TGC 2009: How a Board Game Can Make You Cry
by Jordan Deam, 30 Apr 2009 9:00 pm

Brenda Brathwaite was in a bit of a rut.

After 28 years in the game industry and a couple dozen titles shipped, she wanted a change of pace. As much as she enjoyed designing games and passing them onto burgeoning teams of programmers, artists and animators, she missed the satisfaction of doing everything herself. Digital games were great and all, but when she played a pair developed by different teams that felt nearly identical, she realized it was time to pull the plug.

Thus began perhaps the most shocking, entertaining and awe-inspiring talk at this year's Triangle Game Conference, "How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design."

Brathwaite's presentation focused on six experimental tabletop games she created on her short hiatus from digital development and how they re-ignited her passion for game design. The first game came about after a discussion with her 10-year-old daughter about an elementary school lesson on the slave trade. While her daughter had all the facts memorized, Brathwaite was dismayed to learn that she didn't grasp what the Middle Passage was like for the Africans who were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic. So she did what any game designer worth her salt would do: She made a game out of it.

Brathwaite assembled a collection of tiny wooden figures, then had her daughter group them into "families." After her daughter was finished, she picked them up by the handful and placed them on a makeshift boat. Her daughter was confused: Why would she take the parents but leave the baby? Why wouldn't brothers stay with their sisters? "No one wants to go," Brathwaite explained. That's when it started to click.

Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip's halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her "cargo" wouldn't make it. It wasn't a "fun" game by any means, but it served a different purpose: It helped her daughter intuitively understand the emotional experience of the slave trade, a lesson that numbers on a chalkboard couldn't provide.

At that point, Brathwaite was hooked.

Her subsequent projects dealt with other uncomfortable historical moments. One simulated Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Ireland in the mid-17th century, a game wherein the object wasn't to win, but "to lose the least." But no one in the audience was prepared for her third game, unassumingly titled Train.

The object of Train is to get a collection of people from Point A to Point B by placing them in a boxcar and sending them on their merry way. Played among a group of three people, players draw cards from a pile that can impede other players or free them from existing obstacles. The first player to reach the end of the line wins.

The destination? Auschwitz.

The "game" didn't stop there, however. The game board, pictured above, is an allusion to Kristallnacht - Brathwaite explained that she needed to break a fresh piece of glass each time she "installed" her work in a new location to properly evoke the violence of the experience. She even typed the game's instructions on an actual SS typewriter, which she purchased solely for that purpose.

There were audible gasps in the audience when Brathwaite revealed Train's shocking conclusion; one attendee was so moved by the experience that she left the conference room in tears. But Brathwaite's intention wasn't to invite controversy - just like her game about the Middle Passage, she wanted to create a game that affected people deeply.

Judging from Train's reception so far, she succeeded.

She even typed the game's instructions on an actual SS typewriter, which she purchased solely for that purpose.

The game board, pictured above, is an allusion to Kristallnacht - Brathwaite explained that she needed to break a fresh piece of glass each time she "installed" her work in a new location to properly evoke the violence of the experience. She even typed the game's instructions on an actual SS typewriter, which she purchased solely for that purpose.

Yes, but how does it play? I am mroe interested in the game then this sensationalistic interactive prop. A theme is a theme, whether abstract or about shooting babies.

The point in media covering "games" is not about the games. It never is. It's about the people - usually about how outside the norm they are.

I always found it particularly ludicrous that journalists are put in the position to impart meaning to those outside an interest group, about what goes on in an interest group the journalist by nature does not - cannot - grasp. I've even discussed that with journalists, and they pretty uniformly seem to think they have some divine talent for interpretation of such things outside their scope of interest and experience.

I'm a little surprised at the reaction to the article here. I agree that there are some aspects of performance art here, and I doubt anyone—including Ms. Brathwaite herself—would expect someone to buy these games for repeated play and enjoyment at home. But I feel like people are attacking them for that, and I'm not sure why. Just last night I read a quick note on Tom Lehmann's site about how games can teach through their mechanics. To me, these games sound like novel applications of that concept, and I'd be interested to see more of it.

I'm a little surprised at the reaction to the article here. I agree that there are some aspects of performance art here, and I doubt anyone—including Ms. Brathwaite herself—would expect someone to buy these games for repeated play and enjoyment at home. But I feel like people are attacking them for that, and I'm not sure why. Just last night I read a quick note on Tom Lehmann's site about how games can teach through their mechanics. To me, these games sound like novel applications of that concept, and I'd be interested to see more of it.

