KEI-GO! Our Journey in Developing a Language Card Game

By James York, Meiji University, and Martin Sedaghat, Niigata University of Health and Welfare

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.69732/VUXU9211

Introduction

This paper documents our journey in designing, and more importantly, publishing a card game in Japan. An emphasis is placed on the context because we will mention specific companies we used to print the various components of our game. Although we are focusing on Japan, the majority of tips in this document are location-agnostic.

The paper covers the following:

• The benefits of using analog games in language learning contexts
• Going from prototype to product
• Designing graphics for language card games
• How we plan to teach and research the effectiveness of our game (as a model for other, interested readers)

Why play card and board games in the language classroom?

James has published a number of papers on teaching with games (see York, 2019, 2020, 2023a for a flavor). Featured prominently are analog (board, card, table, conversation, folk, etc.) games, which are the kinds of games that language teachers gravitate towards (Nurmukhamedov & Sadler, 2020). But why play games? What do they offer foreign language students?

Our first benefit of card and board games is a practical and financial one — compared to their digital counterparts, they are cheap or can be acquired for free, printed and played from online sources (like BoardGameGeek). They also do not require hardware to run (the hardware being your students’ brains!) thus not requiring additional costs to play. 

Pedagogically, James has argued (York, 2019; Cornillie & York, forthcoming) that the way one learns and plays a card or board game shares close ties with a task-based language teaching approach to foreign language education. Simply:

Playing a board game	TBLT
Learn how to play by reading the rules of the game or watching others play on YouTube.	Pre-task: input, schema activation, vocabulary focus, model of upcoming task
Play the game. Conversation with others to keep check of rules, actions, and the game state.	Task: output, meaning focus, fluency.
Debrief what happened in the game.	Post-task: accuracy focus, reflection.

James created a framework (TBLT Gaming) which pedagogically scaffolds learners for each stage. Some features are: comprehension questions before playing, fluency-focused gameplay, audio recording and self-transcription, accuracy-focused language work, and task repetition. Learn more in a slideshow on the topic or in a YouTube video about TBLT gaming. A visual outline is available below.

Note: James’s TBLT Gaming framework has been used with digital games also. During the first lesson, students consider what language they will need to carry out the following “play” session, and plan accordingly.

Other quickfire benefits of gaming

• Card and board games are predominantly progressed through verbal interaction between players, which make them appropriate for focusing on speaking skills.
• When players enter the “magic circle” of gameplay, their affective filter is lowered.
  • Though, note, games which require students to be a “villain” or “bad guy” can cause stress to some students. 
• From a TBLT perspective, although the situation of robbing a king, defeating goblins, proposing to another player in the class might not be an authentic real-world task, the language produced as part of the shared fantasy of gameplay is authentic as it is aimed at completing a meaningful goal (see Sykes, 2014; Fine, 2002).
• Games can be used as the source for further literacy and cultural knowledge development due to their cultural relevance. In other words, gaming is a major cultural pastime, meaning interactions with other cultures around games is easy. For example, if a game is popular in your native language, there is a good chance it is popular in the target language, too. Target language communities around games in the target language thus become wonderful sources of language input (See York 2020, 2023b; Blume, 2019 for more on this topic).
• They’re fun!!

What is the topic of KEI-GO!?

The card game that we focus on in this article is called KEI-GO! (York, 2024), which relates to the Japanese language concept of the same name — keigo. Keigo is a Japanese language system of honorific speech used to show respect to others. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, consider English pragmatics, or, how context and social distance affect how we talk to others. For example, one would ask a favor of a boss in a very different way than we would from our children who might have forgotten to do their homework for four nights in a row!

Keigo consists of three main types:

• Sonkeigo (尊敬語): This type of keigo shows respect to the person being spoken to or about. It is used when the speaker is of a lower social status than the listener or wants to show respect for the listener’s position or authority.
• Kenjōgo (謙譲語): This type of keigo shows humility and modesty on the part of the speaker. It is used when the speaker wants to downplay their own importance or status in relation to the listener.
• Teineigo (丁寧語): This type of keigo shows politeness and formality in general. It is used in a variety of situations, including when speaking to strangers, superiors, or people in positions of authority.

