This article explains for the uninitiated how board wargames are played, and tackles the thorniest issue in the hobby: how to make games on topics that often include shameful and tragic events. One can write a book and condemn historical actors. How do you design a game and include the actions, if youre trying to be at all serious? Here is my favorite passage from the article: ...selecting a certain sort of cover imagery for a war game or a book or a film poster does not make one a Nazi sympathizer; but it does indicate that one has unconsciously accepted a particular ideological construct of a historical event and, by dint of naturalizing it as “just an image” or “just a game,” allowed the representation to become a relay station for that ideology’s ongoing propagation. Matthew Kirschenbaums article is about King Philips War, a game from MMP. Weve all had this discussion about WW2 games. But the KPW controversy is recent, its about American history specifically, and it has echoes locally in Western New York, where Indian treaties are a part of the local consciousness. By focusing on a new and recent issue, one instigated outside of our hobby and not about WW2, Kirschenbaum has a topic that lends itself to a fresh look by jaded grognards. He gives me words for the unease I often have when I want to explain what makes me uncomfortable about wargame imagery and advertising copy that glorifies war. I dont want to be a conduit for glorifying war. Studying military history Im interested in, and playing serious games. But perpetrating a comic-book, jingoistic understanding of war isnt something I want to be a part of. Designer John Poniske takes this seriously, too. Last summer I got a preview of a new game hes working on. Its about the slave uprisings in Haiti during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 03:11:52 +0000
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