Game Britannia Episodes 2 & 3

 

Games Britannia

 

Episode 2 - Monopolies and Mergers

 

 

From the start of this episode, Benjamin Woolley leads on to explain about how board games have affected and influenced the British society over the past 200 years by teaching a wide audience of people valuable morrals.

 

 

The first game looked at was Monopoly. This game was created with various playing boards globally, depicting different landmarks and areas based on the version of the board while keeping the same game rules and mechanics. There were many releases, the one we all know was based on London landmarks, with American board versions using landmarks from New York etc.

 

What I didn't realise about Monopoly was that it influenced by another game called 'The Landord's Game' also named 'Brer Fox & Brer Rabbit'. This game was very similar, however it taught players the value of fair play while pointing out the differences in classes of people with how land taxes were extremely unfair compared to taxes based on income. So it pulled in and laid bare the social inequalities of that time while keeping the game fun and teaching players the benefits of equality and fairness.

 

Woolley then goes on to explain that during the great depression, board game companies decided to help families through this time by creating games such as Cluedo and Scrabble, these games are popular games that most households have even today due to how families can come together to play.

 

Towards the end of the episode, Woolley shows how the popularity and production of board games has declined due to the rapid advancements in technology. However, board games today are still using the original idea of teaching players about the happenings around the world but with changes or improvements that water the information down, making it into a more family friendly fun game.

 

 

 

Episode 3 - Joystick Generation

 

 

With this final episode of Games Britannia, Woolley shows how classic board games moved on to the first fantasy RPG, and also how board games turned a new leaf into modern day computer games.

 

The first fantasy RPG game that was created which derived from classic board games was 'Dungeons & Dragons' (this RPG is also massivly popular even today). This game was created as a distraction from real life during the great depression to a fantasy game where people would role play a made up character from a fictional world. Players could make whatever choices they wanted in the game (even to extreme measures that would oppose the normal characteristics of the player) and creating narrative which further emerses the players into the fictional fantasy of the game.

 

It was from the idea of Dungeons & Dragons that the first computer games were born. Due to the success from the unique play style, simulation games were created for computers which gave players similar choices to those in D&D, such as Rolercoaster Tycoon, Theme Hospital and The Sims - again creating and taking players from their imperfect worlds to their fantasy perfect worlds.

 

From these examples we can see the link between board games to computer games and for this reason we see why the those particular board games should not be forgotten.

 

Finally, Wooley goes on to show that players create deep emotional connections to the characters within modern day computer games. We see examples from Grand Theft Auto, to see how players can relate to a character such as the main character in the game, and be lead to do things like steal cars and kill innocent people. We only have to look back at the history of games to see why players can make these choices - a complete opposite to choices made in real life. Players can see the consequences of their actions in an unreal environment without the penalties that they would recieve in real life.