If there’s one unifying theme to this blog, it’s my firm belief in the banality of the world. While many writers argue the world is more interesting than it seems, I think it’s a lot more boring than it seems. In that same vein, Jesse Singal published an article titled “Not Everything is About Everything.” The piece discussed a Tennessee school board’s removal of a graphic novel about the Holocaust. Though many commenters tried to tie this banning to the broader culture war, the banning appeared to stem from ordinary prudishness.
Likewise, I see frequent discussion around colonialism in board games. This topic leads to tons of emotional, unhelpful, and bad-faith points on all sides of the issue. I won’t recount the various arguments and counter-arguments here since If you want to read some, just Google “colonialism board games Reddit” and enjoy the dozens of threads on the subject. For something equally intellectually stimulating, smash your head into a brick wall 7 times. I think these debates suffer from people trying to make “everything is about everything,” and that instinct causes people to miss some basic points
Let’s say I wanted to make a tactical, competitive two-player co-op game. To fit these mechanics, imagine I themed it after the 1999 Columbine massacre. In it, players would take the role of the shooters, attempting to maximize the carnage the incident. That sounds, like… yuck, right? I wouldn’t play that game, regardless of it’s mechanical prowess. Nobody wants to pretend to kill minors, and the event occurred far too recently for most of us to stomach.
In other words, the theme would be in bad taste, and most of us would avoid it for that reason alone. Notice, however, that there’s no colonialism, racism, erasure, cultural appropriation, any other hot button issue. It’s just gross. That’s it.
We can apply this same criteria games themed around exploiting or enslaving people from North America and Sub-Saharan Africa. I doubt that these games encourage real-life harm. Economics and power struggles cause exploitation, not board games. I also don’t know if games about ugly historical events hurt people psychologically, or if this mental pain disproportionately afflicts minorities. In my experience, people of color seem less bothered by offensive material than than the average white ally.
On the other, I don’t feel any mental anguish towards the hypothetical Columbine game. I just think it sounds odious. I feel the same towards a game like Puerto Rico1. I don’t want to earn by points by managing slaves on sugar farms. That’s fucked up. Couldn’t they set the game in space or something? Meanwhile, Lost Ruins of Arnak takes place in a fictional desert island so that players don’t engage in immoral behavior.
Topics impact people in different ways. There’s plenty of World War II games, and many require a player to take Hitler’s side. I don’t fans of these games to be Nazi-sympathizers. Some play these games to learn about the war’s tactics in a way they couldn’t from a documentary or history book. Furthermore, winning as the Nazis might beget a feeling of “well, thank god the real Hitler fucked this one up!” Yet, I can understand why someone wouldn’t want to play as Nazi Germany. When the religious Tom Vasel reviewed Arcadia Quest: Inferno, the cavalier invocations of damnation and hell bothered him. That’s fine! Christianity plays a huge role in his life, and so it’s reasonable for him to avoid the theme.
Personally, the topic of dating always “hurts” me a bit, since it reminds me of own lack of romantic success. I would avoid playing a dating-theme game (if such a thing exists), because I couldn’t enjoy it. No, I’m not asking for censorship, trigger warnings, or removing books from a school curriculum. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t spend three hours playing a game about love.
It’s also okay to dislike something for non-psycho-socio-political reasons! For instance, I’m tired of building Medieval towns in board games. I enjoy mechanics of Paladins of the West Kingdom more than those of Teotihuacan: City of Gods, but I’d rather play the latter because of the former’s tired theme. Why couldn’t the fictional West Kingdom sit in any other part of the world? I also don’t like anime art styles. For many, anime themes remind them of their favorite shows, graphic novels, and conventions. I don’t know anything about anime, so I find myself annoyed by the disproportionate anatomy and maximalist color-vomit. I love Bullet, but I would have preferred a Galaga-esque theme in the vein of Under Falling Skies.
Not everything is about everything. We can criticize revulsive or unappealing media without resorting to our political fixations.
Full disclose: I haven’t played it, so I’m basing my thoughts on secondhand material. If these descriptions are inaccurate, one can think of it as a thought experiment.
Very much enjoyed this post - esp the sentiment "Not everything is about everything". Wise words for our time.
Puerto Rico is an interesting one. In the game - the workers (discs) that you place on facilities are listed as colonists. The word "slave" is never ever used. However, there's been so much discourse about it - starting with the *assumption* that some of these people must be slaves if its realistic that it has become assumed that the game has you do this directly: which it does not (It also suggests the critics haven't played it! Surprise surprise...).
Of course, historically, a lot of the people working on the plantations would be slaves. But in the game's world the same colonists also run prestigious businesses in town so... they're clearly not?
There is some better more nuanced point in the idea that the game sweeps the issue under the carpet. But then the debate is about the duty of art of re-create history and in what ways: which is way more nuanced and thorny. It can't just be that the game is problematic on a simple level for making you profit from slavery.
It’s really interesting to me how we humans find so much importance in symbolism. I agree I wouldn’t want to play a game where I had to be the Nazi, but it’s all pretend so why do I care?
When my child was in To Kill a Mockingbird many years ago, I remember feeling relief that his character didn’t say the n-word so I wouldn’t have to hear that word come out of his mouth. But then, he had to (in addition) say some words off stage as another character and he had to say it anyway.
I found it really jarring, even though he never used that word toward a person in real life.
It really is interesting to me, how we can have have such strong reactions to pretend things.