The very concept of property is political. In fact, you could make a case that it’s a basis for all politics.
But I do get your point. To many people, political means passing laws and that’s pretty much it. I tend to take a Politics Is A Big Freakin’ Umbrella perspective.
-Tom
More like dismissive. And I disagree with religiouz reasonz being used just as vehemently.
I find that using the term ‘politics’ in its broadest term (yes, technically x is political…) isn’t useful at all.
If everything is political, then nothing is political, the term lost its meaning.
Don’t go on twitter!
That seems like a very siloed view of economics and politics. I don’t think there’s any way to separate the two, especially when you’re talking about a game that teaches kids that amassing wealth is winning and the way to do that is put your rivals in the poorhouse.
It feels like your view is that gameplay must explicitly recreate political motives to be a political game. The Atlantic article explains the issue there. Puerto Rico doesn’t have a whiff of slavery in it and the theme of the game is rugged folks doing the work of taming a new land. But knowing the history and cost of colonialism puts the mechanics into a completely different light. (The fact that the company thought coloring the workforce tokens purple instead of brown was a fix for that issue is good for a laugh.) The very theme of the game, as neutral as it tries to be, is built on a European view of colonialism being a good thing.
The designers of the board games mentioned in this article seem particularly taken by a certain kind of imagery: rugged landscapes, heroic pioneers. They are also part of an industry that has been overwhelmingly white and male. “It’s a case of romanticised ideas that are familiar from other media, such as adventure novels or films,” says Lukas Boch, a research assistant at the University of Münster, in Germany, who is writing his doctoral dissertation on historical depictions in board games. “The authors simply lacked (and sometimes still lack) a sense of the inconceivable cruelty associated with colonisation, which makes it a very sensitive topic for many people,” explains Boch, who answered my questions via email with the input from his research colleagues Max Rose, Toni Janosch Krause, and Barbara Sterzenbach. “The crimes committed during colonialism were known in the 2000s. However, those who considered the topic important were not represented in the board game community at that time.”
Words to live by…
For sure. And while I would define politics within a game to be more than just laws and such, I am defining it as something more specific than you are (even if my definition isn’t fully clear). And I’m also focused on the mechanics within the game which I find entirely economic unless you’re going to define anything economic as also political. At least that how I’m understanding the idea that Monopoly is political.
Yes, I’m siloing the political from other mechanics. At least for this discussion. I can’t define where the border is though which is fine and seems to be the main difference in opinions. That Puerto Rico didn’t have slavery as a mechanic doesn’t really bother me as a choice, but I haven’t played the game so maybe it would stand out as more of an omission and/or problem if I had. Though I’m not sure you could have any lighthearted game of historical culture/city/nation building if slavery (or any other normal but terrible system of human cultural evolution) had to be a mechanic or referenced. But in PR’s case it may be such an obvious omission that it can’t be overlooked.
EDIT: whoa! How’d I double post??? Sry.
Eh, boycotts and consumer actions are just about all the tools people have in dealing with things they disagree with in the consumer space. Company puts out a product or acts in a way you don’t like, you vote with your wallet. One person isn’t effective, so you get a bunch together–sort of a parallel to how a corporation multiplies the power of a few people (though nowhere near as effective).
Many of these sorts of consumer actions are head-scratching, or involve things of dubious (to us) merit, but some are widely supported, like the boycotts and disinvestment campaigns against South Africa back in the day. While as individuals of course we pick and choose our poison, if we support using such methods in one case, we can’t condemn the method as a whole simply because others use it for causes we reject.
If the economy and property ownership isn’t political, only party theatrics would be politics, and that is clearly not the case.
Well, I wasn’t talking of that.
Yeah, I think that’s the core of this discussion. Designers have for a long time made games about colonialism that are lighthearted, or at worst neutral, and as more diverse people get into the hobby the audience is starting to look at it from a non-white guy perspective. Maybe this lighthearted/neutral approach to a subject that entailed enslaving and killing people is not a great way to depict these events.
And just like Monopoly, what seems to be a politically neutral game is actually teaching a certain POV to players that perpetuates the establishment thinking.
Were you saying that not everything has to be analyzed through a political lens, then? I’d agree with that, while probably disagreeing on the border, but I don’t really know where I’d put it.
There are certainly lines I wouldn’t cross (like porn, I can’t define it but I know it when I see it), but if this is the rule then no historical game can be anything but serious. The entirety of history is filled with amazing feats of human generosity and brilliance while also lots of killing and enslaving perpetuated by most all cultures at one point in time or another.
This is absolutely true, but allows for a nuance that will never be comprehended by a mob.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I think colonialism as a lighthearted “Hey isn’t taming a new land fun?” game is pretty offensive if you’re a native from that land on the other side of the table.
Let’s take a different medium for an example since I’m not a board game expert. Old World, the game du jour here on Qt3, handles slavery pretty well. It’s in the game. It doesn’t whitewash it or sanitize it. You can either enact policies that allow it or forbid it, each answer having advantages and disadvantages appropriate for the setting. The same goes for religious persecution, pillaging, assassination, kidnapping, and torture. It’s all in there and the player is left to consider these on their own merits. I don’t think Old World is a “serious” or dour game at all.
And given that I think it’s facile to be dismissive of people’s political concerns, it looks like we’re in agreement. :)
-Tom
We need to make an announcement! Call the press! :-)
I think Monopoly would be even more political, if you would change the setup. Say one player would get the expensive streets from the get go, maybe even some hotels. The other players would start with nothing, maybe some bucks.
I think the “poor” players would think that the game is rigged or unfair. Well, that’s really political. Maybe we should change something!
Old World has plenty of natives that players expand over. It’s not dour, but that’s my point (I think, hell I’m not sure anymore, hehe). It handles expansion and most of it’s problems pretty well. Attila: Total War covers Attila’s massive expansion and colonization of much of Europe and Asia. It’s not really ‘dark’ either (unless you’re playing some country in Northern Italy, ha!). So colonization/expansion games can be, while perhaps not exactly light hearted, certainly not uber-serious or dour either.