Grow Up – the new game for parents

Adult children who keep returning to the family home were the inspiration for a new board game called Grow Up.

A team of Waikato University marketing students devised the game for the Semester A marketing trade show which took place at the Management School last month – and won best product overall in the second year competition, judged by marketing staff and people working in the industry.

Seventy-nine student teams took part in the trade show. Each team had to come up with a game or toy and take the product from idea to market.

“It was a broad brief,” says senior marketing tutor Trisha Koslow.

“Students could create for any age group they liked, from babies to adults.”

Communications student Brigid McLeod says she got the idea for the adult game from the TV sitcom The Cosby Show, where the parents longed for time to themselves but circumstances kept cropping up that prevented the children leaving the nest.

“I also liked the idea of inventing a game for adults because there aren’t many board games for them.”

In Grow Up, parents’ futures are decided on the roll of a dice and directions on cards, as different scenarios are played out on the board.

“You may win lotto and ditch the family, or you may end up having another baby in the house. The winner is the person who ends up with the highest number of points and no children,” says Brigid.

Her team mates were Amber Cardale, Ashleigh Farrier and Robbie Morrison.

“The counters you play with are the parents and the kids are represented by pegs which are stuck into the bent-over backs of their parents – a metaphor for the heavy load parents have to bear,” says Robbie.

“We liked the idea of parents sitting around playing a game and having a laugh,” says Ashleigh, “but at the same time it’s a game children can play in a relaxed and even comical environment where they can discuss what can be some serious real-life situations.”

The best overall team in first-year marketing created Study Ease – an on-line multi-choice study quiz, in which students can answer questions based around their NCEA school subjects, as a new way of studying.

Points are accumulated over time, and an overall ranking system will be shown on the group’s website, where students can see how they are ranked against others in the system.