Most of the movies or shows I've seen that directly interact with video games show them in shallow and/or goofy ways. The husband and his friends addicted to some sports game on the XBox, the gawky teenager, the Mazes and Monsters parody of a person who gets too deep in a game and can't get out. But Westworld, which is now in its first season on HBO, is something different. The premise of Westworld is that humans pay a lot of money to be fully immersed in a realistic wild west setting, complete with brothels and shootouts. To fully enjoy their experiences, they interact with robots that look like humans and express human emotions. Human visitors can treat the robots however they please, because they will just be repaired and put back into circulation, their memories wiped... sort of. And that is where the problems with Westworld truly begin. You might first compare a show like this to 2001: A Space Odyssey or another film about experiments with advanced AI coming back to haunt us. But what I can't shake when I see the show is my own experience as a video gamer. I half expect one of the androids to say, "I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took a bullet in the knee." In the very first scene of the show, a man is talking about how he played the game "white hat" while he was with his family, but returned alone to be fully evil at a later date. Inside Westworld, the android characters say their lines again and again, and interacting with them sends visitors down various "questlines" that allow vacationers to become heroes, villains, or treasure hunters. It was like the TV version of Red Dead Redemption, or a western version of the Elder Scrolls Online. The character who interests me most right now is the Man in Black (Ed Harris), who has been playing the game in Westworld for a very long time and who wants to push it to its limits. At first, he just seems to be a violent participant, but it soon becomes clear that he is in search of something deeper—and he is willing to scalp, murder, and abuse his way there. He finds the suffering of his android "hosts" to be fascinating, even enjoyable. He's probably the character I would have been in Skyrim if I were hoping to meditate on the nature of evil. I really struggle with playing evil characters in video games. Getting all of the Daedric artifacts in Skyrim is something that I did once because I wanted that platinum trophy, but I will never do it again with another character. I enjoy the Thieves' Guild, and even the Dark Brotherhood, but the human sacrifices and cannibalism were a bit too much for me to take. Other players, however, seem to love having the option to experiment with depravity, and I don't necessarily think that is wrong. But how will the upcoming VR systems for PlayStation and XBox change the ethics of interacting with AI? And where would we draw the line when interacting with robots that were not human, but truly seemed to have human feelings? It is one thing to shoot someone on your flatscreen TV, but it is quite another to literally get blood on your hands. Westworld is a superb show so far, and I can't wait for the next episode to air. But I also like the show because it makes me think about who I am as a gamer.
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I haven't read it yet, but I just downloaded a book whose premise excites me. In The Birth of the Chess Queen: A History, Marilyn Yalom suggests that the queen—which did not exist in the earliest versions of chess—became an integral part of the game in response to the rise of powerful female leaders in Europe from the year 1000 on. Although I haven't yet read her argument, she is touching on a concept that captivates the historian in me. What do the mechanics, themes, and symbols in our board games say about us? This question is particularly difficult to answer right at this moment, because we are living in a very productive age for boardgames. There are new boardgames all the time, many of which are testing out new themes and new mechanics. What will future historians of recreation and pop culture see when they look back at us? How much are we able to take a step back and look at ourselves? I don't yet have full answers to these questions, but I can think of some potentially productive directions: 1) Games with a traitor mechanic. I thought Mafia was a folk game until I did some research and learned that it was invented in 1986 in the USSR by Dmitry Davidoff. More recently, the game has been repackaged as Werewolf, and we have seen a proliferation of games with a "traitor" mechanic. From The Resistance to Dead of Winter to Shadows over Camelot to Spyfall, gamers have come to embrace games in which the enemy is among us. Is this mechanic as new as it feels? Or does it have deeper roots than I realize? 2) The rise of cooperative games. Cooperative games exist both in opposition to and in combination with the traitor mechanic. You could say that Dungeons & Dragons is one of the original cooperative games, but co-ops seem to have caught fire only recently in the world of board games. What does the proliferation of cooperative games within the hobby say about us and about what we want to get out of playing games together? Will cooperative gaming become more popular over time, or will it die down as gamers gravitate towards more competitive options? 