On a frigid night recently, about a dozen people arrived at the Evanston Public Library to try playing a new game created by  Steven Franconeri, a Northwestern University psychology professor.

There were no dice or buzzers. People didn’t scream out answers. Instead, they quietly debated some of the country’s most hot-button issues on which there was strenuous disagreement.

There were no winners or losers, at least in the typical uses of the terms, and at the end of the night, people continued with friendly conversation, well after the game had ended.

And that’s just the result Franconeri expected.

Franconeri’s game is called Point Taken, and it’s designed to help people come up with a better way to find common ground on issues that typically lead to raised tempers, name-calling and zero recognition of another person’s point of view.

He devised the game to help deal with his own exasperation over the state of public debate on important issues in the country.

Steven Franconeri, a Northwestern University psychology professor, has invented Point Taken, a game that requires people who disagree on a topic to find areas of agreement. He hopes it will help people see past political labels and social media rage to be able to discuss issues more rationally. (Jeff Banowetz/for Pioneer Press)

“You see so much angry political disagreement,” he says. “And you know, there are solutions out there to communicate better with each other. If you go out and get training to become a therapist or mediator, you know how to help people have better conversations about tough topics. But it isn’t easy.”

Franconeri introduced the game at the Evanston Public Library by airing a few YouTube clips of how people more typically debate today. Each participant has an agenda to overwhelm their “opponent” with information supporting their cause. To concede any point at odds with your initial position means that you “lose,” so both people end up talking past each other.

In Point Taken, Franconeri flips the script, starting with the idea of someone “winning” the debate. Instead, the idea is to reach a consensus on points of agreement between two people, even when they are far apart on the overall question.

“The game is designed to create a framework that allows people to be more logical in their thinking,” Franconeri says. “You can learn the game in 10 minutes and play it in half an hour. It allows you to be able to sit down with your uncle at the kitchen table and be able to have a calm and clear discussion.

“They don’t have to agree at the end — they probably won’t agree at the end — but we want to bring that connection back.”

Franconeri used his own research, as well as that of colleagues at Northwestern’s Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, to create the game’s structure, which is easy to understand from the start and designed to encourage people to take the time to understand their opponents’ best points.

People came to the Evanston Public Library in January 2026 to play Point Taken, a game invented by Steven Franconeri, a Northwestern University psychology professor, that requires people who disagree on an issue to find some common ground. He hopes it will help people navigate the roiling issues of our times more calmly and rationally. (Jeff Banowetz/for Pioneer Press)

“There’s nothing wrong with disagreement,” Franconeri said. “But social media amplifies outrage and extreme views, and those people with different beliefs are considered evil or incompetent.”

Playing the Game

Point Taken is a writing-based game played between two people. All you need is a pen and some scraps of paper. (You can play online at pointtaken.social, where you can also download templates, but it isn’t necessary.) You write down a question that’s the point of contention. If you want to practice on some less contentious issues to get started, Franconeri has a list of samples on the website — like, “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”

The goal of the game isn’t to persuade the other person, but to better understand their position. There’s a short set of rules involving civility, mutual respect, and not questioning a person’s character or motivations, but they all boil down to a basic premise: Be nice.

Once the question to be debated is agreed upon, each person writes two reasons supporting their position on separate pieces of paper. Once that’s done, you then respond to those reasons, in writing, with another scrap of paper. (When done right, this is a quiet game.) If you agree with the point made, congratulations, you’ve reached a point of agreement. If not, respond in writing why you disagree with the point on another scrap of paper. These points go back and forth from the center like an octopus’s tentacles.

Most people will find, even on divisive issues, that it isn’t that hard to come up with some areas of agreement. You may also find that a deeply held position isn’t on as rock-solid ground as you thought at the beginning.

Franconeri sketched out the idea of the game in about three months and has spent the last year or so developing it.

“I say this gathering is like the 200th test, or so,” he said. “Which means there’ve been something like 2,000 games played. I think the core elements we were lucky to capture early — focusing on that collaborative spirit. It seems to work.”

The idea of writing down your arguments came from a technique used by debaters.

“We just simplified it and made it so that you can lay them down on the table and work back and forth,” he said. “Another thing we captured early is that it’s critical to listen to the other person. You need to force people to listen to each other. And when it’s in writing, they have to do that.”

At the game night in Evanston, teams of two debated topics such as self-driving cars, cryptocurrency, student-debt relief and religion in public schools. Some tables filled up with the back-and-forth of paper comments, but even the most divisive teams ended up finding some common ground.

“This is definitely something I can see myself using in the future, when you run into a disagreement,” said TC Ngandu, one of the players at the library, who lives in Wilmette. “It’s a way to get to know someone else better, rather than just yelling at these preconceived notions.”

“I got rid of my cell phone seven months ago because I was getting into so many battles with texts and social media,” said Colleen Shalom, from Chicago.

“I was a bully, I screamed at people on the phone, and I needed to step back. I love this because when you slow down and really pause and reflect, it forces you to think before you speak…you respond to the argument they’re making, not the person.”

That sentiment brings a smile to Franconeri’s face. The game is free to download, and his goal is simply to get more people to try it.

“I really worry about the division in the US, and the inability for good people to have a good conversation,” he said. “It’s literally kept me up at night. I thought, I’m a psychologist. It’s my moral duty to do something and not be a bystander. So we wanted to take up those known rules for calm, civil conversations and bake them into something that we could scale up to anybody in the country.”

At least for one night in Evanson, the project worked.