A Night at the Imaginetic Game Club

By Elizabeth Varkovetski 

The room held their breath as Stefanie rolled, was Garcia going to make it over the wall? Had the long journey across Mexico been worth it? Had she been smart to choose the prepaid cell phone instead of the flashlight? 

These are the questions that ran through my mind at Imaginetic Game Club as we collectively played Undocumented: The Journey to the American Dream. As Stefanie, the facilitator, rolled, she wasn’t only rolling for the player, she was rolling for all of us. That is what Imaginetic Game Club feels like; the room stands still as we all become enthralled in the game, watching the die roll on the Zoom screen, as if we were in the room, at the scene of the event. 

Serious gaming has the opportunity to teach us lessons, to walk us through situations we may have never otherwise stumbled upon, it has the potential to make us think, to make us question, to make us learn. With Undocumented, the teaching task was simple — to humanize the Latin American migrants who cross through Mexico each year on their way to the United States. With the goal of educating policymakers, this serious game seeks to show the journey of migrants such as Garcia, and at the end of the day, while they are undocumented, the people sitting around the table root for them. By giving faces and names to people who are regularly just seen as numbers, as the number of people crossing illegally into the United States every year, Undocumented hopes to give policymakers new perspectives. Through game mechanisms such as event cards and die rolls, Undocumented shows how much of the migrants’ fate is left to chance. 

Will you make it on the train, or will you fall off on the ride? 
Are the friendly migrants at your shelter honest, or are they looking for a bribe? 
Will your coyote drive you across the border, or will he leave you in the desert to die? 

Undocumented

As the players’ migrants made it across the Mexican map the discussion at the figurative table was alive. With the safe space of the room, everyone shared how they felt about the journey and what their fears would have been if they were the ones on the route. And as the game drew to a close and the finishing stories were told, people were disappointed at how many migrants who had successfully crossed the border had been deported back to their home countries. While some had managed to stay, the true stories of Mexican and Latin American migrants had to be told – some never make it across the border, and some spend their whole lives trying only to be deported. 

It is at this moment in the night when discussion deepened, uncovering the true wonder of serious gaming and the space that is the Imaginetic Game Club. We all come to laugh, talk, and game, but at the end of the evening, we always leave having learned a new perspective, having had a new discussion, or having had a previously embedded idea challenged. While playing Undocumented may have only taken an evening, it imparted lasting ideas about humanity and migration. After all, serious games are about challenging our thinking and revealing new knowledge.