Board Game Ideology — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #108

As board games are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with adults, we ask: What’s the rela­tion­ship between a board game’s mechan­ics and its nar­ra­tive? Does the “mes­sage” of a board game mat­ter?

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by game design­er Tom­my Maranges, edu­ca­tor Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason, and ex-philoso­pher Al Bak­er to talk about re-skin­ning games, design­ing play­er expe­ri­ences, play styles, game com­plex­i­ty, and more.

Some of the games we men­tion include Puer­to Rico, Monop­oly, Set­tlers of Catan, Sor­ry, Munchkin, Sushi Go, Wel­come To…, Code­names, Pan­dem­ic, Occam Hor­ror, Ter­ra Mys­ti­ca, chess, Tick­et to Ride, Splen­dor, Pho­to­syn­the­sis, Spir­it Island, Escape from the Dark Cas­tle, and Wingspan.

Some arti­cles that fed our dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

• “The Board Games That Ask You to Reen­act Colo­nial­ism” by Luke Winkie
• “Board Games Are Get­ting Real­ly, Real­ly Pop­u­lar” by Dar­ron Cum­mings
• “8 His­tor­i­cal Board Games, from Diverse Design­ers, That Show Great Promise” by Char­lie Hall
• “How a Board Game About Birds Became a Sur­prise Block­buster” by Dan Kois
• “How Clas­sic Board Games Are Bring­ing Fam­i­lies Clos­er Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic” by Drew Weisholtz
• “Keep Your Game Night Rolling (At A Safe Dis­tance) With These 3 Online Ser­vices” by Petra May­er

The two games Tom­my cre­at­ed that we bring up are Secret Hitler and Inhu­man Con­di­tions.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.