Agenda

In this lively session, game designer Jennifer Estaris explores how games can make disagreement playful, safe, and unexpectedly joyful… through a dysfunctional dinner-table game. Drawing on the 2025 Citizens' Assembly Game Jam and the continued development of VoxPop, a daily political puzzle disguised as a family debate, the talk shares practical techniques for designing structured friction, role-based empathy, and comedic realism.

The session culminates in a live, in-room Dinner Table Democracy encounter, where audience volunteers embody exaggerated archetypes, from the Sensible Mum to the Chaos Cousin, and attempt to solve escalating prompts before facing the ultimate final boss: Grandma. Part talk, part social experiment, part dinner-theatre chaos, this session offers designers new tools for building playful systems that hold conflict, humor, and empathy in the same space.

Takeaway

Attendees learn how to design for disagreement using archetypes, escalation structures, absurdity, and purpose-driven content. They leave with concrete techniques for transforming tense topics into playful, emotionally safe experiences that spark empathy, laughter, and surprisingly thoughtful outcomes.

Intended Audience

This session is for game designers, especially narrative and social-systems designers, researchers, and anyone exploring purpose-driven play. No prior knowledge is required, only curiosity about designing for group dynamics, emotional safety, and playful disagreement.