There are rules for using the various strands of keigo based on your social status and the social status of your interlocutor (a heuristic of when to use which type of language is shown in Picture 2). The inherent rules of the language thus informed the design of the game. 

The inherent rules of the language thus informed the design of the game.

If you’d like to know more about keigo, please see this webpage.

So this is all only applicable to Japanese learners?

KEI-GO! is for Japanese learners, yes, but the core concept is applicable to other languages, too. This section outlines some ideas.

As speakers of the English language, we are aware that there is no direct equivalent in English to the Japanese concept of keigo. Unlike Japanese, English does not possess a distinct set of honorifics or a structured system of varying levels of politeness. However, English does employ pragmatic principles that encompass formal and informal language, strategies for expressing politeness, and situational appropriateness. These principles could serve as the foundation for a game designed for the purpose of teaching English pragmatics, and we are currently engaged in the development of such a game. The verb cards in this game could consist solely of verbs, stripped of any honorific forms. A shared list of politeness strategies could be given to players as reference such as in this table:

Very polite	Polite	Neutral	Informal	Direct/Impolite
Could I ask you… to… Would you like to… May I suggest you… Might I trouble you to… If it’s not too much trouble, could you… I would be grateful if you could…	Can you please… Would you be able to… Could you… Please… I’d appreciate it if you…	Can you… Will you… Please do… Could you do me a favor and… I need you to… I want you to…	Can you just… Do me a favor and… How about… Give me a hand with… I’d love it if you…	You need to… You have to… I want you to… You better… Hurry up and… You must… I don’t care how, just…

A rough verb card for the English prototype we are working on:

The game could also be adapted for Korean, which features a system of honorifics and politeness levels like Japanese. Finally, although not on the same level as Japanese, languages such as French and Spanish feature different pronouns based on politeness level which affects verb conjugation also. Thus, although KEI-GO! is designed specifically for Japanese as a foreign language learners, the game could be adapted for multiple other languages. If you’d like to help us produce a Korean version, please get in touch as that’s certainly in the cards for us (pun intended)!

The game

The initial idea for the game was inspired both by the rules of keigo and various other games (such as Hanabi, mentioned below). There is no secret sauce to generating ideas for games (though ChatGPT may have something to say about that…). For this game, James spent hours on his commute thinking up ideas for games on the theme of Japan and Japanese culture. Sushi-inspired games, vending machine games, bug-catching games… but this is the one that made it to the prototyping phase. 

Our advice to wannabe game developers is thus – think it up, make a quick prototype and PLAY it. Don’t let it stay as a hypothetical during development. Get pen to paper and try it out as early as possible. Another simple way to start is to remix a game you are already familiar with but with a language learning twist.

In a nutshell, KEI-GO! is a collaborative (not competitive) hidden role/social deduction game where players are collecting information from others in order to deduce what their own social status is. Players each have a social status where 1 is the lowest and 4 is the highest. The social status is represented by a Role card (more on these later). However, players cannot see their own social status because they hold the card facing away from themselves. Thus, players can only see the status of other players. This mechanic is derived from the game Hanabi (Bauza, 2010) where players hold their hand facing away from themselves and players give information about each others’ hands.

Asking questions

Along with the role card, players have three verb cards in their hand (see Picture 4 below). These cards are used to ask a question to other players. For instance, a player may have “ask,” “go,” and “meet” in their hand and thus may formulate a question such as: “Did you meet Tanaka yesterday?” using that verb card. The verb cards have the plain form of the verb at the top as well as all three keigo versions of the verb below, including example sentences. Players ask each other questions using the verb cards. Using keigo, players will base the way they speak to another player based on their role. As a concrete example then:

The person you ask a question to is role 4: You should use polite speech.

