It’s like Monopoly, but you’re a refugee learning what it’s like to seek asylum

In this game, you don’t pass “go” and collect $200, and there are no “get out of jail free” cards. Instead, you have $10,000 to leave the war or famine of your home country and attempt to secure asylum in a new country, all while navigating paying off various mafia groups, getting caught by border police, starting over at a previous border crossing, acquiring food and supplies, or crossing bodies of water.

Refugeoly — a combination of the words “refugee” and “Monopoly” — is a board game modeled after Monopoly where players learn to navigate the experiences of people fleeing conflict and seeking asylum as refugees. It was developed in 2016 by Vicente Esteban, who was a master’s student at the Royal College of Art in London. At the time, Syrian refugees were crossing the Mediterranean. A young boy drowned, and the image of him, upside down on the shore, had gone viral, Esteban says. It made him think that the media wasn’t the right format for talking about refugees and what they go through. Maybe coming at it from an artistic or design point of view could be better. As he was studying experimental visual communication with some of his instructors — Cecilia Wee, Neville Brody, David Blamey and John Wozencroft — the idea for Refugeoly came together.

Esteban, who goes by the name Vinny Montag in his artistic work and projects, is an artist, designer and educator who is an associate professor of design practice in the industrial design department at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, and program director for the master’s degree in industrial design at the university. He took Refugeoly to Tijuana Design Week in 2024, where it was well-received, so he figured hosting the game in San Diego would make sense, too.

This year he’s sending his game to San Diego Design Week, an annual design festival continuing through Sunday and inviting designers and artists to create in ways that address social, environmental, and civic issues in ways that bolster communities and to see design as a way to build on equality and change. People can participate in game sessions with his collaborator, Lizbeth Dargi, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday at Nissan Design America (9800 Campus Point Drive in La Jolla).

Esteban took some time to talk about his interviews with nongovernmental organization volunteers, and refugees, that helped inform what is seen and experienced in the game, and his hope that it will inspire greater empathy for others. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, sandiegouniontribune.com/author/lisa-deaderick/.)

Q: Refugeoly is modeled after the Monopoly board game, but instead of acquiring property and wealth, participants play as refugees?

A: Yes. Refugeoly was inspired by Monopoly because of the importance of money in the game, and I replicated the board template. It is important to mention that Monopoly was first designed in the early 20th century, as a game to demonstrate how rent enriches property owners. It was actually called The Landlord’s Game, and designed by a woman, Elizabeth Maggie.

Refugeoly is designed to navigate your way from a country in conflict to a country that grants you asylum, essentially a new home. Everything that happens in each box of the game is based on real situations that refugees have to go through. The game’s primary goal is to shed light on the struggles of being forced into a refugee camp. By playing, you’ll experience firsthand the complexity, drama, and hardship of life for those simply trying to escape war and scarcity. Refugeoly is designed to raise awareness about the challenges refugees face at Europe’s borders.

Q: Why did you want to participate in San Diego Design Week with Refugeoly?

A: I want to have the feedback from the people visiting, and it is also a very interesting and dramatic time in the USA regarding migrant workers and refugees, in general. Refugeoly is a game that enables discussion and debate; the game helps to trigger conversations that are needed more than ever.

Q: What inspired you to develop an experience based on the journeys of people fleeing their current circumstances and environments to seek asylum elsewhere?

A: I was born in Cadiz (in Spain), a beautiful coastal city, almost an island. We are connected to the Spanish mainland via two bridges and a natural isthmus, which has been in use since Roman times. We are very close to Morocco, 80 kilometers away. We have people crossing on boats for decades, if not more and this is a very familiar topic for me. Often, you find these abandoned boats on our coast. Inside, sometimes you see personal items, like clothes, shoes, containers for petrol, etc. When looking at this, it is inevitable to think of how scary this journey can be. I can imagine the personal stories happening on that boat during the journey.

Q: At the end of the Refugeoly research document, you have available on your website, it says, “The information shown in the in the above text has been obtained from Government Organisations for the Refugee, NGO Volunteers and the testimonies of Refugees in transit via Skype calls.” I’m curious about the interviews/testimonies from refugees who were in transit; can you talk about how you coordinated these interviews?

