Loser is winner in new game

Press, 22 July 1989, Page 8

Loser is winner in new game

by

CLARE BARRY

The loser Is the winner

in "Poverty Line,” a new board game devised by two Christchurch flatmates, Messrs Bill Harwood and David Nixon. They said they hit on the idea for the game last Christmas morning, while contemplating their chances of getting their overdrawn bank balances

back to zero before the end of the summer.

Players begin the game with several million dollars of assets, and the first player without any assets or enough money to complete a turn is the winner. The men intend to sell the game throughout New Zealand. They have produced

about 500 so far, and have sold to six shops in Christchurch within a week.

They said many people did not take them seriously until they saw the final product. They did all the work on the games themselves, except for the printing and binding, and apart from the dice, all the necessary pieces’- were

made in New Zealand. This is not their first venture into the board game business. They produced a game called “Skulls and Bottles” in Dunedin about two years ago, of which they sold 2500 copies.

Mr Nixon is a fourthyear medical student, and Mr Harwood works on the game full-time.