3) How historical games reveal our understanding of history. If I were to look at, say, an array of games set in the Roman Empire, would I discover anything revealing about our approach to ancient history? Which aspects of Rome do we focus on? Do games that focus on Roman war or politics capture more about the realities of ancient Rome... or about us? What about other games that focus on Europe, the age of piracy, etc.? There are not yet definitive answers to questions like this—especially because there do not seem to be many up-to-date histories of board games. The last edition of the Oxford History of Board Games was published in 1999. It is an understatement to say that a lot has happened in the world of board gaming since then. I think a lot of gamers feel it—that slight tinge of shame when you tell non-gamers that you spend most of your free time pushing tokens around on a game board or planning to do so. Recently, a poster on Board Game Geek was devastated by a relative's disapproval of his hobby, while a pro-gaming article from a couple of days ago described board game cafés as "kitsch." Board games are cool right now, but they are also viewed by our wider culture as inherently frivolous. I, however, beg to differ. Gaming is an essential part of life and possibly one of the best ways to spend free time. I had my Latin students read some excerpts (in English) from Seneca's On the Shortness of Life, which is a text that never fails to get me thinking. It has some real gems in it, such as "Nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing," and "Learning how to live takes a whole life and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die." Which of course leads me to ask: Am I spending my life in a way that I won't regret? Including all of that time I spend playing board games? The time I spend gaming is often the time when I feel the most alive. When I play with others, I connect with them in ways that deepen our relationships and truly give me a sense that I had a quality interaction with someone. We are in the fourth week of school, but I am already closer to my students because I have played games with them. Playing Mice and Mystics with my boyfriend has put an extra spark in our relationship (and we are coming up on our six-year anniversary). Some of my best family memories involve playing men vs. women Trivial Pursuit or trying to keep up with my older relatives in a round of Facts in Five. I remember those evenings more vividly than any movie we watched, any present anyone ever gave me, or even any one family dinner we had together. When I play alone, it's one of the few times I am truly in the present moment. Normally, I am constantly worrying about the future, mulling over the past, fretting about things. But during a game, my focus is entirely on the game. My brain is on fire. I'm living out an adventure as a mage, a castaway, or a vintner. I'm also a voracious reader, and a good game scratches a lot of the same itch that a good novel does. As George R. R. Martin has written, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies." What about a gamer? It's no surprise that excellent game designer Ignacy Trzewiczek chose to title his blog (and later his book) "Boardgames That Tell Stories." Even abstract games like chess or Hive tell stories of tension and dueling wits. And what is it that gives life meaning, if not a story? I have spent a lot of time contemplating ancient Roman history, and one of the most difficult realities for me to absorb is that millions of people have lived, died, and left no trace of themselves. Seneca's writings have reached us, but even he isn't around to know that. In fact, he learned firsthand about the shortness of life, because his former student—Emperor Nero—forced him to commit suicide. I wonder sometimes: Did he feel that he got to live enough before that happened? And what about all of the nameless farm workers, shop owners, bath attendants, and other people we never get to hear from? I know they did a lot of work for very little money. But I hope that they also talked to their friends, told stories, and played games. Ever since Pandemic Legacy came onto the scene, I have heard constant talk about legacy games—games in which the choices you make are permanent, in which you rip cards in half and write on the board, in which there can be plot twists. The legacy system brought new life to Risk, and has now done the same for Pandemic. With Seafall finally hitting players' tables, there has been yet another surge in Rob Daviau love. Legacy games are hot right now, and they've probably had a permanent impact on tabletop gaming. All the same, I don't think I'll be purchasing a legacy game anytime soon. There are several reasons why they don't seem like a good fit for me. Some are situational, while others are a matter of taste. Socially, legacy games are a challenge if you don't have a regular gaming group. Because the point of a legacy game is that the game changes over several sessions, you need a consistent group of people to play with over time—and you will preferably play often enough to remember what has happened from one session to the next. There is no way I could fit this into my life right now. My friends and I have trouble getting together even for sporadic game nights. On top of that, I would rather not commit to playing the same game for months on end. I like seeing several different games come to the table, and embarking on a legacy gaming adventure would kill game night variety for weeks on end. On a