But these different landscapes are in the gameworld nothing more than raw materials waiting to be extracted,” Alf Seegert, designer of the board game Haven and a professor at the University of Utah, tells Inverse.īut in recent years, some designers have begun charting a different course - away from colonialism and economic games, and toward issues like climate change and t he biodiversity crisis. “In The Settlers of Catan, set on a newly colonized island, hexagons represent different kinds of terrain. Examples of these games are Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, and Catan. Many board games - typically known as “ Eurogames” - prioritize resource extraction for the player’s gain, which directly mirrors colonial powers that sought to conquer lands and people for economic gain and world domination. “It's expected that board games have soaked up some of the colonial attitudes from the cultures and people that create them,” John Brieger, a design researcher who runs the Brieger Creative studio, tells Inverse. What’s the biggest problem with board games? Welcome to FUTURE EARTH, where Inverse forecasts 100 years of possibilities, challenges, and who will lead the way. In doing so, they are signaling that the future of Earth need not be a roll of the dice. A hundred years from now, the themes of these games could present a cruel irony if they’re still being played in a resource-strapped world.īut a wave of new games is pushing forward ideas about the objective of board games while still keeping them fun. Some of our favorite board games, ranging from Catan (previously known as The Settlers of Catan) to Risk, are designed around extracting resources from the Earth, through any means necessary. We’re not talking about increasing competition from video games or social media, but actual sustainability. It’s no secret that board games have a sustainability problem.
0 kommentar(er)
