience, it's important that not all the instructions and rules of the game are explained in the beginning, but dispensed gradually. Keep a little mystery concerning the goals and the next steps of the game.

Round 1: Invent Neologisms

The goal of the first round is to invent new words. This round is played individually, and depending on the time that is available you can ask participants to come up with any given number of new words. These words can be anything, but we noticed it tends to become easier if the category is specified – for example when the task is to invent new professions, new utensils, new scientific branches, etc.

An easy way to invent new words – often with surprising results – is to use existing texts. Print out some texts that are somewhat related to the topic at hand (or not at all), and ask the players to scan through them (without actually reading them too much). Ask them to highlight a number of words they are intuitively intrigued or attracted by – not necessarily by their meaning but also by their sound.

Once they have done so, explain the goal of this round and ask them to compile a list of new words. New words can easily appear when trying to combine two (or three) of the underlined words. Sometimes it also helps to add a suffix like -ism, -esque, -ish, -tion...

In this first round, it is important that participants do not think too much about the possible meaning of the words they invent, but rather enjoy the not knowing. The pleasure lies precisely in inventing seemingly absurd and nonsensical words, using musicality as the only parameter. (Therefore it seems best not to talk about the second round until the first one is finished.)

At the end of this round it's nice to stick the new words to a wall and look at them with the whole group.

Round 2: Pretend to be an Expert

The goal of the second round is to add meaning to the new words that got invented. In pretending to make sense of these nonsensical words, sometimes new concepts, ideas and associations are invented along the way. (Moreover the skill of bluffing – talking absolute nonsense while pretending to make total sense – can always come in handy in a variety of real-life situations.)

This round takes the form of a conversational excercise and improvisation game. Divide the players into groups of 3 to 5. Every player is assigned 3 to 5 of the words that were invented in the previous round. It works best if people get assigned words that someone else invented. (Expanding on their own invented words tends to be less surprising, and less fun.) Give the players 5 minutes with their assigned words to contemplate and to mentally prepare.

Then the improvisation can start. The basic idea is that the players pretend to be experts about the words they got assigned, and are questioned by the others in their group. It's like pretending to be the kind of philosopher that combines several complicated words in a single phrase, but does so in such a way that after a first reading of the sentence it is absolutely impossible to grasp the meaning it conveys.

Every player pretends to be an expert in their field, and the others questions them about their 3 to 5 words. The experts expand on these new words, even if what they say doesn't make sense at all. Sometimes it can add to the fun to hide some assumptions in the questions – about the field of expertise for example (e.g. "I know that the notion of cropstornotology, the topic of your dissertation, caused a revolution in biology, but I never really grasped why exactly. Can you explain?"). Once every player has answered some questions by the others, a general, more open conversation between the players in the group can follow. Often the so-called expertise of the different experts in one group can be very diverse, and doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with one another – but this is okay.

It can sometimes help the imagination of the players to clarify the fictional setting where these conversations take place. You can either propose such a setting yourself, or ask the players to come up with one themselves: a scientific congress in the future you invented, an interview or debate, an informal conversation around the coffee-machine of a university, etc.

Of course it is absolutely crucial for all the players to retain a serious posture and tone during these conversations – a requirement that can sometimes be quite challenging. Getting the giggles is often inevitable. However, even if you have no idea what you are talking about, play the game and keep on pretending that you do – that what you're saying makes sense, even if it doesn't. Trust yourself, and to your own surprise you will see that you can come up with some kind of explanation that sounds somewhat reasonable, however nonsensical or absurd.

Some guidelines for the second round:

• Do your absolute best to remain absolutely serious.
• Never contradict your conversation partners. Build on the elements they propose (for example, if your conversation partner implies that your new word is a concept in the field of biology, go with that rather than against it).

Testimonies

Some good souvenirs with this game!

In between the 2 rounds you can also do a tonne of other things. It's absolutely fine when the words are invented in the morning and only explained in the evening.

Sometimes players need to get over the initial embarrassment that an improvisation exercise can provoke – and the fear of being ridiculous. If so help them by creating a setting and atmosphere that feels safe and intimate.

With Anna Czapski and a group of participants we tested a proto-version of the game during a working session in Lille in 2018. We played the second round with the whole team in a hammam and thought it was a splendid setting for this part of the game. Recommended.

Diederik P.

Credits

Diederik P. learned this game from the artist Michael Portnoy while they were working on a performance for Playground Festival in 2018. As he introduced the game, Michael recalled overhearing a conversation between some top-notch mathematicians, not understanding even half of what they were saying – but to them everything seemed perfectly comprehensible.

strangergames.com

Anna Cz. and Diederik P. tweaked the game a bit to fit their futurological aspirations. These instructions were written by Diederik P.