personal level, legacy gaming doesn't fit with my motivations for tabletop gaming or for purchasing games. I consider my board games a good investment because they are replayable. I enjoy the process of mastering a game and improving my performance from one round to the next. Even if i play a game so much that I burn out on it, I can take it back off of the shelf after a few months and experience that old familiar thrill. The whole point of a legacy game is that it isn't replayable—nor can it be traded away, because a played legacy game is no longer intact. I already struggle enough with limited-play games like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, and I haven't tried Time Stories yet because I know I'll have to keep buying expansions to continue playing the game. But at least I could theoretically lend or trade Time Stories to other players once I was done with it. I think it is exciting that legacy games are now part of our hobby, and I respect Rob Daviau for developing such a game-changing concept. (See what I did there?) But legacy games don't provide what I'm looking for in a tabletop experience. I wish Seafall well, but I don't plan to add it to my collection. Whenever I play a new board game, I think about whether my friends and students would also enjoy it. Even though I'm primarily a solo gamer, I love to talk about games, and most of my social gatherings focus on playing games. At work, my best times with students also revolve around games. This means that even if I'm playing alone, I can't bring myself to engage with certain board game themes. Everyone has themes that they just don't like. Even though it's supposed to be amazing, I'm not even considering Kingdom Death: Monster. Not only is the cost prohibitive, but I think its depictions of women are gross. There are also themes that I am more than happy to explore, even though they might make other people uncomfortable. I have yet to play Letters from Whitechapel, but I don't think I would mind roleplaying as Jack the Ripper on the run from the police. I certainly enjoy a round or two of Cards Against Humanity, and I have slain many enemies across many universes. I get a real kick out of forcing my children into arranged marriages in Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy. And in the world of video games... let's just say I acquired all of the Daedric artifacts in Skyrim. But there is one theme in games I object to deeply, and that is European colonialism, especially the exploitation of slaves. A game like Settlers of Catan, which was meant to evoke the Vikings' exploration of Iceland, is a game in which the settlers take over land that is untouched and that does not already belong to somebody else. I enjoy Catan, and I choose to interpret the fact that the robber in the game is represented by a black pawn as an oversight. But there is no way I am ever going to invest time and money in a game like Archipelago or Puerto Rico, both of which feature slavery—overtly or not—as a game mechanic. In Puerto Rico, you use tokens that represent dark brown "colonists" who do your bidding. Some people will argue that the game is abstract, or they will make convoluted historical arguments to downplay the issue. Because Puerto Rico is more about role selection mechanics than about Puerto Rican history, some people find it easy to overlook all of this and "just play the game." But to me, there is something inherently wrong about moving a lot of little brown people off of your boats and into your factories/fields/whatever. Archipelago is a bit more self-aware than Puerto Rico, as it's clear from the outset that you are foreigners who are taking land and resources from local people—and also that you are turning local people into a resource. (There is even a "slavery" card.) Within the game, the people you are exploiting will rebel unless you find ways to keep them happy. If a rebellion occurs, everyone loses. Because of its overt recognition of slavery as a real thing in the game—one that can have consequences for players--Archipelago often gets a pass. But for me, "consequences" aren't enough. It's still not acceptable to roleplay as a colonist who is actively suppressing native people. The reason this theme is a no-go for me, when I am willing to tolerate a lot of other things, is that the effects of European colonialism still have a very real, very negative effect on actual people in the modern world. I can't enjoy myself while making light of something that is both morally repugnant and still massively impactful. That isn't pretending to be a little bit naughty. That's implicitly being okay with white supremacy in a world where white supremacy is actively damaging people's lives. One comment I've noticed repeatedly on forums and in reviews is that even though someone might be willing to play a game like Puerto Rico or Archipelago, "I probably wouldn't play it with my black friends." The students at my school are overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic, and there is no way on this earth I would ever ask them to play Puerto Rico or Archipelago with me. And if I wouldn't play a game like that with them, why would I play it at all? The answer: I won't. One of my fellow teachers is currently running a chess tournament at our school. My planning period coincides with all three lunches, and I don't share a classroom. So when there aren't actual classes going on, my room fills up with