The person you ask a question to is role 3: It’s probably best to use polite speech.

The person you ask a question to is role 1 or 2: It might be safe to use plain speech.

Players can determine their social standing based on how others interact with them and the feedback they receive regarding their own interactions with other people.

‍“Oops” cards

If a player speaks out of character, other players can show them their “Oops” card, as a hint that they are not speaking correctly based on their role and the role of their interlocutor. This can therefore be used in either situation:

1. Your role is below the person you are speaking to and you use plain language.
2. Your role is above the person you are speaking to but you use keigo.

Ending the game

Once all the verb cards have been used, the game is over. At that point, players must guess their role. If all players correctly guess their role, everyone wins!

An English version of the rule book that we created to accompany the game is available online.

The graphics

KEI-GO! is a game based around language and communication, so the speaking and textual aspects of it are always going to supersede the visual side, unlike games such as Seven Wonders (Bauza, 2010) or Sushi Go (Walker-Harding, 2013), which could technically be played in silence and require no reading. Thus, the graphics of this game, while not changing or adding to the actual play itself, should serve to smooth the experience of play as much as possible, with fonts, colors, and layouts that are pleasing to the eye and help players to easily find and understand the information that they require.

The following are a few of the major points that we had to carefully consider when thinking about the “look” of KEI-GO!

Platform for Collaboration

As James and Martin live in different regions of Japan, it was important to find a way to share our ideas and collaborate on the design of the game that was both easy to access and asynchronous (we could both work and comment on the game files on our own time, while also seeing changes in real-time). I have used the website Canva extensively in the past for posters and other promotional materials, and it is very user-friendly and offers many design elements and options in the unpaid version. We decided to do the entirety of the graphical work in Canva, which worked well, apart from some issues in transferring files into the final templates (discussed below). A channel in the Ludic Language Pedagogy Discord, which is an online community space for people interested in playful teaching and research, was also created for us to send messages back and forth.

Font and Color Choice

KEI-GO! is a simple game, materials-wise, consisting of a single deck of 34 cards. Without a board, dice, or any kind of markers or other pieces, the cards need to communicate all the information needed for play. As I (Martin) am somewhat color-blind, James recommended using complementary colors, such as the triadic set on this color-matching website: https://www.colorhexa.com/ef92bf. Choosing fonts was mostly a matter of picking something legible but also eye-catching. Two main fonts were selected, one for the Japanese textual elements and another for the English title/logo of the game (see Picture 5).

Without a board, dice, or any kind of markers or other pieces, the cards need to communicate all the information needed for play

Text vs. Images

We often discussed whether to include illustrations on the cards, such as characters doing the actions of the verbs. However, we decided against it for two reasons. Firstly, the available space on each card was limited, and we felt the focus needed to be on the words themselves. Instead, we prioritized adding furigana (small phonetic characters above the larger kanji to help with pronunciation), which required larger fonts and more space (Picture 6).

Secondly, the intended audiences of the game are people who should already be familiar with these basic verbs, so adding art to show the meaning would be superfluous. Those audiences are introduced in the research section below, but in brief: Japanese elementary school students including special needs educational contexts (L1 learners), Japanese as a foreign language students (L2 learners), and in Japanese business professional development contexts.

Role Cards

The cards for the 4 roles or levels of seniority were the most challenging to get right. These are intrinsic to the play of the game, but must be kept secret to the player holding them, so there is no opportunity for verbal explanation or interpretation. We went through numerous variations of numbers, colors, and icons, and feedback from playtesting was invaluable at this stage. What may seem completely logical to 1 or 2 people might be seen very differently by others. We began with a simple silhouette of a person and a number. If specific characters such as a child, a businessman, or an old woman were used, this would limit the scope of where the game could be used and may inadvertently promote unnecessary stereotypes. 

