I played Cards against Humanity not long after it first came out. I have to say it left me with a mental bad taste: It was a game of humor, but the humor was that of making denigratory statements about various people and things, and getting to be outrageous because it was “only a joke.” And that really wasn’t a frame of mind I wanted to cultivate in myself, so I’ve never played it again. I think this wasn’t quite the same as your concern: It wasn’t specifically that there were problematic jokes, but that the spirit of the whole thing was one of contempt and sarcasm, and of licensing oneself to display them, and I find that uncomfortable no matter who’s the target.
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My historical knowledge is not that great: domino theory and the reasoning behind Defcon 1 as a loss condition are both mentioned in the rule book!
On the other hand, the point about the US-centric viewpoint is my personal observation. For example, in a very general sense, it appears to me that a lot of the US events are things the US or US-based organisations did, while a lot of the USSR events are things that happened (with the casual agents more complex, or unknown, or US influence).
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Anyone who hasn’t read Paul’s review of CAH probably should. It certainly says everything I have to say about it.
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This line from the Twilight Struggle rulebook struck me as particularly significant (so much so that I remembered it well enough from years ago to be able to find it very easily now):
Wherever there were compromises to make between realism and playability, we sided with playability. We want to evoke the feel of the Cold War, we hope people get a few insights they didn’t possess, but we have no pretensions that a game of this scope or length could pretend to be a simulation.
The designers are upfront about the fact that they are prioritising making a good game, and I think they achieved that. I think that if the game were made by Russians it might well come out differently, but still be a great game.
My personal view is that Cole Wehrle has achieved more as a game designer than as a historian, which is perhaps why I don’t take his history essays (and the one that started this thread which was about one of his games) quite as seriously as I take his game designs. That said, I’m interested in the subject, and I think the framing of a game, whether conscious or unconscious, tells us something.
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Back when I played it, at one point, one of the players put down a second white card that referred to the same person—I no longer remember who, but someone who would have been considered “right wing.” (It wasn’t Donald Trump, who wasn’t on the political radar that early.) And I said, “Well, you can tell what the designers’ political agenda is.” Now that I describe it, that’s rather like what @benkyo has been saying about “framing,” isn’t it?
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There’s been discussion of this in the World’s Worst Kickstarter thread on BGG - the kind of political “satire” that regards just mentioning someone’s name as a joke in itself seems often not to be done by people with a particular agenda, because quite often they’re kickstarting the “left-wing” and “right-wing” versions of the game at the same time. I’ve not played enough CAH to say, but I suspect they just threw in everything that they thought would get a strong reaction.
If it had occurred once I wouldn’t have said anything. Having it come up a second time—not the general “right wing” trope, but the very same political figure—seemed a bit tendentious. It isn’t as if there were any shortage of right-wing politicians to include!
I haven’t read that since Uni, but just opened it now. I’d forgotten how much extra stuff is packed in there. And a quick read through the card list seems to confirm your US lens idea. Although apparently they both studied International Relations, so I’d be surprised if they didn’t notice. Maybe its more a sign of the time they studied.
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Many would argue that it doesn’t, but comparing CAH to other similar games makes it quite obvious that CAH pushes you in the direction of bigotry. It offers you no opportunity to be creative. No opportunity to do any actual work. Your only tool for gaining a reaction is shock. So all you can do is put down the most shocking card in your hand.
Compared to something like The Metagame where all the cards are mundane, but it encourages you to make odd combinations of cards. And then it encourages you to discuss those odd combinations.
Or something like Bring Your Own Book, where you’re deriving humour from recontextualising the phrases you pick out.
To bring this more on topic: I’d say most games make statements - mostly unintentionally. Via what is and isn’t included. What is and isn’t possible. Not always good ones (in the sense of whether they’re coherent, not as a value judgement), and not always thematic ones, but they’re there.
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I played a game in this general family (“one challenge, everyone puts down a response, someone decides which is ‘best’”) some years ago – Red Flags. I discovered that there is actually a game in there: knowing who the judge is going to be for that round, you can slant your choices specifically to appeal to them. I was playing with people I’d never met before, rather younger than me and who knew each other already, and based on their initial reactions I was able to skew my later plays to match their tastes and win. I’m not at all sure that that’s the game I was meant to be playing, though.
