Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
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Daybreak brings us into the near future of capitalism’s climate chaos — and invites us to imagine what kind of power and institutions we would need to build globally to deliver us from calamity.
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The game has been celebrated by reviewers for the satisfying way it allows players to focus on the challenges of their own region but also collaborate on global problems, and for creating a game that foregrounds the difficult questions of what paths to take toward climate justice.
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the board game industry has been rightly criticized for regularly promoting racist and exoticist tropes, including in the famous Settlers of Catan, where players invade an island and proceed to build trading empires, all the while beset by a mysterious “robber,” implicitly recalling European fantasies of colonialism.
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Daybreak’s more explicit political orientation already ruffled feathers in board game communities. But when it won the prize, it was Menapace’s expression of solidarity with Palestine that really set things off. In addition to making a short speech encouraging game designers to engage with real-world challenges, Menapace affixed a sticker to his T-shirt that depicted the silhouette of historic Palestine in a watermelon motif.
Shortly afterwards, without notifying Menapace, the SdJ issued a public statement, declaring that “we find it intolerable that a game author we invited wore a symbol on his clothing on stage that must be perceived as antisemitic by Jews.” (It was unclear if any Jews were consulted, and if so which ones, or how they felt about being told what they “must” find offensive.) The organization was keen to point out that their concern revolved around the shape of the map of Palestine, which extended to the 1948 borders, allegedly implicitly delegitimizing the State of Israel — which is illegal under Germany’s singularly draconian laws.
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this story reveals what’s at stake when a game “breaks the rules” and dares to take an explicitly political orientation.
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civilizations engage in what anthropologists call “deep play,” games that give expression to and help a society reflect on its fundamental beliefs and conflicts. In many societies, games and sports offer proxies for war and mechanisms to navigate political relations, for good or for ill.
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original Olympics, for example, were a vital diplomatic opportunity for the ancient Greeks.
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As early as the nineteenth century, social movements began using board games to convey their messages, including Suffragetto, a board game developed by militants fighting for women’s right to vote that simulated street fights with the police, or Monopoly, which was a critique of free-market capitalism before it was hijacked and turned into the game we all know today.
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Marxist philosopher Bertell Ollman gained international notoriety for bringing to market Class Struggle, a socialist response to Monopoly that eventually sold over 230,000 copies worldwide.
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The idea that games are “not political” is really a fiction cooked up by late twentieth-century corporations who were keen to sell first board games and then video games to kids, mostly boys. This industry developed in the postwar years when childhood was being increasingly commodified and conformity to white-supremacist, homophobic, and sexist norms was being strictly enforced.
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4X (also prevalent in video games) where players “eXplore” curiously cleansed landscapes, “eXpand” their empire, “eXploit” resources and people, and “eXterminate” their opponents. Many games are built around market mechanics that, inspired by the myths of neoliberalism, imagine economics as a matter of pure calculation and risk, failing to recognize the role of power and exploitation, or the possibility of solidarity.
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Bloc By Bloc, for example, is a (mostly) cooperative game of urban insurgency where players work together as students, workers, incarcerated people, and local activists to defend their neighborhoods from the cops. The TESA Collective works closely with progressive and environmental organizations to produce cooperative games like STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion, Community Garden: The Board Game, and Space Cats Fight Fascism.
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Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory is a phenomenal simulator of class struggle in social democracy (including the possibility that the workers take over the state and institute communism or that the ruling and middle classes team up to impose fascism). Board games like Red Flag Over Paris or Chicago ‘68 help us reflect on the victories and defeats of movements in the past.