Through James’ playtesting, we realized that the numbers 1 through 4 alone could be confusing, as some people might think of 1 as the highest rank, whereas others would consider 4 to be the highest. Next, we replaced the numbers with stars, similar to the ranking or rarity iconography in many video games (see Picture 7). 

However, based on how the role cards were held by any given player, and the overlap with the other cards in their hand, it might be difficult to clearly see the ranking. Another idea was to use specific colors to designate seniority, such as bronze, silver, and gold (see Picture 8), but it was felt that this was not very intuitive, and may also cause problems for people with difficulty seeing colors (like myself). 

Finally, we settled on a simple graphic of a vertical scale, with both numbers and top-down order to clearly delineate roles (Picture 9).

If specific characters such as a child, a businessman, or an old woman were used, this would limit the scope of where the game could be used and may inadvertently promote unnecessary stereotypes.

Converting to a Template

As we were using 3 different companies to produce the 3 parts of the game (cards, rulesheet, and box), we had to be very careful about matching the format and templates (see Picture 10) that each company required. We found that Canva’s mm/cm dimensions did not match those in GIMP, the free software that Martin used for the final template files, and scaling the images that we had downloaded from Canva resulted in a loss of sharpness and elongation of some text. The solution was long winded but boiled down to:

1. Measure the dimensions in pixels.
2. Remake the elements (box top, bottom, sides) in Canva.
3. Export the elements from Canva and import them into GIMP.
4. Overlay these images onto the template from each company’s website.
5. Remove all guidelines and parts of the template, leaving the images in the correct sizes and positions.

Prototyping

The game went through multiple stages of prototyping, using various tools and materials. This section outlines how the game went from idea to initial prototype to product, including the various places where the game was played. Here is a quick overview of the different tools used, which will be explained in more detail below:

• Plain paper for the initial prototype
• The software Paperize to auto-generate cards for printing
• Tabletop Simulator (Henry, 2015) for digital prototyping
• Canva for laying out the final version of cards and collaborative creation (See “ The graphics” above)

Initial version 

The initial version of the game verb cards were created with paper flashcards (purchased at the 100 yen store) and a deck of playing cards was used for the roles (Picture 11). Even at this early stage, the game was mostly complete and played in the same way as the final product. However, the way that we present information on the cards, specifically the verb cards, went through multiple revisions.

Paperize and auto-generating cards

After playing the game with cards that were drawn hastily by hand, James wanted to make the prototype look more professional. Browsing various subreddits (r/boardgames and r/tabletopgamedesign specifically) revealed a variety of tools available for prototyping cards, which can be found in the following table. 

Software	Details
nanDECK	“nanDECK is a software for Windows (any version) written as an aid for game inventors, with the aim of speeding up the process of designing and printing deck of cards [sic] (useful during prototyping and playtesting).” This software is a favorite among board game geeks and the Reddit forums, but had a high learning curve, so we chose not to use it.
Inkscape	“Whether you are an illustrator, designer, web designer or just someone who needs to create some vector imagery, Inkscape is for you!” Another firm favorite, however, the learning curve was a little steep for us.
Paperize	“Experimental bespoke rapid prototyping software for tabletop game designers.” Paperize is a very simple tool which does just as it says. You can add text and shapes to a card, populating the content from a Google Sheets spreadsheet. This is the tool James used for initial prototyping. ⚠️HOWEVER, the project seems to be abandonware: the last updates on the site are dated 2019.
⭐  Dextrous	“Faster prototyping for tabletop game designers.” Since finding and using Paperize, James stumbled across this tool, which is a lot more robust, whilst offering the same, simple card layout features of Paperize, including Google Sheets connectivity. He has since started using this software for new projects and recommend this software for rapid prototyping.

A screenshot from within the Paperize app is shown below. It shows how the section highlighted in red is populated from the Google Sheet by assigning it a value (in this case {{{尊敬語}}}) which is the name of a column in that sheet. A preview of how the card will look is shown on the right (Picture 12). This particular card layout was used for multiple playtests with Japanese students at Meiji University. 

