I had an exciting day. I took part in two board game–related events. In the morning, I was a guest at a private foundation high school, and in the afternoon, I facilitated a debate game at a telecommunications vocational school.

At the high school, they held an all-day event called “Read Hungarian.” They invited a lot of well-known poets, writers, and literary scholars—I was honestly a bit intimidated. I was invited as a board game designer because I’ve created a few language-based games. (Abszolút megvadult betűk, Abszolút képtelen sztorik, Pilvax)

In the end, my games pretty much stayed where I placed them at the beginning of the session until the very end. For invitations like this, I usually come prepared with two plans, and that’s what I did this time too. My session could accommodate 16 participants, so I had figured out which elements of which game we could try out together as a group. But we never got around to that, because I ended up with a truly engaged, active, and talkative group. Since there were lots of parallel sessions and students could choose freely, I expected they’d be interested—but I honestly didn’t anticipate such a great conversation. They were mostly drawn to the behind-the-scenes of game design and publishing—stories, details, insider info—but we also explored a lot of interesting thoughts about board games in general. I really enjoyed myself.

I was nervous about the afternoon session too, even though I already knew the class. Twenty-eight boys and one girl, a telecommunications vocational school—and we had already completed two training sessions together. But now came the peak, the culmination of the program: the VoxPop debate game.

During the previous sessions, the students had prepared for a specific topic (“Stay at home or go abroad?”). They wrote thesis statements, did some research, and practiced debate techniques. They also got to know different types of logical fallacies, and after going over the rules, we jumped into a roughly 50-minute game in two groups. Altogether, around 20–24 arguments were presented for and against the topic, without repetition. There were a few reasoning errors, but we hunted down those argument monsters, and the debate actually led some of them to rethink or nuance their original opinions.

They played smartly and enthusiastically—and they said as much afterward, which truly meant a lot. These are the kinds of sessions that make this work worthwhile. We hope that in these three 90-minute sessions we were able to make a real impact on the students’ debate culture—and through the broader project, in many other classes too—because our society could definitely use a bit of change in that area.