World Modelling and 'The Personal, Political Art of Board-Game Design'

The New Yorker looks at 41-year-old Amabel Holland, an autistic board-game designer who "thinks about the world in terms of systems," and realized you could make a board game about almost anything, "and, when you did, its rules could both mirror and analyze the subject on which it was based." They've since designed more than 60 games, and the article notes that Holland's work, "which is part of a larger turn toward complexity in the industry, often tackles historical and social subjects - death, religion, misinformation - using surprising 'mechanics,' or building blocks of game play, to immerse players in an experience.""With every game, you build a certain model of the world," Reiner Knizia, a former mathematician who's designed more than eight hundred games, told me. Several of his games illustrate market forces: in Modern Art, for instance, you play as auctioneers and buyers, hoping to buy low and sell high. Knizia is a traditional game designer inasmuch as he aims to "bring enjoyment to the people." But Amabel sometimes aims for the opposite of enjoyment... This Guilty Land, from 2018, is about the struggle to end slavery." Holland says their games are "meant to evoke frustration" - specifically to communicate how difficult it can be to actually achieve political progress. Thanks to Slashdot reader silverjacket for sharing the article.

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