WEBVTT - Board Games and Settler Colonialism 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:16.639 Here we go, it could happen. Here's the podcast where 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.480 our intros get increasingly more segmented as you've realized we 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.279 have no idea who was going to do the intro. Yeah, 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.599 we've never, at no point during the existence of this 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.280 show or its growth, have we have we planned a 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:30.640 single thing or talked about how to do our jobs. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:33.360 I've never. I don't even know who we who we are? 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.640 Um we are all meeting for the first time. UM. 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.720 I have that disease that Adam Sandler has or what's 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.400 her name has in that Adam Sandler movie where he 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.080 forgets she forgets everything every day. That's me. But Drew Barrymore, 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.519 is that that's right? That's right, Cherie, Drew Barrymore, So 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:52.040 I forgot, I forgot. I can just is it the 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:53.639 same thing as a Memento, because that's all I can 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.400 think of. Yes, Adam Sandler and Memento. Yes, Adam Sandler's 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:04.360 Memento favorite movie. Well, we should probably introduce the episode today. Yeah, 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:08.120 so it's me. It's good for long and today we're 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:12.200 doing an episode that is uh you know, okay, we 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.960 we we've we've we've we've been forced feeding you really 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.560 grim stuff for a long time. So today we working 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:20.840 to an episode about southern colonialism and politics and board 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.000 games because that's also extremely cool and it does not 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.399 I mean, it is kind of depressing, but it involves 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:32.319 less doom than normal. And yeah, and with me talk 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.720 about this. That it is is Sharine or our wonderful 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.920 producer who also writes for us and is great and 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:43.520 we love thanks. I'm here. Yeah, and Robert who we 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:48.680 we tolerate. H Oh, that's nice to you. You shouldn't, 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:53.160 but we we do. Kyle, it's nice to meet you. Yeah. 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.480 And also we have a Kyle from Strange Matters. Yes, yes, 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.160 I'm Kyle Flannery. I'm my editor and co owner of 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:04.640 Strange Matters magazine. A. I guess we technically have now launched, 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:06.440 even with the print issues are not in people's hands, 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:11.360 a new leftist culture and politics magazine here to be 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:17.960 uh the consulting super nerd uh awesome. Yeah, I am 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.720 very sad. I mean, well, okay, I feel like weirdly 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:23.160 for a group of people that I'm in, I have 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.200 probably played the least board games of anyone here, which 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:32.239 is man. Yeah. So when when I was a kid, 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:34.880 my my board game was risk. Yeah, I did a 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:36.840 bunch of others. I played like he re Quest and 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.240 obviously Access and I'll say I say I played Access 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.280 and Allies. I set up Access and Allies boards many 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:45.840 a time and then gave up after like fifteen minutes 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:47.760 of playing it. I mean, that's that's how That's how 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:51.720 I played here. Request, Yeah, because I was request rule 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:52.880 book and I was like, I have no idea what's 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:58.359 going on here? But um no, specifically my fucking thing. 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.320 We would speech and debate eight tournaments, you know, because 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:03.840 when you do it, you're basically out for a whole weekend, 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:07.880 sometimes three days, sometimes like four, um, and you're basically 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:11.639 living in this school. But but you have like maybe 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:13.480 one or two hours of stuff per day and the 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:15.720 rest of the time you're just hanging around hearing how 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.000 your friends are doing. Is like, the competition goes on 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.639 and we would play epic specifically Lord of the Rings Risk. 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.639 We would have these massive risk games. Oh I have Yeah, 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.320 I have very good memories playing Lord of the Rings 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:29.520 risk with my friends. Yeah. I just had the normal 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.120 vanilla risk woll I was really missing out. I just 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:37.360 thinctly remember being at a bachelor party where h After 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:39.960 we finished all the normal bachelor party stuff, we crawled 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.600 back to the place where everybody's gonna camp out for 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:44.560 the night, and so we managed to convince one of 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.720 the other groomsmen that a game of risk when it 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:52.240 takes about an hour. I did, like, like it was 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.840 like three in the morning. Yeah, that's the wedding that day. Yeah, 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:59.600 it was like three on the day of the wedding. 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:04.600 It was an act of extraordinary cruelty. Anyway, didn't get married, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.680 but he didn't take Comchotka, which is really key to 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:11.280 his his plans to assault North America. We we, we 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:13.320 shockingly did all make it to the wedding, which was 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.839 very much a risk, very much a risk. Yeah, very 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.799 much a risk. Uh yeah, that's why it's called that. Yeah, 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.479 I was I was smart enough to just go, no, 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.880 I'm going to bed. I'm not doing three a m risk. 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:32.080 That's not happy. But yeah, I guess to kind of 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.360 back up in front a little bit of context about 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.160 why I kind of thought this was so worth talking about, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:39.640 because I'm guessing that there's some readers at home who 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.440 are having a very common thought, which is, why why 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.839 are you talking about board games? Like who cares um. 