A: Firstly, I started to gather information through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website. There, you can find really interesting information about conflicts and displaced people’s trajectories, reports, etc. Some of the information there was used for developing the mechanics of the game.

Then, I had the chance to contact a couple of NGO volunteers working in a Greek refugee camp, through my good friend, Gonzalo Hohr, a photographer who specialized in conflicts and natural disasters, who introduced me to them. The volunteers gave extremely valuable information about how mafias operate, aspects of their paperwork for applying as an asylum seeker, lots of common situations that happen in refugee camps on a daily basis, and also helped me to get in touch with a few refugees whom I interviewed. I was based in London, thus, I conducted online talks via Skype and WhatsApp. I interviewed around 20 people. With some, I could exchange some words due to the language barrier; with others, we had long conversations. In total, I spent around two months, on and off, obtaining information and testimonials. The questions were focused on the journey itself. For example, how much they had to pay for a boat crossing, what happens at the border controls between countries, or which things were essential to have for the journey. The two words that were repeated the most were “mafia” and “money.” These two triggered the idea of creating a game and using a kind of Monopoly-type board game. There are some stories and testimonials too tragic to hear that I did not include in the game, in order to keep it still playful.

Q: What are some examples of how the information from government organizations, volunteers, and the refugees themselves shows up in the game?

A: The information that I outsource is present in each box of the game, from beginning to end. For example, in box number seven, “Life Vest, You have an extra life if you land at sea,” I found this information in the USA National Library of Medicine, in which they reported from Lesbos, Greece, the finding of hundreds of fake life vests, which were unable to keep people afloat. Or, number 26, “Asylum Paperwork. Option A: Pay $1,500 to the mafia band and roll the dice. Option B: Don’t pay and stay two turns.” This information was given by an NGO volunteer (who said that) often, once the refugee has reached a country and is trying to get an asylum seeker application, mafias can facilitate the process if they are paid. Some refugees talked about extreme right-wing militias waiting at border controls. Even if they had the right to cross, they would be stopped by these groups and forced to walk back and wait for a better moment and travel to another border.

Q: You host large format workshops of the game at schools, organizations and other groups in various countries. What has been the general response of the participants to the game, particularly comparing their thoughts before playing to how they respond at the conclusion of play?

A: This is a good question. I have played Refugeoly with very different age groups; however, the large format workshops have been focused on high school and university students in Madrid and Cadiz, Spain; London; China; and Mexico. There have been really amazing responses and anecdotes.

In Madrid, we played Refugeoly with several schools and one of them was a private and wealthy school with middle- and high-class students. Another school was from a very deprived area, humble and with a large population of migrant students, some born in Spain and others who’d just arrived. The wealthy school’s students have some really empathetic reactions; many of these students have never heard of how the mafia controls the refugee journey and how much money is needed to get to a country of asylum. Many conversations about this were triggering, and some students could not finish playing as they were in tears. With the public-school students, we had some interesting situations. One of the students took me to a corner in the room to whisper in my ear that her father came from Morocco on an illegal boat, and she was ashamed to tell anyone. She also said that she could understand, now, why her father would not talk much about his past. Another interesting case was a student who ran out of money (that’s when you lose the game), and she stole it from the game board where the money to be paid to the mafia is left. This was amazing, as it is a game based on luck. Fun is also part of it, and cheating also happens, and in real life, many refugees end up working for the mafia to pay their way to safety.

Q: What is your goal for the game? What do you hope participants gain from playing?

A: The main goal for Refugeoly is to help to change our misperception about refugees. We all can be a refugee in a specific time; it is simply a question of luck. This game has the power to transport you to the many, and mostly dramatic, circumstances that refugees have to go through. If the people playing this game can feel how tough life is when you are in such a fragile position as a person, hopefully, they will be more empathetic and that might trigger the desire to help them. Let’s not forget that we are also facing climate change, which might provoke migrations to colder parts of the world; and those who are in the first world might become third-world citizens. Refugeoly is about humanizing and understanding that we are simply humans, and we must help each other.