Just a game?
This one's a departure from the usual technology, as I wanted to take the opportunity to tackle a question that sits at the heart of a hobby I care a lot about: board gaming.
If you've stumbled here from my usual engineering focused ramblings, the only context you really need is that there are currently over 150k games on BGG, which gives some sense of how big tabletop gaming has got, and certainly how far it extends from the stereotype of Monopoly.
Back to the story though. Recently, I came across an article from the Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin, drawing criticism in response to a recent release from Compass Games, The Great Hunger: Ireland's Tragedy in the 19th Century.
Now, this isn’t the first time Compass Games have drawn controversy (see also The Troubles). Even so, it saddens me to see the medium of board gaming reduced to thoughtless stereotypes like…
“The board game is not unlike monopoly, except the board is a map of Ireland.”
I guess working with that logic, Schindler’s List is not unlike Home Alone, except it’s set in Poland.
The idea that board games (and arguably video games too) can only ever be a form of light entertainment comes up in the media again and again, I suspect because most people's picture of board games comes from jovial memories of playing them as kids.
That said, there is a genuine cultural double standard at play here. Film, TV and books are given the benefit of the doubt as “serious” vehicles for difficult subjects, while board games get treated as trivial, even child-like, rather than as a medium for exploring and learning about something in a more engaging format.
What makes this criticism from EPIC particularly ironic is that I've actually visited the museum myself. It's a fantastic place, full of interactive, hands-on exhibits designed to immerse you in the history of Irish emigration. Touchscreens, audio installations, personal storytelling booths - the whole experience is built around getting you to do something rather than standing and looking at it. Games are simply another medium of engagement, and it's strange to see an institution that so clearly gets interactivity draw the line at the tabletop.
Kriegspiel, as it was known to the Prussians, has been a form of educational “board gaming” used since the 19th Century. It’s still used to this day from the Pentagon to the MoD - to simulate historical, current or even hypothetical events. To better understand the decisions that actors might take and the implications of those decisions.
Somehow though, it has become accepted that anything involving a game is a triviality, when books, film and TV all lack something the tabletop has, which is agency.
When you watch a documentary, you observe suffering. When you read a book, you absorb it. When you sit down at a table and are forced to make decisions, such as in the case of the Famine - who eats, who emigrates, who you can’t save, you’re having to confront history as well as learn about it. You carry the weight of choices that real people had to make.
That’s the opposite of trivialisation, surely?
Not to mention there is no exclusivity on the medium you choose to explore a period of history. In fact quite the opposite. One often leads to another. When I play historical games, it encourages me to read more, watch more and better understand the subject in all of its nuances. A game can be the entry point that sends someone down a path they would never have otherwise taken. The mediums feed each other far more than they compete, and they’re all after the same thing anyway, which is understanding.
It seems especially odd as well to draw all these conclusions about the game given the original article is relying purely on published abstracts, rather than speaking to the designer Kevin McPartland (of Irish descent) or even playing the "game". There seems to be some inherent assumption the designer is doing this for no reason other than some sort of morbid cash grab. Designing niche historical simulations isn’t exactly the most commercially enriching of activities.
In my view, every medium is an opportunity to bring these stories to a wider audience. The alternative is that these tragedies slowly slip from collective memory because apparently nobody could address them sufficiently sensitively enough. History doesn’t survive on reverence alone, it survives because people keep finding new ways to engage with it, talk about it and pass it on.
You can disagree with the execution of a specific game, that’s legitimate criticism. What concerns me is the precedent. If the accepted position becomes that the tabletop is too trivial a medium to handle serious history, every game designer who wants to tackle a difficult subject will think twice. That would be a loss for the hobby and a loss for the stories that deserve to be told.