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:48.760 And you know, I reminded a little bit of the 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:50.760 little tweet joke from a while ago of a couple 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:52.200 of years ago. Whm I talking about a little while 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:56.719 ago of on Star Trek they have the uh you know, 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:00.480 we've got there. What do they call that? The Holi Deck? Uh? 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.040 They about the Holida Deck. And but for some reason, 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:05.040 every week everybody's into some weird new board game. What 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:08.080 the hell's going on with that? Uh? And for the 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.839 people who aren't aware of this kind of sector of nerddom, 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:16.039 board games are actually massively more popular than they were 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.400 when I was a child, when osmlenules were young. And 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:21.000 a large part of that posh has actually been from 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.960 game developers themselves. The people who make your video games 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.520 absolutely fucking love board games. Uh. And it's for a 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.200 pretty simple reason, which is that you know, all of 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.680 the rules to the game. Board games are naked before 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.320 your eyes. You have you have stripped them down to 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.920 their their atomic components before you have done anything. And 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.360 that means that if you are interested in the art 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.880 of how a game works, uh, they're actually wonderful case 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.240 studies because you can see very quickly the way that 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:52.760 you move from what the mechanic is doing to like 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:54.640 what it means, Whereas in a video game that can 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:55.800 be a lot more obscure, it can be a lot 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:59.920 more complicated, uh, and it requires it can require a 0:05:59.920 --> 0:06:02.480 lot of digging. You don't have to, you know, I 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:04.239 am enough of a turb owner that I have broken 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:06.920 into the game's files for video Verius video games, I've 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:09.840 played and ripped out the code and looked at it 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.239 and been like, so that's the drop rate Because again 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.320 I'm a consulting turb owner here. But with the board game, 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:17.840 you don't have to do that. You just know all 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.720 of the rules up front. Uh, and so you know 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:24.839 if you're uh. And so that that's you know, reveal. 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.280 I can reveal a lot about what the designer's intentions are, 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.960 what they're communicating, and how that communication all works. So 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.880 that's that was kind of my start point here. Should 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:35.160 I just keep on going and explain what the hell 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:36.680 is going on with this article that I'm about? Yeah, 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.080 I mean, I was going to note that the primary 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:41.920 board game played in Star Trek T and G was 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:47.120 was was Stratagema in the uh, the classic episode in 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.960 which data has to get really good at what is 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:57.159 basically holographic chess. Um. Yes, anyway, you talked about Star 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.280 Trek the Next Generation, So now that's that's all. It's good. 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:01.880 It's good that we didn't get into the awful board 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:06.040 games from d S nine. Oh god, yeah, there's I mean, 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.839 Strategy a M is pretty ridiculous and the episode is 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.680 very silly, but it's it's one of the more fun 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:15.960 data episodes episode from DS nine. I think it's really 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:20.040 considered the worst episode in all of d S nine. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.200 I mean there's I think the worst episode of Star 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:24.360 Trek the Next Generation is not the board game, but 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:26.840 it's the one where Riker and his dad fight in 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.240 what's basically American gladiator jud where they have to have 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.080 the bandit sticks that they have to fight the ultimate 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:38.800 martial art. Anyone, please continue? So so talk. So I 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.480 wrote this article that has is upcoming in publication. It's 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.160 going to be in our first issue, uh, And it's 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.840 about a particular trend that I noticed in board games 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.920 that there were a lot of board games that were 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:53.720 in terms of what was actually going on on the board, 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.400 they were incredibly violent, but they managed to make it 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.080 look like there was no violence going on. And so 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:04.480 I actually I am grateful for Robert for talking about 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:06.240 the games that you talked about, you know, access and 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.720 Allies and risk. Uh, even like Monopoly. These are games 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.239 that are in was generally known as the American tradition, 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.920 where the goal is to eliminate all the opposing players 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.920 to be the last last one standing. Yes, like everything 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.559 in American it is like one person wins by using 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:25.800 either violence or capitalism on the You you survive, you 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.120 outsurvive all of your opponents. Uh. Because that is what 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:31.440 we do in America. We just survive. We just pray 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.600 to God that there is somehow a tomorrow and by God, 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:39.720 they're going to take Comchatka. Political stance as an American 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.880 is that we will take the Comchatka Peninsula and we're 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.439 going to take Australia for those three extra armies that 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.280 Australia strategies. Uh. I feel like half the risk strategy, 