Games are more than just fun distractions. They reinforce cultural values and make us privy to specific modes of thinking. Those who have played board games might be familiar with traditional games (e.g., chess) or family games (e.g., Monopoly (1933) or Risk (1957)) and the feelings they create. Some of the earliest board games were used as educational tools and for enculturation in the service of the empire. Modern board games are full of these imperial effigies and, unfortunately, are guilty of glorifying Western colonialist history and themes by placing players in roles of would-be world dominators and colonists.
Playing Oppression
Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games(MIT Press, 2023), written by Mary Flanagan, game designer and author of Critical Play (2009), and Mikael Jakobsson, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lays bare the history and perpetuation of these disturbing themes. The authors hope that Playing Oppression will be a step towards “…a reckoning of [our] colonial pasts, as well as a revitalization” of a growing hobby whose market is expected to be worth approximately $40 billion by 2028.