An Innovative Board Game Design Based on Cross-Cultural Communication

Different board games reflect different cultural contexts, including various beliefs, social norms, and values hiding behind the rules of play and design of products. What if a board game could engage multiple thought patterns at once, thus facilitating cross-cultural exchange? This article presents a design for such a game, here called cochess. Cochess is an innovative board game that brings together players of chess and xiangqi (Chinese chess). The rules and design of cochess cultivate cultural exchange between two bodies of knowledge and ways of thinking.