Introducing the Franchise Hacking Toolkit: A New Resource for Creative, Critical & Sustainable Game Design
We’re excited to share the launch of the Franchise Hacking Toolkit — a brand‑new resource developed within Work Package 6 (Hacking Games to Reimagine Consumption) of the STRATEGIES project. Building on our growing body of research into hacking as a creative, critical, and sustainability‑oriented design practice, this toolkit empowers educators, researchers, students, and creators to reimagine existing game franchises as instruments for future‑thinking and ecological literacy.
What Is Franchise Hacking?
Franchise hacking is a design method developed by Stefan Werning that invites participants to deconstruct and rebuild established game worlds, rules, and mechanics. Rather than creating games from scratch, franchise hacking works with familiar procedural languages to expose underlying values, experiment with new systems, and generate alternative, more sustainable, narratives.
This approach has been at the heart of STRATEGIES research. Our recent Hybrid Franchise Hacking Workshop, co‑run by Utrecht Gamelab and the Manchester Game Centre, demonstrated how hacking Magic: The Gathering can spark deep discussion about climate threats and sustainable futures. Participants collaboratively redesigned cards from the popular game, creating mechanics to reflect their lived experiences—from environmental challenges in UK cities to the distraction of digital “doomscrolling”—showcasing hacking’s capacity for cultural and ecological insight.
Our Game Hacking Education Report (authored by Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake) underscores this potential of hacking, presenting a five‑stage hacking method, case studies across teaching contexts, and guidance on inclusivity, ethics, and sustainability. It positions hacking as a powerful pedagogical tool for cultivating critical literacy and sustainability‑oriented design thinking.
Some of the cards from our sample deck, which explores petrocapitalism through M:TG.
What’s Inside the Franchise Hacking Toolkit?
The new toolkit distils the insights from our hacking method into a structured, practical resource designed for direct use in classrooms, workshops, and research environments. Its core features include:
🧰 A Step‑By‑Step Guide to Franchise Hacking with MTG
This guide walks users through the full hacking process:
Understanding MTG’s “procedural language” — the rules, card types, mechanics, and embedded systems that shape meaning in the game.
Identifying the values and assumptions encoded in MTG cards, factions, and mechanics.
Redesigning cards and interactions to explore sustainability, climate futures, and alternative systems thinking.
The methodology reflects STRATEGIES’ long‑term research into game hacking as a structured pedagogical and creative practice.
📁 All Files, Templates & Tools Included
The toolkit includes:
MTG card‑design templates
Editable worksheets for collaborative card creation
Example decks used in STRATEGIES workshops
Step‑by‑step instructions for using design tools such as NanDeck, which enables hybrid, real‑time card prototyping.
These materials allow any facilitator — novice or experienced — to run a hacking session without needing to assemble tools from scratch.
🌱 Sustainability Focus
The game industry increasingly grapples with sustainability challenges, and designers need tools that encourage experimentation, reflection, and cross‑disciplinary dialogue. Franchise hacking invites exactly that: a playful way to interrogate dominant narratives and prototype alternative possibilities.
It offers:
A low‑barrier entry point for learners who may find traditional game‑creation daunting.
A critical lens through which creators examine how games model systems, behaviours, and impacts.
A collaborative method for imagining ecologically resilient futures within familiar fictional worlds.
As demonstrated through our workshops and educational research, hacking fosters not only creativity but also a heightened awareness of how games can shape our understanding of environmental realities.
Explore the Toolkit
The Franchise Hacking Toolkit is now live and freely accessible: https://www.strategieshorizon.eu/hacking-toolkit
Whether you're an educator integrating sustainability into your game design curriculum, a researcher exploring transformative methodologies, or a creator eager to challenge and reshape the systems embedded in franchise worlds, this toolkit offers a foundation for deep, critical, and imaginative play.