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:52.319 half their experience I saw, were just waste to nerve 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.280 the Australia strategy. Uh. But um, in any event that 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.600 there's a European tradition uh. And one of the things 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.000 that has been a lot that's been very popular, has 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.720 made an absolute shitload of money over the last several years, 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.000 shipload being very relative because again, board games are pretty 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.559 small field compared to video games or gambling or booze 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.400 or something like that. Um, but even kind of the 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.120 dominant name in the game. And uh, one of the 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:18.320 kind of major conceits of this style game is you 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:22.520 don't elimit other players. All players. Any player who starts 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.040 the game at the table is going to end the 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.480 game at the table. You you never limited anybody, and 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.439 this is I think an admillable enough goal. Yeah, that's 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:31.280 one of the things that's annoying about a lot of 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:32.920 games is like if you're trying to do a party 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.400 thing and people are getting eliminated. Although it can be fun, 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:37.880 if everyone is drinking at the same time and while 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.600 you play the game, people get eliminated and then get 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:42.920 drunker and heckle everyone else at the table. That's actually 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.200 not bad. That's actually not bad. I remember it being 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:46.840 like middle school in high school, where you just have 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:49.480 somebody sitting there bitterly four hours. Well, you try to 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.440 clean up a risk game. Um. Anyway, the one that 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.920 most people are probably the one that is the most famous, 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.520 infamous is sellers of kat Um, and that's kind of 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.200 what's my start point. Sellers of katan Is is a 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:07.880 board game where you play as European colonizers to a 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:13.880 almost uninhabited islands and almost uninhabited island, and you cannot 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.400 damage the other players directly. There is no mechanism for 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:19.439 doing this. You can block them off from building things, 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.720 you can never send him. I always go hard on 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:27.240 the roads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can block people with roads. 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.880 It's a very like it's kind of like like about 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:34.440 like a rivalry between developers almost. But one of the 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.600 things that that is kind of outstanding about this is that, uh, 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:39.599 it's not a technically on inhabit island. There is a 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.520 quote robber that starts out on the island, uh, and 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:47.840 the robbert is capable of inflicting violence on the players 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.679 and it can be sort of controlled by the players. 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.840 And so the part that was again striking to me 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:56.800 about this is you can't directly you know, this would 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:58.840 actually be the right number players of me. Chris, Sherene, 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:00.360 and Robert were all sitting at a table will playing 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.040 out of katan I could not eliminate any of them. 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.480 None of them could eliminate me. We could not harm 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:07.880 each other directly. We can just negotiate with each other, 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.040 we can trade with each other, but there's still ultimately 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.800 a winner. And uh, you know this is if you 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.480 are willing to make some some kind of specific historical 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.240 amnesia about how colonials am actually operated, where you know, 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.880 like wars of colonial aggression also included like wars in 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.240 Germany like the Seven Years War, or you know, the 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:30.560 wars of Spanish succession. We're all happening at the same time, 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.080 but you can, you know, it can be viewed as 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.120 similar to that. And again it has this explicit theming, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.480 and that is I do think that those things, those 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:42.640 things are dealvetailing together, right that the only people who 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:48.160 are real people are the colonizers. The colonized are non agentic. 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:55.120 They're just set. They're they're they're setting um. And the 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:56.640 more you think about it, it's just it's just kind 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.600 of messed up. It's it's just kind of it's kind 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:02.160 of messed up. And I do think it's kind of 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:07.880 interesting that, h the game doesn't really say this very explicitly, right, um. 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.440 And I know, I know there's going to be somebody's 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:12.040 going to say, oh, you know the game says rob 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.079 or it doesn't say Native American. How can you know? 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.000 It's like, come on, man, if you watched a movie 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.600 where there was some there was a group of people 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.840 in the movie who were portrayed as violent and incapable 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.319 of acting on their own, and all of these racist tropes, 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.560 even if they were not played by Native American actor, 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:35.080 even if they didn't use an explicit Native American references. 