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Ohh actually I can contribute my own idea here, instead of just bouncing off of other peoples.
Martin Wallice’s A Study in Emerald is a game based on the excellent (I’m bias) short story by Nail Gaiman. In short, it’s late 1800s and the monarchs are great old ones from the chuthulu(lulululu) mythos. Two teams are either trying to maintain status quo or start a rebellion. It’s billed as a great overthrow the old ones with assassin’s and explosives and agents game. I was a bit miffed when it was pointed out to me that the best way to get points is by controlling cities.
I can either use two agents, an action and burn a card (all of which take an action to get) to get 4 points, or I can use two actions to get something similar.
Except, after sulking about if for a while it kinda made sense. If a rebellion is going to happen you need the people on side. No point killing the king if no one wants change.
I’ve played that too and found it better than CAH. We may have been doing more than is intended by the game though, as we treated it as a discussion. So you had to “sell” the fictional date you’d created to the judge, much as you would in Snake Oil or similar.
It meant you got a lot of odd discussions about the implications of the desirable/undesirable traits. Billionaire Banshee is similar, but skews more towards “weird” than “horrible” for its traits.
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I think that’s pretty much a given though. Boardgames cannot really be simulations, given the constraints of the format, and in nearly all cases playability should be prioritized over aspiring to simulate.
Something else though… maybe a feeling of verisimilitude? can be very important in theming a game successfully. If TS were claiming to simulate the Cold War, if it were claiming that domino theory was accurate and the war hawks were right and all the rest… it would be both inaccurate and kind of absurd, and probably quite offensive to many. But it doesn’t, instead it provides some insight into what might have driven people who believed in all that, and it does it with just enough verisimilitude to be effective.
Contrast, perhaps, Labyrinth: War on Terror which similarly works on the basis that a particular model and strategy derived from it are actually valid.
I suspect I agree, but I still find it odd to phrase it as though the game itself is making the statement. I’d phrase what I think you’re trying to say (borrowing the language of the thread title) as “the framing of most games gives us insight (often unintentional) into the culture of the designer(s)”. Nowadays designers are noticing this and trying to make the framing more intentional, but in a few years’ time all the unintentional/tacit stuff will look more obvious I imagine.
The reason I want to take the statement/argument out of the game and locate it in the audience is that I think it’s highly mutable over time*. And most of what we see in the framing of a game is actually highly dependent on our own environment. If we all agree, I’d claim that it’s often mainly because we have a shared set of prejudices to start with. Our view of a game says something about us as well as the game, in other words.
[*] The designer’s intention isn’t mutable, but the reaction of the audience is. And the designer can’t really curate audience reaction, however hard they try.
This is an interesting claim. If I’ve understood it correctly, the claim is that the intention of the designers, as expressed in the designer notes at the end of the TS rulebook, is the the difference between that game being offensive and not offensive to many. It might well be true, in which case designer intent is more significant than I give it credit for.
Yes, I’d agree with that. Much the same way things work with books, art, music, etc. But I’d say that the game is the communication point we have with the designer (and publisher, etc). And I’d say it’s important to note that. Something put forward by a designer in an interview is very different when it comes to how it can be interpreted than what is put forward in a game.
Geography is another thing that can affect interpretation. To pull an example that’s mentioned in an SU&SD video, the Kebab Shop tile for Istanbul says to a German audience “here’s something you’re familiar with about this other culture”, whereas to a Turkish audience it says “here’s some nonsense that doesn’t fit the game because that’s all anyone knows about your culture”.
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Well, I’m not sure it requires explicit clarification by the designers. I think someone could probably come to this interpretation of the game simply by playing it, along with subtle hints like the coffee mug stain on the map.
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Fair enough. I think there’s plenty of scope for people to be offended by Twilight Struggle if they feel so inclined, but both the designer notes and the coffee stain go some way towards mitigating that.
Obviously it’s hard to generalise, but my early reactions were along the lines of “well, this is absurd” until I came to the conclusion that TS wasn’t attempting to simulate the period. I’m sure that “absurd” for me could very easily be “offensive” for people with stronger emotional ties to the topic.