As another example of the role cards at this stage, see Picture 13.

️ Final Prototyping with Canva

As Martin has written about above, the final tool we used to create KEI-GO! was Canva. This allowed us to collaborate on artwork, leaving comments on cards and designs that we liked and disliked. Thus, one of the ways in which we worked on design was to create multiple versions of the same card and vote (via comments) on the one that we liked the most. 

I (James) was surprised at how robust, yet easy to use Canva was. We did not subscribe to the paid tier, yet were able to create the cards for this game, which attests to how well the website is designed. Some of the other elements of Canva that I thought were useful are as follows:

• Element search: Quickly search for clip art or other graphics to make quick prototypes.
• Snapping: Elements snap into place on your designs, so aligning objects is easy (it can also be manually overridden).
• Canvas size: You can manually set the size of the canvas which means that we could export the cards to the exact dimensions requested by the print company.
• Export file formats: Designs can be downloaded as various file types such as PNG, JPG, and what was particularly important for our project: PDF. This is because we did not use any images on the cards, only vector graphics. By exporting as PDF, it allowed the cards to keep the crispness of their graphics at any zoom level (see Picture 14).

Playtesting on Tabletop Simulator

It is possible to import prototypes of cards into Tabletop Simulator (Henry, 2015), which, as the name suggests, is a game that allows players to engage in multiplayer card, board, and other tabletop games virtually. The game comes with a variety of tools to play with, including dominoes, playing cards, chits, and dice, but it also provides tools for users to upload their own cards. Thus, Tabletop Simulator has an active modding/workshopping community where users upload their own creations or other popular card and board games. In our case, we just needed to upload a custom deck of cards, which can be done quite easily if you have an image of each card. A guide is available for users who wish to do so.

James used Tabletop Simulator to play the game with his Japanese students on the Kotoba Miners Discord server. The students join from various locations to attend weekly Japanese lessons, and thus the game could not be played face to face. Tabletop Simulator acted as a tool for playtesting the game with people who are not colocated. This avenue of playtesting made up the bulk of total playtesting time, where feedback was collected each week and then the game was updated to align with the feedback we gained. For a specific example of their feedback, Martin wrote about the role cards above.

Struggles that We Faced in Creating KEI-GO!

The majority of our struggles relate to graphic design. Going from a cheap prototype to a polished game is not easy. Martin’s knowledge, as well as feedback from playtesters, was invaluable. Specifically, playtesting the game helped us craft the role card design, and prompted us to add example sentences to the front of the cards for reference. 

For this particular game, another big hurdle was the language itself. Some questions which we faced are shown in the next table.

Questions/struggles	Our solution
Which verbs do we include?	James chose verbs that are the most frequently used in Japanese, as found in Tono et al. (2013)
How do we show the differences between the three forms of keigo?	Use different colors for each part of the card. Emphasize which form is used for yourself and your partner on the cards. The section of card to the right shows 相手 (partner) and 自分 (you) to show which verb form you use based on the subject of the sentence:
Are the example sentences correct?	James invited his Japanese-language teaching colleague (Baku Ueda) to be proofreader/spell checker

We also struggled knowing how to go from prototype to product. Some of those issues are shown in this table. 

Questions/struggles	Our solution
Which company to use for printing?	James’s student who created a card game in the past helped us here. We used the companies that he recommended.
How many to print?	The more you print, the cheaper each box is. However, for this run, we were only thinking of having enough to conduct research in K-12 classrooms (see below for more info on this). James did some calculations and as a rough estimate, we needed 35 copies to play the game with five classes of students. However, we rounded up to 50 copies so that we would have some to give away and a few for sale.
How do we make our art fit the companies’ templates?	We were able to make the cards fit a template by making our own version in Canva, but the box needed to be done in another program. Martin used GIMP as a free alternative to Adobe’s Illustrator or Photoshop.