teenagers conducting very intense chess matches, even if they are no longer in the tournament. Most of the time, watching kids learn to play chess is a delight. I am not particularly good at chess myself, but I smile every time I spot someone who has checked out a chess strategy book from the library or who is trying to watch YouTube chess tips on a cell phone. (Hey, it's better than Snapchat!) But while chess may be all games, it's not always all fun. Several of my lunchtime players are new to the game, which means they get crushed by more experienced opponents. Last week, one of the novices was frustrated after a relative veteran gleefully destroyed him, to the point where he needed to step out for a bit. When he returned, one of the other experienced players made a huge mistake: He challenged the newbie to a match for fun, and then let him win. When called on it, he said, "Well I didn't think you'd be able to tell!" Ouch. It's a topic we all have opinions about: Should you ever "let" someone else win a game? If so, under what circumstances? There was a spate of news stories around Christmas 2015 that encouraged parents not to let their kids win at board games. And in an era where every kid who plays a team sport gets a participation trophy, it does seem like our society is in need of more healthy competition. It's interesting to work through this issue with chess, because it stirs up memories from my own childhood. When I was still in elementary school, I spent a summer with my grandparents and played chess with my grandfather every single night. He had no mercy. I felt so much despair during that month because Pops would just decimate me and I could never quite figure out why. (He's not much of a talker.) I still get anxious about playing chess because it takes me back to night after night of crushing losses with no discernible evidence of progress. I only beat Pops one time, on the second to last night. I'm pretty sure I just got lucky, but victory was sweet. I'm glad he never let me win. Still, since that summer, I have barely played any chess at all, and just thinking about it gets me all worked up. Perhaps the best solution is the middle way: Play to win, but not to destroy. Letting someone win devalues the game and shows disrespect for your opponent. But when playing a friendly game, especially one that includes new players, keep it friendly. There is no need for ultra-competitive craziness. Try a new mechanic. Conduct a bold experiment. Test the limits of the game. You can't always do that stuff when you're out for blood, so take the chance while you're supposed to just be having fun. Also, play in a way that keeps everyone in the game for as long as possible. (There are obvious exceptions to this, depending on the game you're playing.) No one, even someone who is just learning a game, wants to feel like they have no chance at all. I have always hated to lose, and I probably always will. But these days, I derive most of my enjoyment from feeling that I have put up a good fight and played well. Winning is fun, but progress is satisfying. I might still enjoy chess if I had gotten a better understanding of what I could do to improve, even after so many losses. Of course, if you are a highly competitive person who wants to see the enemy driven before you, that is fine—as long as your fellow players experience similar levels of bloodlust. And if you're primarily a solo player like me, you have no one to blame but yourself when Friday kicks your butt... again. :( The first time the Darkest Night Kickstarter came around, I eagerly backed it only to be cruelly disappointed a day later. Victory Point Games had canceled the campaign and promised a relaunch the following week. I admit I was skeptical—the whole thing seemed like one big trainwreck. I am happy to say, however, that it looks like I was wrong. The Darkest Night campaign relaunched on May 12, this time asking for only $90,000 (originally the amount had been $120,000) and accompanied by stretch goals that actually add new cards and mechanics to the game. Full funding has already been reached, and the campaign is moving along nicely towards its first stretch goal. By next March or so, I should have something that I really wanted: a copy of Darkest Night with all of the original expansions, all in one big box. On top of that, there will be two new expansions. Plus, I went for a sweet set of miniatures. I am once again feeling excited about Darkest Night! There will be a lot of gaming to do in the not-too-distant future. These days, when people think about the topic of women and gaming, they tend to think of GamerGate. Fortunately, that blight on our social landscape seems to have died down at last, but it happened, and it was appalling. Most of the harassment women in gaming face, however, is nothing like what Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, or Brianna Wu have endured. Board gaming, especially, still seems relatively unaffected by controversy over representation of women within the hobby. People occasionally express disgust with games like Barbarossa, a game about sexy anime Nazi girls. But for the most part, board game designers remain relatively immune from backlash over representation of women (or lack thereof). In some ways, the lack of overt controversy about these issues in board gaming leads to a more frustrating kind of hostility—the kind that you feel, and that you know for sure is real, but