Early last year I started upon a fixation with board games. In my youth I spent a considerable amount of time in front of computer and television screens playing video games but of late, my focus on cardboard counters and wooden meeples has largely supplanted my desire for the digital. I suspect this is related to my inherent suspicion of this so called information age, wherein every aspect of our lives is increasingly being plugged into the internet. The things that we covet, the objects of our desire rarely have physicality anymore. We say we love our smartphones and laptops but these items are purely a mediator, a delivery system for that which we are actually consuming. I enjoy playing games because they are an avenue for challenging the mind, storytelling and having a bit of fun. This of course can be achieved through a computer screen but the interaction has a more diminished quality.
There is an increasing alienation in this era between subject and object. As was previously mentioned, the objects of our desire are increasingly becoming digital but this possesses a problem. We are beings of sense and it is through a varied collection of sense that we perceive our world. If we appreciate an object we perceive its values via touch, sight, scent, sound, its weight and so on but through the medium of the two-dimensional screen we are limited to at most two of these senses and they are of course skewed by their confinement within the limitations of the object projecting them. Of course technological development in these areas is increasing rapidly and in time we will have, at least the simulacra of three dimensions, smell and so on. There is always going to be a limitation to this process and the finitude of the object of this process will always possess an alienating quality, something akin to the uncanny valley spoken of in aesthetics. I am reminded of those video games which allow you, either through a zooming function or quickness of in-game camera, to position your point of view inside of the various models on-screen. What happens in these instances is that you break through the polygonal façade of the digital model and realize its essence, which is a profound emptiness; the models are always hollow, a void in drag. Despite all this, digital media will always be an excellent medium for story telling but the more it is refined the more limited it becomes because the increased definition and thoroughness of representation excludes the space where imagination takes play.
A board game can come with a myriad of different components whether they be little wooden meeples (see above image), cardboard tokens, metal coins, cards and so on. By themselves they are just bits of paper, wood and plastic but it is through the rules, the system, that these miniscule objects gain prominence. And because they are often presented in an abstract sense there is considerable room for one’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Each token, card or miniature is a condensation of a concept. With every action you undertake with that token you are providing actualization for that concept. The entire value of the playing is provided by you as the player. It is your faith in the goals and the rules which keep the enterprise in motion and it is this investment which makes the activity worthwhile.
When you think about this you realize that it is analogous to the very same underpinnings of society itself. For is not a society a collection of social contracts or rules? It is our faith and loyalty in and to these contracts which makes a society worthwhile since it provides the relative safety and fairness that all reasonable beings desire. The social contracts we are beholden to are the cogs, the machinery and lubrication of our activity and it is our faith and investment in such that acts as the energy moving the crank which keeps it all in motion.
We can take our analogy further and reveal a shortcoming in the collective game we call our society. Whether a game’s components are made from the most premium of plastics or scribbled on loose pieces of paper its value will always come down to the quality of its rules and the resultant gameplay. Though there is a pool of game mechanics which will always have a place in games to come there is still room for ceaseless variation and improvement. If a particular game exists whose chief defect is a too great reliance on the luck of dice, a new game can be created which captures the essence of what made the former game good but decreases the reliance on luck through a different mechanic which puts more power in the decisions of the players. This admirable quality of revolution within the design process of board games is present in many other aspects of human life. No matter what we create there is always room for refinement and reorganization. And yet in our most grand of creations, our very society, we seem to have forgotten this essential creed of revolution, of putting visions of change into practice. But instead of refining our world, improving it for all players, we are letting it succumb into a state of hopeless, stale, self-defeating entropy.
Sophia Slap 