Cardboard Ghosts: Using Physical Games to Model and Critique Systems

Cardboard Ghosts: Using Physical Games to Model and Critique Systems explores both the capabilities and limitations of overtly political board games to model systems and make arguments. Two major approaches are considered and contrasted: one, built around immersion and identification, creates empathy. The other, applying the Verfremdungseffekt to distance the player from the game, creating space for reflection. Uncomfortable questions of player roles and complicity when modelling oppressive systems are examined.

Throughout this book, board game designer Amabel Holland draws connections to computer games, literature, theatre, television, music, film, and her own life, framing board games as an achingly human art form, albeit one still growing into its full potential. Anyone interested in that potential, or in the value of political art in today’s world, will find many provocative and enriching ideas within.

Key Features:

• Surveys the history of commercial board games as a polemical and persuasive form
• Explores games existing at the edges of the industry that push the boundaries of what games can do and be
• Grapples with the ethical and moral considerations of simulating real-world horrors
• Provides a case study of the author’s influential game This Guilty Land
• Lively prose and personal anecdotes makes complicated theory digestible for a wide audience