An essay collection exploring the board game's relationship to the built environment, revealing the unexpected ways that play reflects perceptions of space.
Board games harness the creation of entirely new worlds. From the medieval warlord to the modern urban planner, players are permitted to inhabit a staggering variety of roles and are prompted to incorporate preexisting notions of placemaking into their decisions. To what extent do board games represent the social context of their production? How might they reinforce or subvert normative ideas of community and fulfillment? In Playing Place: Board Games, Popular Culture, Space (MIT Press, 2023), Chad Randl and D. Medina Lasansky have curated a collection of thirty-seven fascinating essays, supplemented by a rich trove of photo illustrations, that unpack these questions with breadth and care.
Although board games are often recreational objects, their mythologies and infrastructure do not exist in a vacuum—rather, they echo and reproduce prevalent cultural landscapes. This thesis forms the throughline of pieces reflecting on subjects as diverse as the rigidly gendered fantasies of classic mass-market games; the imperial convictions embedded in games that position player-protagonists as conquerors establishing dominion over their “discoveries”; and even the uncanny prescience of games that have players responding to a global pandemic. Representing a thrilling convergence of historiography, architectural history, and media studies scholarship, Playing Place suggests not only that tabletop games should be taken seriously but also that the medium itself is uniquely capable of facilitating our critical consideration of structures that are often taken for granted.
Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Nahaufnahmen.ch, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.
Iris Moon, "Melancholy Wedgwood" (MIT Press, 2024)
Catherine D'Ignazio, "Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action" (MIT Press, 2024)
Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia, "The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice" (MIT Press, 2024)
Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere, "Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power" (MIT Press, 2024)
The Scientific Attitude
Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, "The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games" (MIT Press, 2024)
Diana Chapman Walsh, "The Claims of Life: A Memoir" (MIT Press, 2023)
Matthew H. Hersch, "Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle" (MIT Press, 2023)
Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age" (MIT Press, 2024)
Brandon R. Brown, "Sharing Our Science: How to Write and Speak STEM" (MIT Press, 2023)
Peter D. McDonald, "Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer" (MIT Press, 2024)
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, "The Inhumans and Other Stories: A Selection of Bengali Science Fiction" (MIT Press, 2024)
Benjamin J. Pauli, "Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis" (MIT Press, 2019)
Murray Dick, "The Infographic: A History of Data Graphics in News and Communications" (MIT Press, 2020)
Thomas Metzinger, "The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports" (MIT Press, 2024)
Sten Grillner, "The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function" (MIT Press, 2023)
Jacob Ward, "Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications" (MIT Press, 2024)
Richard A. Detweiler, "The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment" (MIT Press, 2021)
Marco Armiero et al., "Mussolini's Nature: An Environmental History of Italian Fascism" (MIT Press, 2022)
Lee McIntyre, "On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy" (MIT Press, 2023)
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