Printing the Game

After thoroughly playtesting the game, revising the art, and creating an attractive rulebook, it’s time to print. But which company to use? How do you go from prototype to product? 

In our case, we had friends in the industry that gave us advice, which we are happy to share here. There are probably “better” or cheaper methods, but a finished game is better than a perfect game, so when considering printing your game, there comes a time when you just have to decide to hit that print button. The next table outlines the three companies we used to print KEI-GO! All of these require comprehension of Japanese, but there are board game printing companies in many countries. As a starting place for finding a company near you, try Board Game Manufacturers. Additionally, a popular US print-on-demand company is The Game Crafter. 

Component	Japanese Company	Notes
Cards	Press Talk Direct	The cards are 63x88mm (the size of Magic the Gathering-style cards). Matte finish for a super smooth feel. Rounded corners. 25 different fronts. 3 different backs. We created our own template for submission.
Boxes	Popls	Gloss finish boxes. Single playing card deck size. Required us to use their template for submission.
Rulebook	Raksul	A4 size, folded three times to fit in the box Double sided printing. No template required, as the size was standard A4 paper.

As we wrote about in the “Struggles” section above, by using three different companies, we had to use different templates for the printing process. Press Talk Direct asked us to format our card design in a specific way, showing bleed lines and edges. We had never done this before, and the template they sent us was very professional looking. We created our own, simple version in Canva and sent it back, which was rejected, but they were extremely accommodating, showing us what they required, and helping us format the template to fit their needs, so it was actually quite a pleasant experience to work with them. 

The box was more of an issue as we had to fit our design onto their template. Martin used GIMP to fit our artwork onto their template, and again, the company was very helpful in making sure our art fit just right, not letting us hit print until everything was looking good. Though the company checked our files for the correct dimensions, it was not their responsibility to check for any errors involving colors, images, and text. It was discovered after ordering the boxes that one of the side graphics had been flipped vertically instead of horizontally, resulting in the upside down text in Picture 16. This was a careless mistake on the part of Martin, and taught us that it is important to check and recheck every detail of the game design and layout at each stage, before settling on the final version to be printed/produced. Having a checklist of all parts to go through would be one way to ensure these kinds of accidents don’t happen.

Once we had all the components printed, one big job was putting it all together. The boxes were the most difficult piece to put together, as the shiny finish is a sticker which needs to be applied to a cardboard box (which also needs to be put together). We also had to fold the rulebooks ourselves. Finally, Picture 13 shows the KEI-GO! cards as they were delivered to us. Each card was delivered as an individual stack, which meant that we had to take one card from each stack to make the KEI-GO! card decks. This was not too much of a job with only 50 copies, but going from 50 to 200 would be a lot of work. In this case, I heard from another friend that it is possible to send your printed cards to a company which will do the work of putting together the game, but of course this incurs additional costs for the finished product.

Research with KEI-GO!

K-12 context

In Japanese elementary schools, keigo is part of the Japanese language curriculum. It is introduced in lower grades and formally taught from grade 5 (Harada, 2017). Harada (2011) advocates focusing on respectful expressions relevant to modern society and teaching keigo through role plays and practical examples. Nagata (2019) emphasizes the importance of teaching speaking and listening skills for keigo usage. Thus, the conversational game developed in this study aligns with these educational approaches.

Japanese university context

Keigo education extends way beyond elementary school and can be seen frequently as part of university language classes (Minayoshi, 2014). Since 2011, career education has been mandatory in a number of universities, underscoring the importance of keigo for business (Nagata, 2019). As an example of student interest in the topic, a study at Mie University’s Faculty of Humanities found that of 118 students enrolled in the “Japanese Communication A” course, the most popular topic of research among students was keigo (n = 33, 28%) (Hayano, 2017). Thus students are aware of the necessity of practical keigo skills, making this an additional avenue for us to use KEI-GO! as an educational tool.

