Game designer Brenda Brathwaite is perhaps best known for her work on the classic Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series of PC games, although she has certainly kept busy since. Her latest project is in fact a series of six non-digital games, and it is one of those games that I write about today.
Train is not your standard board game. It comes on a full-sized window, not in a cardboard box. There is no company logo on the rules, because there is no publisher. You cannot buy it, because only one copy exists in the world and it is not for sale. You cannot play it, unless you see it in person. If you do see it in person, it will not be at a game store but at an art gallery. And when you do play it, you will only play it once because it was intentionally designed to have no replay value. This goes way beyond the “indie” aesthetic, beyond perhaps where many so-called “art games” have gone, to something that is such uncharted territory for games that we don’t even have a name for it yet.
In terms of mechanics, Train is a relatively conventional roll-and-move, race-to-the-end game. Each turn you roll a die and either add that many passengers to your train car, or move your train car that many spaces forward. The objective is to deliver passengers to a series of locations, the names of which are printed on “terminus” cards. To give the play more of a German-game aesthetic, event cards are introduced that allow you to speed your car forward, switch tracks, block other people’s forward progress, take over other players’ cars, or derail a train car.
It doesn’t take very long for the first person to reach the end of the track with their first load of passengers. And they turn over the card and discover that their destination was Auschwitz.
And then you realize all of the subtle things that you missed in the printed rules and on the game itself. The broken glass on the window, an allusion to Kristallnacht. The word terminus itself, that now sounds more ominous than it used to. Most telling of all, the end condition in the rules that cryptically states, “Train is over when it ends.” So much of the rules are like that, intentionally left open to player interpretation – incidentally, this is also why you will be unlikely to see an online version any time soon.
With the flip of one card, you realize what you have done during play. You crammed a bunch of wooden pawns uncomfortably into your train car, even stacking them on top of each other, because you thought it didn’t matter. You played cards to speed your train to its destination. You played intelligently and optimized the mechanics in your favor, and you won. And that means you lost.
It’s easy to claim ignorance: I didn’t know what I was doing, I was only following the rules. But once you do know the results of your actions… do you keep playing? This is the important question that Train asks. It asks using the play of a game, in a way that could not be replicated in any other artistic medium. And now it is no longer a board game, but takes on the properties of a tabletop RPG. Do you refuse to play? Do you continue playing, with the new goal of saving everyone (a goal that is very possible within the framework of the mechanics)? Do you keep playing anyway in order to further explore the dark efficiency of the system?
As with Super Columbine Massacre RPG, the very mention of using a game to examine a serious topic is something that will surely follow with some critical praise from people who desperately want any excuse to claim games as an art form, and horrendous damnation from people who will assume that by virtue of its game-ness it automatically trivializes the subject material. Both positions are unfortunately arguments from ignorance, made all the more frustrating by how difficult it will ultimately be for people to play this thing. And yet, Train is what it is, and having played it myself I have to say that it could not be any other way.
Saw that coming
Surely I wasn't the only person who saw the pawns stuffed into cattle cars and figured out what the outcome was. You could pick that up before you even read any of the article.
Why do you act as if you have to contemplate the moral level?
"And now it is no longer a board game, but takes on the properties of a tabletop RPG. Do you refuse to play? Do you continue playing, with the new goal of saving everyone (a goal that is very possible within the framework of the mechanics)? Do you keep playing anyway in order to further explore the dark efficiency of the system?"
I don't know why you feel forced to start addressing the game this way?
Sure you can start thinking of it in these terms. But you seem to act as if you just would? Particularly your notion of "You played intelligently and optimized the mechanics in your favor, and you won. And that means you lost.". You can start thinking in moral terms and think you've lost, sure. You can do so, but it's simply a choice to do so, not as if there is some property the game actually has that MAKES it play occur at this level.
It's pedantic of me - but it's important to make clear what is a property of the game and what is simply a responce that you reflexively had or chose to have. This is a real problem in RPG's, where people insist the game can do X, and when someone else doesn't reflexively do X or choose to do X, people treat them as disruptive because it's a 'fact' that the game does X.
Epiphany
Ian is essentially narrating a personal experience. He is presented with a game; he reads the rules. As a gamer, he immediately starts thinking about how to optimize outcomes. He does so to the best of his ability. He gets to the destination, and draws a card. It says that his destination is Auschwitz.
Suddenly, he has an epiphany, as to the actual intent of the designer, and the nature of the people (or meeples) he is transporting, and their eventual fate. This sends shivers up his spine. It's an emotional moment.
The fact that the game can evoke this emotional moment is a strong point in its favor.
I had a different reaction, because I encountered the game in a different way. Brenda sent me the rules. I read the rules. I looked at the pic of the game layout. I thought "This is a dumb game, but maybe it works in a gallery context." Then I looked at the cards and said, "Oh, okay. I get it. But it's still a dumb game." Because, of course, my aesthetic of the game says it has to be a game, and not a game-like object that plays off our expectations of the game to create an emotional effect.
Then again, my experience of the game was different from Ian's not merely because of a possibly different aesthetic, but also because we encountered the game in different ways: He actually played it, which does make all the difference.
