Student granted university’s highest award after turning in board game for master’s thesis

In another shining example of how tabletop titles can be used for more than just entertainment, an American student has been awarded with his university’s highest accolade after making use of a board game to research disaster resiliency.

Brooks Hogya is a graduate of Royal Roads University’s Master of Arts in Disaster and Emergency Management programme, and worked with fellow student Mark Altermann to design a game based on disaster resilience theory that was also used to gather research from 40 volunteers at the ResilienceByDesign Innovation Research Lab.

Hogya was subsequently granted the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal, which recognises the “most outstanding master’s dissertation, thesis or graduate project for that year”.

“Research can often be esoteric,” Hogya said. “I was looking for a way to synthesise information and interact with it in a non-intimidating way.”

Hogya has since been tasked by the government of Alberta to work on a second board game based on emergency response.

There’s no picture of Hogya’s game available, so we’ve used an image of the Parker Brothers’ 1979 title Disaster. Thanks, BGG Bryan Arroyo.