Japan as a Foreign Language (JFL) Learners

As Japanese learners ourselves, we know of both the importance and difficulty of keigo for JFL learners. Carroll (2005) writes that keigo is one of the most difficult aspects of Japanese for foreign learners. Of the three types of honorifics, teineigo (polite language) is taught in introductory courses, with the more difficult patterns of kenjogo and sonkeigo coming later. 

There are several reasons why keigo is so difficult for JFL learners. First, the use of keigo is highly context-dependent. The level of formality required varies depending on the situation, the speaker’s relationship to the listener, and the topic of conversation. This can make it difficult for learners to know which level of keigo to use in a given situation. Second, keigo involves a number of complex grammatical rules. These rules can be difficult for learners to master, especially if they are not familiar with the underlying grammar of Japanese. Third, keigo is often used in conjunction with other forms of polite language, such as honorifics. This can make it even more difficult for learners to understand and produce keigo correctly. Finally, and as mentioned at the start of this section, keigo is not always used in everyday conversation. This means that learners may not have many opportunities to practice using keigo in real-world situations.

Despite the challenges, learning keigo is essential for anyone who wants to communicate effectively in Japanese. Thus, we see this game as a beneficial tool for JFL learners to practice keigo in a safe, face-saving environment which gives them a practical experience of its usage.

Special Needs Education

Although we hadn’t initially considered this avenue for using KEI-GO! as an educational tool, a friend of James’s, who is the mother of an autistic teenager, brought up an interesting point. She mentioned that one challenge autistic children face in integrating with society is their ability to speak appropriately to others. She suggested that using KEI-GO! for role-playing could be beneficial in her son’s school. Thus, a third avenue of use is in special needs educational contexts.

Business Professional Development

The final use case of keigo is in business training camps or professional development sessions. Despite (or perhaps because of) its importance for business professionals, there are significant issues with its understanding and use (Satake, 2021; Maruki, 2022) not only in spoken form, but in writing also.

The other aspect of keigo which we feel has application in business training or professional development contexts is in how the game has the potential to subvert stereotypical intra-business relationships. Consider the notion that keigo is used based on seniority for a moment. The head of a company division would expect to be spoken to in keigo by new members of staff, or younger workers, yet these same leaders would use plain forms or even imperative forms of verbs with their staff. These social norms may be subverted in KEI-GO! as players’ roles are not aligned with their social status outside of the game, allowing for the situation where a subordinate becomes the leader/elder/boss and their leader must use keigo with them, whilst they get the opportunity to use plain forms. Such role-reversal may help employees to develop empathy for each other (see Yaniv, 2012). 

Summary

The potential for using KEI-GO! as an educational game can be summed up as the following four areas:

1. Public elementary, junior high, and high schools
2. Japanese as a foreign language classes
3. Special needs educational institutes
4. Business training sessions

‍How we’ll use KEI-GO! as a learning tool

Initially, James considered a research plan involving two groups: an experimental group that would play KEI-GO! and a control group that would not. This setup would allow us to compare the efficacy of the game with traditional teaching techniques. However, implementing this in practice is challenging, especially when seeking permission to introduce the game in schools. The main issue is that all classes would likely want to play the game. Denying half the students this opportunity could lead to resistance from the local board of education, making it difficult to obtain approval for the study.

A simpler, albeit less rigorous, version of the study would focus on comparing students’ pre- and post-test scores regarding their knowledge of keigo. The challenge here is that we want to use the game as part of a well-designed, pedagogically sound lesson plan. This means wrapping the gameplay with didactic learning activities (such as simple briefing and debriefing activities) to maximize learning from their experience of playing the game (see deHaan & York, forthcoming). The issue is understanding which was more influential in promoting learning gains — the effect of the game or the didactic activities. However, holistically, evaluating whether the game, as part of teaching, is a viable and enjoyable way for students to gain experience and knowledge of keigo remains a valid avenue of research. A lesson plan for using KEI-GO! is shown in the table below. The framework follows a simple task-based language learning procedure. Following York (2019, 2020), the lesson should be repeated multiple times to allow students to acclimate themselves to the game and increase the potential for learning. 

