Dear World Leaders,

The time has come to provide some more information about our upcoming board game, World Order! This week we will be discussing about the idea behind the game, the influences behind it, and the drive that led to Hegemonic Project Games have an International Relations game as our second title!
The world has changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. The United States emerged as the sole superpower, and it enjoyed a period of unipolar global hegemony. However, in recent years, especially after 2010, the rise of China and other emerging powers has led to a shift towards a multipolar world.

A multipolar world is one in which there are multiple great powers with similar levels of power and influence. While there is a long debate about whether the current world state is a bipolar or a multipolar one, this shift in the balance of power had a profound impact on international relations, as it has made the world more complex and unpredictable.

Nowadays, no single global power can dictate the rules of the game. This means that states must cooperate with each other to solve common problems and to prevent conflict.

But this intriguing inter-webbed international system of states, “racing” for “global hegemony” can not be easily explained and analysed without finding an innovative and fun way to introduce people to the subject, and help them understand how world politics work.

The Vision and Goal

Understanding the underlying intricacies of world politics and international relations was always a big interest of mine, leading to my studies in International Political Economy, in an attempt to increase my knowledge in a subject that is getting more important by the day.

This led to my Postgraduate degree thesis being titled “Will China overtake the U.S. in the future as a hegemony?”, a text in which I also meticulously and extensively discussed how other existing global powers, Russia/USSR, France, the UK, India and Japan, would further grow their soft and hard power and influence, in the span of the next 500 years, along with expanding on the different schools of thought, such as Realism, Hegemonic Stability Theory and World-System Theory, in an attempt to create patterns and motifs that can easily be analysed and draw results from.

It was around that time I first envisioned an educational board game that could serve as an introduction to the academic principles and theories that encapsulate International Relations and the dynamics driving them.

This was the main reason I went on to found Hegemonic Project Games. My goal is and always was to blend creativity, education, and innovation to develop unique non-conventional educational experiences. Experiences that could explain and detangle difficult-to-understand concepts about Politics and Economics, in a playful way. Shortly after, the dream of an educational politico-economic board game was becoming a reality, with Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory! But still, it did not focus on the academic discipline of International Relations!

Today, our team includes members of various academic backgrounds, all working together to create captivating board games that are intended to do the above while partnering with esteemed academics for each of our titles, in order to make sure that everything matches reality and is academically valid. By sharing the same interests with other members of the team, along with the current events of today, we are always aiming to find ways to provide more “tools” to society, because ultimately, this is our passion: to help answer difficult questions of reality and today, such as “Why do states behave aggressively?”, “ How can that conflict be resolved? or “can trade and globalization actually increase prosperity and achieve an everlasting peace?
In our team, we always say that “board games can be powerful tools for learning that could help players develop a better understanding of the world around them”, and this is what we want to do!

From Hegemony to World Order

Now, following in the steps and educational character of Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory, a game that puts you right in the clash of social classes in a modern nation, Hegemonic Project Games moves from the intrastate to a larger, global scale board game.

World Order is based on academic principles of International Relations and real-world interactions between states in world politics. The game is based on the world of 2010, where the four major global powers – the United States, China, Russia, and the European Union – compete for influence and power over our world’s geographic regions.

Players take on the role of one of these four powers, as they are called to balance their own interests with the interests of other powers and make strategic decisions about how to allocate their resources. The game’s mechanics are designed to reflect the complex and ever-changing nature of international relations while taking into account a variety of factors, such as each power’s military strength, economic power, and diplomatic ties.

The goal of Hegemonic Project Game is not just to bring another global powers board game to the market, but to help shape its players into informed global citizens, empowered to decode the nuances of diplomacy and economics that shape their world. In short, to create a fun strategy game, with interesting decisions!

So here we are now,
As we work on World Order, bringing it every day closer to completion, our vision for more games where players can not only engage with their player group and have a fun night but also learn something in the process, is becoming a reality!

See you soon,
Varnavas Timotheou
Founder
Hegemonic Project Games