Ex-Weta man's Kiwi game

Nik Preston traded his job at Wellington's WETA Workshop as a computer graphic designer for the manual labour of cutting game pieces in a small home office to form a board game he hopes will become an essential piece of Kiwiana.

Industry - The New Zealand Game aims to teach players about history, geography, economics and people who shaped our country, and to do it with all the fun of a classic board game like Monopoly.

Mr Preston says he and his brother, Jacob, decided to develop the game because they were conscious of shortcomings in their own general knowledge.

"About five years ago me and my brother Jacob and our friend thought we'd make the game because we were quite embarrassed about our knowledge of geography and New Zealand history," he says.

He began to feel the pressure of working at WETA during the day and moonlighting at home developing the game so had to make a choice.

"I was working on other projects in my spare time, as well as this game, and found that these projects were taking up more and more time, so I quit my job so I could focus on the game."

His initial concern was how he would stay motivated on the project.

"I enjoy working on the game, but I find that I'm spending most of my time doing little things I don't enjoy, like ringing up people finding out how much printing costs, and working on accounting-type things."

After a year of playing the game with friends, family and focus groups, the pieces of the game all fitted seamlessly together, Mr Preston says.

"The first version combined only geography and history, but I found that it wasn't a complex enough game. It wasn't until the economics element was added that it started to fit together better."

Mr Preston says he designed Industry to be played with up to six people. Many of the cards benefit the weakest players to keep the playing field even for the whole family.

In a nutshell, each New Zealand region on the board has a specialised industry, such as crops, fisheries, manufacturing, livestock or mining. Players choose the industrial region they want to play in. A roll of the dice determines what industry will be affected by a player's turn and if an event will occur.

An event card describes a historical event or person and how they shaped the country.

Another board represents the New Zealand economy.

"They play and encounter different events that happened in New Zealand history and experience all the effects of them," Mr Preston says.

One challenge was choosing 50 significant historical events or people for the game from the likes of Robert Muldoon, Apirana Ngata, World War 1, the goldrush, and the baby boom.

"It was quite tricky at first to choose events that were important to New Zealand, but also made a good game."

The Robert Muldoon card allows players to do as they please with the economy, while the 1984 economic reforms card stabilises the economy and restores its starting position. The Springbok tour card enables one player to stop another from playing a turn.

Mr Preston is pitching the game to the Ministry of Education to encourage playing it as part of the New Zealand history or social studies curriculum in schools.

"Most educational games are based on a question-and-answer model. I wanted to make a game that was bit different.

"Kids will get a really good impression of what happened. Even if they don't remember the year, they will remember: 'Oh, there was an earthquake in Napier or there was a goldrush in Otago."'