that you can't actually prove. I have been very lucky so far. I have never been seriously harassed. It probably helps that I don't typically game online. But that doesn't mean I haven't faced mild forms of prejudice from men at my FLGS (friendly local game store). My boyfriend and I regularly shop at game stores together, and we frequently face the problem of male employees who talk exclusively to him, even if I am the one who is buying the game. This has also happened when I buy video games at GameStop—you'd be amazed how many employees assume that copy of Far Cry 4 is a gift for my boyfriend instead of myself. The thing that really drives me up the wall, though, is the constant assumption by game store employees that I do not know what I'm doing or what I'm talking about. I bought a copy of Codenames a few weeks ago, plus some sleeves for my Lord of the Rings LCG cards. The checkout guy looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said, "You realize those sleeves aren't going to fit the little cards in Codenames, right?" I raised an eyebrow at him and said I was quite aware of that, thank you. He started to backtrack and offered up a lame excuse: "Oh, well, I always check when people are buying sleeves." I know his is untrue, because he doesn't check when my boyfriend buys them. A different guy at the same store once insisted on looking up a game I wanted on Google to make sure I had given the correct name of the game before he tried searching for it in the store's database. The game was Darkest Night (before I heard about the reprint and decided to wait). Are you freaking kidding me? Again, when I gave him the "WTF" look, he backtracked and said, "Um, I check with everyone, our search engine is really finicky." Really? These minor offenses really are minor. They aren't the sort of thing you complain to the manager about. It can even be hard to explain what made you so angry to someone who wasn't there. But that doesn't change the fact that they happen constantly, that they are annoying, and that they serve as a powerful reminder: Women aren't always viewed as "legitimate" gamers in the same way that men are. That's something I hope will eventually change. The high school that I teach at doesn't have the best reputation. We have low test scores and a grade of D from the state. Even though we have some award-winning teachers whose students do magnificent things, it feels like nobody every talks about the good stuff. But if you were to visit my classroom, you would immediately notice that my students are intelligent and charming. They can be rowdy, but don't let that fool you. The trick—and I still struggle with this every day—is to be engaging enough to draw their attention away from the drama of being teenagers. Unfortunately, few of my lessons are that good, because I am old and boring (I'm turning 30 in June, and to a teenager, that is ancient). My school's game club, however, always fills me with hope. One of our biggest issues school-wide is that many of our students are weak readers. Very few of my students read for pleasure, and most see reading and writing as agonizing punishments. I make my College Prep kids write a practice SAT essay every week, and they still grumble about it as though I am trying to tear off their fingernails. Despite all of the reading/writing hate, two of our biggest hits at Game Club are Once Upon A Time and Gloom. That's right. Many of my students claim to hate books, but they LOVE storytelling games! Once Upon a Time is a game in which the players tell a story together. Every player will have a starting hand of cards that contain various story elements, as well as one card with a secret individual ending. While you are narrating, you play your cards by incorporating them into the tale. If someone else is narrating and says a word that is printed on your card, you can interrupt and take over as storyteller. The ultimate goal is to play all of your cards and guide the tale towards your secret ending. In our most recent round of OUaT, we slowly revealed the saga of a fairy who lived in a well, went too deep, and ended up reaching a sewer that contained the lost city of Pooplantis. (This is what happens when you play with teenage boys, and I wouldn't have it any other way.) The absolute joy my students take in asking leading questions, in trying to interrupt each other, and in making each other laugh is priceless. Even students who are normally a bit shy about playing games enjoy OUaT, because although there is a win condition, there isn't much competitive pressure. The game truly is about having a good time telling a story together. Gloom is also a particular favorite with my students, especially the ones who like to feel a little bit wicked. The object of Gloom is to take control of a family—possible members include a creepy clown, evil twins, and a "disturbing handyman"—and play status cards that make your family as miserable as possible before they die horrible deaths. You can also annoy your fellow players by making their families happy and successful. As you play the cards, you read the flavor text and tell a story about what happened. Over the course of a game, you and your friends create a communal tale of despair, and it is hilarious. What I love about Gloom is that my students know the text on the cards is going to be slightly transgressive. As a result, they will devour it, even if it contains words they aren't fully