CrimethInc. : Insurrection is Not a Game : Play, Resistance, and Designing the Game “Bloc by Bloc”
▻https://crimethinc.com/2018/06/04/insurrection-is-not-a-game-play-resistance-and-designing-the-game-bloc-b
I have learned more about the history of subversive and anti-authoritarian tabletop games out there in the world. Suffragetto is a game from 1909 that simulates women’s suffrage protestors clashing with police. What we now know as the game Monopoly was originally a game called The Landlord’s Game that critiqued real estate speculation and finance capitalism. Class Struggle, Chicago Chicago, and Mai 68 Le jeu are a few other titles from the 1970s and ’80s that attempted to simulate popular uprisings. A few years ago, some Italian comrades created a game called Riot that features anarchists, autonomists, police, and nationalists fighting each other in the streets.
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For gamers’ perspectives on the themes of colonialism and domination in Settlers of Catan, check out:
Postcolonial Catan
First Nations of Catan
For more on systems thinking in games, check out Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. For more on the critique of cybernetics, watch Adam Curtis’s All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.