Between ‘Playing the American Dream’ and ‘How Japanese is Pokemon’ there is an interesting through line of games as both reflections and perpetuations of the culture that makes them. I’m genuinely happy that we got to read some material that brought that up, as it very much validates the analysis of games. That being said,…

“Round and Round the Houses: the Game of Parchisi” Figure 3:11. A pair of parchisi pieces, described as “matronly”, are made of intricately decorated carved ivory and wood.  The matrons skirts are hallowed to house small metal shavings that were made to rattle when the pieces were moved. Money, resources, and unique design techniques were…

I found our Playing the American Dream reading to be the most grabbing of this weeks readings. I suppose that I have always known that games like Monopoly are capitalist in nature, and that they advocate capitalism-related success stories of lucky “dramatic upward mobility” that is so prevalent in the capitalist realm. However, I never…