In Agricola, I can feel genuine stress if I'm having trouble feeding my family. I had a similar experience in SimCity when I was struggling to balance my city's budget. I personally believe games of all kinds can very effectively set up situations that evoke emotional responses from the player. It sounds to me like Ms. Brathwaite's games are designed to establish an emotional connection with important historical events. I'd love to see more games that try to do that.

Yes, these games are different from all the games we've got listed on the left side of the page here. But that doesn't make them wrong somehow.

This woman will probably get a $750,000 government grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For whatever it's worth, and I'm still categorizing myself as one of the "new guys", especially within this sub-forum, but the reason I shared this was not because I thought the games themselves were some paragon of the medium, or that I thought we should all rush out and buy a game where the object is to herd people to a concentration camp.

I simply thought it was of interest to see a person who's designed dozens of computer games getting back to basics, especially in the medium we all enjoy. She wasn't, so far as I can tell, designing these games to sell; it was to illustrate some educative points to her kid.

By her own description, these interesting experiments in design seem to have proven successful. She was able, though bits of game design, to demonstrate to her child (and, I suppose, the audience she presented these games to) aspects of certain historical events in a different context that simply reading about it in a book.

To my mind, that's at least one thing the gaming medium can do: show us something in a way we hadn't thought about it before. To my mind, that was the goal of her experiments and, for that, it seems a success.

(as far as "is it fun?" I don't think that was ever the goal and, really, do we want to hear about someone who's made some of these events into "fun" games? Kind of a twisted concept, IMO.)

As an artist, this kind of comment annoys me. The NEA certainly never hands out individual grants even close to that level - that's large even for a science grant. Most artists struggle, and do what they do because they love and believe in it, not to simply be provocative. Most artists aren't designing "games" about the Holocaust, they are working locally, in and with their communities, and most grants given to artists are to foster such work, not as handouts for the most out-there stuff. This year, the budget for the NEA is $121 million, of which $100 million will be given in grants. Compare that to the rest of the Federal budget - it is miniscule. Compare that with what other developed nations spend on art and culture. Yet somehow it is always portrayed as a waste, with no evidence provided.

Sorry for the rant, but comments like these just further reinforce the idea that funding the arts is worthless, and makes it harder for artists to live. It has nothing to do with the "art" this designer makes.

I'm sorry, but the budget for the NEA should be $0. An artist needs to create art that the public wishes to purchase. The NEA makes the public buy art that the public will not purchase any other way. Art that's forced on others is bad art... and it's tyranny as well.

Just my opinion.

Escapist

Game

Auschwitz

. . .but I think designers have to ask themselves why they need to design a game, no matter if the goal is to educate or entertain, around a certain event.

The middle-passage example at least tries to teach the child the realities of the slave trade from the victim's perspective. I think there are much better ways at going about this, such as watching Roots or simply reading an (age appropriate) story about it. I think people within game design often far overestimate the importance of their craft as a mode of education.

In terms of Train, though, I fail to see the point. If the goal of a "teaching" game about such a horrible event doesn't ally you with the victims, than what is the point? Why would we want to pretend being an SS officer? And buying the typewriter just seems to reveal more about the designer's own bizarre fetishization of her topic than any avowed need for "authenticity" could justify.

Well, I'm not going to use this forum to get in an argument over this, but my main point is that the NEA funds a lot of arts education and community outreach programs. It is hardly handing out money for artists to do whatever they like. And most individual grants fund the making of the art - that is, supplies. They don't fund the artist's lifestyle or "buy" the art.

But besides that, the government provides funding for many things which would have little "value" in the marketplace. If we want to govern our whole lives by monetary value, than so be it, but not every worthwhile human endeavor boils down to a dollar sign. It makes it very easy to say if someone doesn't want to buy something, it's worthless, but it doesn't make it so - it just makes it easy for us to classify what is valuable without having to think about it or consider another scale of values (an ethics).

I'm sorry, but the budget for the NEA should be $0. An artist needs to create art that the public wishes to purchase. The NEA makes the public buy art that the public will not purchase any other way. Art that's forced on others is bad art... and it's tyranny as well.

Just my opinion.