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:37.679 If all of the good guys are people who dispossessed 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:41.800 this person, you know what's going on. People don't look 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:45.200 at the tempest and see Caliban and go this person 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:49.120 has nothing to do with the Americans that yeah, yeah, 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:54.040 uncivilized like civility or like civilians in general. They come 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:56.720 from somewhere else and they inhabit the place. But yeah, 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.640 you're right, like just like Columbus discovered America, the natives 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.199 are based like it's it's it's a blank slate as 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:08.120 far as white settlers are concerned, and like the positionality, 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.640 like like the game is very explicit about who is 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.080 a settler and who is not. Right, the settlers are 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.080 you and everyone else playing the game, and then you 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:19.200 have the other person who's on the island who got 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.280 here before you? And it's like, yeah, I mean the 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.400 name is pretty blunt, like you are, like you know, 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:29.160 there's no I don't know. It's it's very it's very 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:31.240 hard to evade. And you know, like you can see 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.520 the art from the game, like it's all white people. Uh, 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:36.679 and it's it's it's kind of interesting cause in the 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:38.600 first edition printing they're all kind of medieval, but in 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:42.480 later editions they're like colonial America. Like it's I don't 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:46.120 think it's like it requires some very deliberate uptuseness to 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:50.360 miss that this is what's going on. Um. And uh 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.080 So anyway that that has um that was that was 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:56.160 released like twenty something years ago. Uh. I find it 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.760 very funny that settlers of Katan managed to win games 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:02.480 with the Year awards in both two thousand and five. 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.680 Like it hasn't changed, mud, I don't know. Yeah, those 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:13.560 those are different years, Like what's going on? Definitely? Yeah, 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:15.960 they did add boats. They did add boats. That's true. 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.040 You're not you're not wrong about you don't. You don't 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:21.800 you don't have boats? Come on, that's true. Actually, it's funny. 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:23.880 My neighbors have a boat. I do not have a 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.440 boat because I'm a regular person who doesn't have lived 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:32.560 next to a lake. M Oh yeah, yeah, I also 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:37.440 do not have a boat. So yeah, I briefly had 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:39.600 a commute to work that I could have kayaked, but 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:43.000 I don't know to kayak. That's New York baby. I 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:48.360 developed a desire to have a boat last year because yeah, 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.120 I was in Spain and I met a Spanish guy 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.240 with a boat, and that does seem like the life. 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:57.000 But that's neither you're You're You're horrible descend into turning 0:14:57.000 --> 0:15:00.520 into some sort of Hemmingway adjacent character. Yeah, just just 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:02.400 I mean it is. It is nice to be drunk 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.840 on about. It's also very expensive to have about, So 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:09.800 maybe I'll get drunk on an inflatable raft instead. I 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:11.440 just get a sunfish and just flip it over every 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.720 thirty seconds. Um, the working man's boat. Yeah, the working 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:18.880 man's boat. Um. But yeah, and uh so so from there, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.280 I kind of what has happened is unsurprisingly that, you know, 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.360 board games are actually kind of a summit demographic art 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:28.720 form compared to video games, because all you really needed 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:31.640 some paper, Like really, that's all you need? You need 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.040 some paper? Uh, and you can make a board game. Uh, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.000 if you have tabletop simulator, do you just need tabletop simulator, 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.160 You're already done, like uh, and then you just need 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:42.640 to be able to bully people into play testing your game. 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:45.720 And that's really the hard part. Uh. But you know, 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:47.840 so this means that, you know, people will iterate on 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.640 things pretty quickly. You know, so very like fan fiction environment, 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.600 people will will iterate rather quickly on your ideas and 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:58.240 develop them further. Um. And so I looked through some 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:00.800 of the other games that I've played and liked, and uh, 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:02.720 you know, I actually tend to like pretty much all 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:07.120 the games that I studied. Splendor is the one that 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.880 is very fun, very casual, very easy, and it just 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.960 says this art that bugs me, this art that really 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.000 bugs me where it's about being a gem trader. And 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.680 it's very much seems to be based on Renaissance Italy 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:25.040 or like renaissance on TWERP you know this and m 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.960 for some reason, like you don't see people in minds. 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:33.680 It's very weird. All of the there will be pictures 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:35.840 of minds. It's like, okay, you bought this emerald mind 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.480 and there's like nobody there, which is very weird because 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:41.960 I have seen pictures of pre industrial I've seen pictures 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.520 of minds from the nineteen eighties, which is firmly industrial, 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.560 where there are thousands of people you can barely see 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:51.200 the ground, you know, thousands of people everywhere. You know, 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:55.200 mining is very labor intensive. Um, you only start seeing 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.200 mining become kind of like capital intensive, like very recently, 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:00.320 and even then only really in the United States and 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:02.920 a couple of other countries. Germany obviously uses very capital 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:07.160 intensive mining. Everywhere else it's very very labor intensive, but splendor. 