familiar with. The desire for new information drives them to take joy in reading. And both Gloom and OUaT help my students to connect with words and to pay attention to something other than a smartphone screen. When I see these things happen, I wonder: Would it be possible to extend an experience like this to a full classroom of kids? What concepts could I take from games to help my students focus and actually retain some material? I haven't fully figured out the answer yet, but I do know this: My students respond so much better to play than they do to our current system of standardized testing and endless preparation for it. They are quicker to learn strategy when engaged with a game, even if it's complicated, because they are motivated. And once I have played a game with a student, our relationship changes for the better. I think it's because we've actually had fun together and connected as people. Shouldn't school be that way more of the time, and not just on Game Club afternoons? P.S. If you would like to see footage of Once Upon a Time and Gloom in action, they have both been featured on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop. Just click the links to be taken to YouTube. Although I enjoy several board games that began as Kickstarter projects (Apex Theropod, Hostage Negotiator, etc.), I have never actually backed a game on Kickstarter. But Darkest Night has been on my wish list for a while. When I heard that a second edition would be on the way soon, I held off on buying the first edition and waited for the Kickstarter campaign to start. I have long been suspicious of Kickstarter, in part because my boyfriend has been waiting for Mighty No. 9 for several years now. But Victory Point Games has successfully run campaigns before, and Dawn of the Zeds 3rd ed. ought to be reaching its backers in the near future. I expected the Darkest Night campaign to... well... to have its shit together from day one. Darkest Night is already an established game with a faithful following. How could this possibly go wrong? On Tuesday afternoon, I backed Darkest Night. I was looking forward to that day in March 2017 when I could rescue a blighted world from the hands of an evil necromancer. Other people seemed excited, too, based on the fact that the project was already half-funded by the time I went to bed that night. Alas, about 24 hours later, I received an email notifying me that the campaign had been canceled. Wait... what? Apparently, funding for the project had slowed down, and Victory Point Games had received many complaints from would-be backers. So many, in fact, that they had decided to scrap the Kickstarter campaign entirely and restart it next week. Based on the threads from BGG and on comments from the Kickstarter page, potential backers of the game were upset about three main things: 1) Pricing. The game itself (especially with the expansions) was a bit expensive. I expected that, honestly. But some of the shipping costs, especially to gamers in Europe, were absurdly high. 2) Miniatures vs. Standees. I did not realize that people were so passionate about this issue. Darkest Night was going to be released with pretty sweet-looking miniatures, but several would-be buyers argued that they would prefer standees. Some believe standees would be cheaper, while others just feel minis are overly trendy right now. 3) Awkward stretch goals. Many of the stretch goals for the Kickstarter campaign entirely focused on people who backed the game with both expansions (not those who only went in for the base game or for the base game plus one expansion). They also exacerbated the minis vs. standees problem. The heroes included in the expansions would not have miniatures unless the stretch goals were met, which means that rather than have a consistent game with all miniatures or all standees, players could be stuck with an ungainly mix of the two. Victory Point Games clearly expected this project to be funded quickly, perhaps even within the first 24 hours. (I wonder if the Dark Souls board game has created some high expectations.) The fact that Darkest Night slowed down by day two seems to have sent VPG into a tailspin. I have very mixed feelings about this entire situation. It seems crazy to get $70,000 into a campaign and then scrap it. Could VPG have tweaked the existing campaign? More importantly, why didn't they think this out more thoroughly in the first place? Did they trust in Darkest Night's reputation and get lazy about making the campaign as excellent as possible? I'm glad they are listening to their consumers, but the fact that it had to happen in such dramatic fashion is a turnoff. I also worry that a botched start has destroyed momentum and prevented us from playing the best possible version of Darkest Night. Will buyers truly respect VPG's decision to restart and open their wallets next week when the campaign goes live again? Or did VPG overreact to the complaints of consumers who ultimately cannot be satisfied? Hopefully, the campaign will come back better than ever, and we will all get to experience the premium version of Darkest Night. But there is nothing premium about a sloppy start. Although the renewed campaign may override my doubts, my first attempt at backing a game on Kickstarter has been less than impressive. |
AuthorMy name is Liz Davidson, and I play solo board games. A lot of solo board games... Archives
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