Time (minutes)	Activity	Notes
5	Introduction	Greeting and Warm-Up. Explain the goal of the class: to learn and practice keigo using a card game called KEI-GO!.
5	Pretest	Students complete the pretest on their iPads (see pre-/post-test section below).
10	Review keigo	The classroom teacher goes through the three main parts of keigo, eliciting answers from students.
20	Gameplay	The teacher explains how to play, with examples from the rulebook. Students are put into their predetermined groups and play the game once.
5	Debrief	Students share their experiences with the class, and the teacher reinforces the elements of keigo covered in the day’s lesson.
5	Post-test	Students complete the post-test on their iPads.
OPTIONAL	Delayed post-test	We may ask the school to do a delayed post-test two weeks later to see if the students have retained knowledge.

Pre-/post-Test Design

A comprehension test was designed with Google Forms to assess students’ understanding of the sonkeigo, kenjogo, and teineigo forms of various verbs used in the game. The test first asks students the meaning of the three different keigo types, and then includes six verbs for each, chosen to limit the length of the test and avoid overwhelming the students. All questions are presented in multiple choice format, with an option for students to state that they do not know. An example follows:

「食べる」の尊敬語として正しいものを選んでください

[Please choose the SONKEI version of taberu (eat)]

• 召し上がる (meshiagaru) [Sonkeigo version of taberu]
• いただく (itadaku) [Kenjogo version of taberu]
• 食べます (tabemasu) [Teineigo version of taberu]
• 分からない (wakaranai) [I don’t know]

A questionnaire asking students what they thought of the game is also provided to gauge how acceptable they think it is as a learning tool. The questionnaire is a modified version of the Technology Acceptance Model as seen in Bourgonjon, et al. (2010), Bourgonjon, et al. (2011), and Xie et al. (2021). A demographics section is also included to understand whether prior gaming experience is a factor.

What’s Next for KEI-GO!?

Fixing errors and improving the quality of the current version

Since printing this first run of KEI-GO! we have personally found several small proofing errors (flipped graphics, wrong number of “Oops” cards written in the rulebook, etc.) which need to be corrected. Additionally, although we playtested the game extensively, we did not have people play the game without us explaining how to play. Since production however, we have distributed the game to a number of friends who have played the game in our absence (a very important part of playtesting which we did not have the chance to do). Based on their (lack of) understanding of the rules as written in the rule book, we have since received a number of ways in which the rules should be rewritten for clarity.

Expansion opportunities

We purposely did not include location cards in this version of KEI-GO! as we found that during playtesting adding in locations would make it harder to come up with suitable questions to ask of other players. In other words, the additional cognitive load of considering location as well as social status/keigo-use slowed down the pace of the game. In future versions of the game however, we could include location cards to add in a role-playing aspect to the game (use keigo on the train, in the office, at school, in space with aliens, in a Cthulhu themed horror world, etc.).

Much like the various expansions that exist for popular games like Instant Propose (daipo, 2017) another obvious avenue of expansion is in the addition of verb cards. This could also be based on various themes such as love, fantasy, horror, isekai, etc. which could then be shuffled in with, or replace the default cards, adding a new flavor to the game and increasing replayability.

Conclusion 

This paper discussed our journey of creating and publishing an educational card game, KEI-GO!. The process involved designing the game mechanics, creating the artwork, prototyping, playtesting, and printing. Challenges included graphic design issues, language-related complexities, and navigating the printing process. Despite these hurdles, we were able to produce a finished game with potential applications in various educational contexts. Future plans include refining the game based on feedback (in the wild!), exploring expansion opportunities, and conducting research to evaluate its effectiveness as a learning tool. We hope this paper was useful in your own card game development journeys! Please consider sharing your ideas and work in the #game-design channel of the LLP Discord and on The FLTMAG!

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