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…
Category: Thoughts
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…