Rövid leírás:

This book explores both the capabilities and limitations of overtly political board games to model systems and make arguments. Holland draws connections to computer games, literature, theatre, television, music, film, and her own life, framing board games as an achingly human art form, albeit one still growing into its full potential.

Hosszú leírás:

Games can be used to model systems because they are themselves systems. Video games handle this under the hood and teach you as you play, but because board games are operated manually, and require the player to understand the system beforehand, they can be a valuable tool for recognizing, understanding, and critiquing real-world systems, including systems of oppression. These systems, often unseen and misunderstood, haunt our world. Board games turn these ghosts into pieces of cardboard we can see, touch, and manipulate.

Cardboard Ghosts: Using Physical Games to Model and Critique Systems explores both the capabilities and limitations of overtly political board games to model systems and make arguments. Two major approaches are considered and contrasted: one, built around immersion and identification, creates empathy. The other, applying the Verfremdungseffekt to distance the player from the game, creating space for reflection. Uncomfortable questions of player roles and complicity when modelling oppressive systems are examined.

Throughout this book, board game designer Amabel Holland draws connections to computer games, literature, theatre, television, music, film, and her own life, framing board games as an achingly human art form, albeit one still growing into its full potential. Anyone interested in that potential, or in the value of political art in today?s world, will find many provocative and enriching ideas within.

Key Features:

• Surveys the history of commercial board games as a polemical and persuasive form


• Explores games existing at the edges of the industry that push the boundaries of what games can do and be


• Grapples with the ethical and moral considerations of simulating real-world horrors


• Provides a case study of the author?s influential game This Guilty Land


• Lively prose and personal anecdotes makes complicated theory digestible for a wide audience

"If you're into understanding systems or helping other people understand systems?especially systems of oppression, you should definitely check this one out. Highly recommended.?  ? Matt Leacock, designer of Pandemic

Tartalomjegyzék:

Acknowledgements

Author Biography

01. Stories and Systems

02. Mechanical Metaphors

Systems and Synthesis

Little Sisters and Cellar Doors

The Stones of Turncoats

The Hidden Models of Computer Games

System Knowledge is System Mastery

Cognitive Loads

Primitive Polemics

03. The Paper Time Machine

History of Professional Wargaming

Avalon Hill and the Birth of Commercial Wargaming

Jim Dunnigan and the Paper Time Machine

Mechanical Complexity in Wargames

04. Wargaming as Technique

Games as Arguments

Kubrick?s Two Golden Eagles

The Wargaming of Root

Objectivity in Modeling

Complicity is Required for Systemic Modeling

05. Immersion and Identity

Identities

Roles as Empty Avatars

Roles as Opportunities for Exploration

Roles in Historical Games

Detail and Texture

My Favorite Story

06. Agency and Viewpoint

A Thing That Happens To You

Pax Porfiriana and Pax Pamir

Viewpoint and Horror in Meltwater

Ordinary Complicity and Fancy Hats

Complicity in John Company

Ethical Considerations of Immersion

07. Alienation and Distance

Limits of Immersion

Too Close To The Gears

The Verfremdungseffekt

The V-Effect in Mother Courage

Media Literacy

Nonhierarchical Art and the Monoform

Alienation in Board Games

08. This Guilty Land

The Concept

Modeling Civility and Compromise

Modeling a Broken Legislature

Distancing Players From Roles

Working Against Texture

Working Against Flow

Emotional Texture

Limits of Alienation

09. Challenges and Hopes

Useful Doubts

Ethical Challenges

Practical Challenges

Political Art is a Custard Pie

The Future

Index