[This post is the english translation of an article I wrote for Apogeonline. If you can understand Italian, you may read it here.]
There’s a very peculiar series of boardgames. First of all, they’re not published in the usual ways. Just a few people, as for today, had the chance of playing one of them. Their inventor, Brenda Brathwaite, is now showing them during ludic-themed conferences around the east coast of the US. Brathwaite, 22 published titles in the videogame industry from the nineties ’til today is currently exploring non-digital games, in order to better understanding the mechanics (which are a game’s functional atoms) and how they can convey messages and influence people’s culture.
Brenda started her quest when her daughter asked her to explain the Middle Passage, the network of goods exchange between Europe and America involving slave trade from Africa, with a game. This very game, tells Brathwaite, managed to show the complex case in a better way than school lessons. This experience moved the game designer to think deeper about how ludic mechanics could communicate and put the player in front of difficult decision and consequences. So she decided to develop a series of six boardgames, which she called, referring to McLuhan, “The mechanic is the message”. Today the series is made up by Middle Passage, Siochan Leat, a game about Brenda’s Irish family and Train.
Train is pretty much a classic race-to-the-limit game, in which the winner is the first player to reach a certain goal. Each player controls a train over a track. The goal? stuff as much pawns as possible in the coach and then unload it at the end of the journey, where the draw of a “Terminus” card will reveal the final destination. During the trip, there are a lot of unexpected events, represented by action cards the player can use to change the end of the contest, for example switching tracks with another player, or forcing him to unload all his passengers and so on. What strikes in a really powerful way the people playing train is what is written on the “Terminus” card. Each of them has written the name of a nazi concentration camp. Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau are words bringing a strong meaning to the elements of the game. Those yellow, stylized pawns are now jew prisoner on theyr way to a lager. The window where the tracks are set, with a glass broken in a ritual way at the start, recalls kristallnacht. Even more, the typewriter which accomodate the rules, an original SS find, bought by Brathwaite herself, cast a grim shadow on the player’s very approach to the game, with the blind obedience to rules that now seem orders.
Such a situation could make people think about an after all ordinary game, counting just on the final twist to shock players. That’s not the case. As Brathwaite tells, the experience of the game is not less involving for people who have already played it or who know the final. Mechanic is the message, even in the very gestures that player must do to complete his mission: pawns are not easy to be put in the coach, and unloading the train is as much as difficult. As Ian Bogost points out, each gesture in the game is carefully thought to bear a precise meaning, and knowing how the game ends doesn’t spoil its meaning.
Train is an experience which is both physical and social. It is easy to think about the latest evoultion of videogames, which taking advantage of immersive interfaces seems to put an increasing attention on the body interaction , and by connecting with social networks tries to enhance the social aspects of play. According to Brenda Brathwaite gestural interfaces are really important to offer players new experiences, but they are not so decisive from the game designer point of view: designers have more subtle ways to involve players. As for social networks, instead, interesting things are happening: Facebbok is the platform where a lot is going on, a lot more interesting than Twitter, which until now failed as a gaming platform.
The easiness in delivering a game with social networks and in generating a discussion around it completes a mosaic revealing how games, through interactivity and mechanics, are becoming the medium of the new millennium. Or at least an art form capable of involving and moving people without necessarily be funny.
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