I think both of us have it right, in our own ways: It's at least in potentio a powerful work, because it plays off our expectations of the game. But it's not, in its own right, a good game qua game.
I think you're reading too much into the idea that Ian "can" or "should" play the game in a different fashion now that he has had his epiphany. Actually, there's really no point in playing the game afterward: the epiphany is the point. Yes?
Meanwhile, incidentally, I'm contemplating the nature of the gameplay and its simulation value, and concluding that in a way, they don't mesh. That is to say, the actual way that Deutsche Bahn packed people onto railcars, as I understand it, was to essentially say, "Get in, or you will be shot." It was up to the people involved to figure out how to solve the problem of close packing in a limited physical space.
It does occur to me that there would, however, be potential for a similar game involving the American slave trade, partly because there are real trade-offs involved. As a slave trader, your objective is to transport the highest dollar value of slaves from Africa to America. You don't give a crap if some of them die, of course, but if you pack them too tightly, taking less in the way of food and water in order to carry more merchandise, you will wind up with less to sell on the American end, because more will die. In other words, jam them in as tightly as possible to maximize the number surviving the journey, regardless of the death toll -- but jam them too tight, and there are diminishing returns, because more will get sick in the filth generated by the others, and you won't have enough water and food to sustain them.
Similarly, the conditions of the journey are not entirely predictable -- if you are becalmed in the Sargasso Sea for some time, many more of the slaves in the hold will die than if you have a quick passage. So the right balance between provisions and chattel is not predictably calculable in advance.
Thus, there's the potential for a truly dire and repulsive Oregon Trail-style game, in which you make decisions about how closely to pack, and how much cargo space to devote to provisions, and then have a series of die-rolls to determine what happens during the course of the journey, with the death toll certainly recorded, but with your score ultimately dependent solely on your profit.
I'm tempted to do it -- it's basically a simple resource-tradeoff design with a bunch of die-roll table look-ups -- but I'm not sure I have the stomach for it.
American slave trade game.
It does occur to me that there would, however, be potential for a similar game involving the American slave trade.
Funny, The Escapist describes that subject as the beginning to Brenda's path to 'Train'.
The first game came about after a discussion with her 10-year-old daughter about an elementary school lesson on the slave trade. While her daughter had all the facts memorized, Brathwaite was dismayed to learn that she didn't grasp what the Middle Passage was like for the Africans who were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic. So she did what any game designer worth her salt would do: She made a game out of it.
Just noting the choice involved
I'm not sure I'm noting anything terribly controversial? Like if book X was reported as written by author A, but was actually written by author B and I note that, it's not controversial. Here it's just similar pedantic detail noting - the game doesn't MAKE you think at the moral level of saving the pawns or quiting, etc. You can decide to think at that level, and that's fine and an interesting thing to do. But the game doesn't make you do that - at best its materials trigger a memonic reflexive responce to think at that level. Or you can just choose to start thinking at that level.
"Actually, there's really no point in playing the game afterward: the epiphany is the point. Yes?"
Is it?
Or can you choose to think it is the point, if you want? (taking it were talking about what we think, rather than what the author intended, for the time being)
You sound like you imagine
You sound like you imagine people have a lot more control over their thinking than they often do. My reaction to the end revelation of the game would probably be brief shock, a moment of wry amusement at how the designer 'got me', a slight feeling unease and then not thinking about it any more and going to do something else. I wouldn't choose to respond that way, I can't control my responses. I don't think anyone can, on some level. So when you say he is choosing to react that way, I don't think he is. I don't think he could opt to react any other way. (A conscious choice to do so would only be denying how he had reacted, not actually changing it.)
I think your blending
I think your blending emotional reaction with physical reaction/action. You might not be able to control you emotions - that doesn't mean you can't control your physical reactions. The game might trigger emotions, but that doesn't mean the game forces your physical actions in terms of saving the pawns or quitting (both are physical actions). But the review doesn't note this as an exciting way of now looking at the game - it depicts it as the only way to look at the game. Not as a deliberate effort to say its the only way, but out of reflex.
Am I the only one who
Am I the only one who thought the 'surprise' ending manipulative and cheap?
"Am I the only one who
"Am I the only one who thought the 'surprise' ending manipulative and cheap?"
No.
Stunning
Just reading the way the game comes out gave me a chill. And the range of responses to this article, from tragic admiration to anger... even outrage... shows fantastic power in the piece. One need not even play the game to be affected by it. I laud the designer for having the emotional depth, and daring, to construct a game like this.
strange
without any experience of the realisation during an actual game, of what the game is about, and having it outlined in multiple online posts, i see this game as something to be admired.
its strange that films,tv programs and books are permitted to be entertaining without being fun, and to try and create other emotions within its participants/observers, yet if a game, (whether it be computer or board), attempts to create the same emotions within its player, no one seems to understand the angle.
i agree, it can be seen as a bit of a 'gotcha' moment, but at least someone is attempting to try new things in genres never before experimenting with such themes.
i personally wont be playing this game, simply because without the veil, i see no point.
i hope more people take a page from her play book and experiment with the parameters and boundaries of the genre they create for.