Let's Roll: Comparative representations of empire in board games

Game scholar Stewart Woods, in his monograph Eurogames, explains that in the Western world, there currently exist two major sub-categories of hobbyist board games, AngloAmerican and European. While these terms are geographical, they now refer to different styles of design. Woods’ historical quantitative analysis stops short of cultural critique, but his discourse mirrors the online board game community’s pride in Eurogames for their ability to design non-violent representation. While Anglo-American games are said to be formally constructed to depict belligerence and little more, it will be argued that they are capable of doing so with nuance. In contrast, Eurogames have developed new forms of play which abstract or excise violence from violent histories, rewriting and whitewashing the past events, and consequently producing problematic depictions.