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:10.119 They won't show you the people doing the mining, but 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:13.560 they will show you the people short sorting the gems, 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:19.359 which is just skipping the slavery part exactly, exactly the 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.000 part they're skipping. Yeah, it's even today, like you ignore 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:25.120 what your how your cell phone is made, right, You're 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.440 just like you're glossing over the unflattering parts and going 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.360 straight to making a gym. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're you're 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.160 going straight to you know, I've I've you know, I've 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.840 got my my pretty purple cell phone, you know, and 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:44.000 the the part where you know, there was yeah, pretty 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.000 much of war in the Congo fought over it, and 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.480 then they had to install suicide nets in China gets 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.439 completely glossed over and all that stuff goes into this phone. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:55.600 But uh, you know, to me, it's just kind of 0:17:55.600 --> 0:18:00.600 a necessary hunk of plastic and metal for surviving in America. Um, 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:05.040 And I you know, I'm not entirely I don't want 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:07.400 to be too hard on the designers here. It's very 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:08.840 like there's a part of me that wants to be 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:09.840 and there's a part of me that wants to be 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:11.720 kind of forgiving and being like do you really want 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:14.240 to be playing this like fun casual game and like 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:18.320 be confronted with slavery. Uh, But at the same time, 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:23.119 like but yeah, you you really try to have it 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:26.200 both ways here, Like this is like I don't make 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:29.480 the game about something actually fun, not yeah, not something 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:32.439 that well. I mean there are there and there are 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:33.760 people who do that. You know, It's like not that 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.640 hard to find people like making games about like theme 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:41.879 parks or like haunted houses or utopian or like like 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.920 weird like utopian arcologies and stuff like that. Like people 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.800 make these things. But like so this, uh, this colonialism 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.000 keeps on like coming back, and part of that, you know, 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:53.760 part of that is I guess like all sci fi 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.760 is kind of colonialist. But wait before we go, do 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.320 you know what else keeps coming back? You know what? 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:05.159 Tell me what? Sure? You capitalism? It's time for an 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:21.840 ad break and there's still more capitalism. But that's true, 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.080 that's true different capitalism. Yeah, right now we're we're in 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:29.600 like more early capitalism. And uh so the the game 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.160 that like really stuck in my cra all the weirdest 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:34.840 and uh, I might end up reading a quote out 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.000 from here. I'm sorry for being an incredibly irritating person 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:42.200 and doing that as a game called Mombassa. Um, and uh, 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.920 Mombassa is so aggressive about how colonialist it is. It 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:49.840 is so so aggressive. The premise of the game is 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:55.520 that you are adventurers in the Scramble for Africa, and 0:19:55.680 --> 0:20:00.320 the goal is to be the player who retires the richest. Uh. 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:05.240 And the ways in which the mechanics of this game 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.639 are messed up, uh, the part of the mechanics that 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:11.240 I will say is genuinely clever. And if they hadn't 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:13.320 made it about the Scramble for Africa, I would have 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.679 like no, I would just be like, yeah, cool. So 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:17.800 I still have to admit that this is this as 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.320 cool is that you start out working for a different 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.320 joint stock company. But anybody can buy shares in anybody 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:27.439 else's joint stock company. So the best strategy is to 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.280 buy somebody else's company and then they make the company 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.920 valuable and you contribute as little as possible. Free rider problem. 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.480 You know, the classic of game theory that the liberal 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.879 economists fucking love talking about. Uh. Great thing to do 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.200 with the game. But the way you make your company 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:46.840 valuable is like it's it's pillaging Africa. Like like it's 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.160 pillaging Africa, and it's it's very very weird, Like there's 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.119 you have this map of Africa in front of you, 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.520 and the map of Africa has valuable things in it has, 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.600 you know, diamonds that you can pick up. It has 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.720 like there are books, which is unclear if that represents 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.679 Like you write an adventure novel like King Solomon's Minds, 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.560 or you write a naturalist guide, or you write an ethnography, 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.600 but you're writing some sort of book that is based 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:17.920 on how you despoiled the African continent. Uh. And what 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.520 what always struck me is so weird is that the 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.119 territory is just when you enter the territory. You just 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:27.960 take everything, you just you just pillage it. It's not 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.080 like territory that you hold and really make more productive. 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.960 You don't develop it. There's at least it's honest about 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:34.720 that to a certain extent. At least it's honest that 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.920 like the Europeans were lying about any of that development, 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:42.560 civilizingnition ship like that they were there to steal um 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.040 and But what is so so weird to me about 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:49.199 it is that like there's there's no resistance, there's no 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:53.679 risk to expanding across the continent, there's no negotiation. The 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:58.159 only other characters at all are the other players, the 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.679