Games Britannia: Part 2

The first part of Games Britannia was intriguing and opened my awareness towards a lot of interesting old ideas which shaped how games are designed and played today. Games Britannia: Part 2 was focused more, towards the beginning, on how board games can be used for educational purposes and teaching children manners.

Commercialized games such as 'Mansion of Bliss' and 'Mansion of Happiness' were aimed to bring children out of their juvenile minds and help them mature quicker through playing board games.

Monopoly

Monopoly is a great example of a modern board game based on an older game called 'The Landlords Game', designed by Elizabeth Magie, which was a game designed to show and bring focus to the land grabbing and renting system. The theme of money, property owning and taxing players for landing on your properties, however, actually drew people in as it was a great way of escaping and playing the role of one of the land owners they were almost slaves to.

War on Terror

Probably my favorite segment of this part though was the cover on the commercial moral board game 'War on Terror' in which the aim of the game was to obtain global domination through the liberation of other countries. In the game, players can choose to either fund or fight terrorism. Funding terrorism is obviously the easiest way to quickly conquer countries. The game wasn't designed to justify the funding of terrorism but to help people understand that funding terrorism causes other complications. People began to understand the choices which lead to the decision to fund terrorism. A soldier actually sent a letter from Iraq to one of the designers in the show questioning why he was a part of the war once he'd played the game.