It’s extremely jarring to see a chessboard that uses abstract symbology for its pieces rather than gendered/role based imagery. It’s a foreign thing, and as someone introduced to chess through its usual Western depiction I’d find it extremely difficult to play not having the rather opaque imagery typically depicted. Birth of the Chess Queen…

Games act as a lens for the society that births them. Out of all the articles assigned this week, that is the core takeaway. The evolution of society and the changing of games go hand in hand, more so than other mediums such as books and, later, movies. Games had the benefit of not being…

From Hofer, page 88: This image, the cover of the game, seems to encompass a lot of what was going on in 1880’s America (this game was copyrighted in 1886). We see it’s taking place in a city. The messenger boy wears a uniform; that can be part of the drill of working for someone…

If this image is any indication, pachisi seems pretty darn important if they are willing to put deific (?) figures in the art depicting its play. It’s also interesting that many of the pachisi illustrations depict women playing the game, which seems to say that women often had leisure time, the game was gender neutral,…

This week’s readings, at least the text-heavy pieces, though they covered a wide range of eras and games, all shared one assumption: that the games that are popular within a given culture or period can demonstrate certain values, priorities, or other characteristics about that time and place. I suppose this might be a pretty basic…

A lot of this week’s reading had one common notion or lesson, capitalism is bad. I probably should have seen this coming after last week’s class when Maggie warned us about this but after doing the reading I can see why Maggie was telling us about how bad capitalism is and I see why it…

In How Japanese is Pokemon, there seems to be a sociologist’s point of view on how audiovisual culture was an area dominated by the United States, but then the focus turned to Japan. This dawned the era we experience now through Japan being a technological powerhouse. Japanese animation, or anime, is interesting to follow. Tobin…