Recently, a fan of Spirit Island who studies anticolonialism asked me a really good question, and I thought others might be interested both in the query and in my answer. The questioner was kind enough to give me permission to quote them if I anonymized it, so here’s their query and the (lightly edited) core of my reply. In one…
The Green Games Guide
In brief: check out the Green Games Guide! Most folks are well aware that board gaming, like most industries, carries an environmental cost. While the total impact of our industry may not be as high as that of other sectors, we should still address it: we need lots and lots of systemic improvement all through human society in order to…
“How Good Is This?” – valuation in board games
There’s been discussion for years about games that aren’t presented as auction games but can be interpreted and analyzed as auctions. (Sometimes taken to fantastic tongue-in-cheek extremes.) The following thoughts sprang from that discussion. What’s Valuation? A lot of boardgame mechanisms – including but not limited to anything auction-like – can be thought of as the valuation of choices: You…
Being a Force for Bad
Content warning: mentions of racism, violence, abuse, oppression, slavery. When is it a good idea for a board game to make a villain a playable position? In competitive board games, all players are each others’ antagonists. But this is a different thing than having roles which are coded as “villains”, “bad”, “malefic”, or “in the wrong” – roles that would…
Showing my work
Earlier this year, an Indigenous gamer1 asked what I was doing to find, create, or advance actual Indigenous voices in the board game industry. On hearing my answer, they suggested I ought to be more public with that information, to raise awareness and promote taking action as a norm. (Tied to the concepts of showing your work or paying the…
Spirit Island in a paper analyzing island-themed board games
Dr. Hannah Fair of the University of Oxford has published an analysis of island-themed board games, looking at how they reflect society’s ideas of the world – environmental, social, and more. The main three games examined are Taluva, Vanuatu, and Spirit Island. It’s a really neat read if you enjoy academic papers; I was struck by a number of its…
Colonialism and Games
Several articles and videos addressing colonialism & board games came out recently (Feb 2021). It’s made me think I should start keeping a reference list of links on the topic. If there’s a good read/watch/resource that I’ve missed, or if you’re a creator who’d like to be credited differently, please drop me a line! When I know that a creator…
Site is live!
It’s on the bare-bones side, but serves its basic purpose of being a central point for “here’s how to get in touch with me”, “what games have I made”, and linking to the signup form for email updates. Some things I hope to add: answers to frequently asked questions (about specific games and game design in general), links to interviews…