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Unfortunately, /r/boardgames is a cesspool and has been for years at this point. I stopped visiting because I was sick and tired of reading people's political opinions in a forum which is ostensibly about board games.
Me too. For a time I tried to write a board gaming blog, and it used to get a lot of traffic when I'd post it to reddit. But eventually the politics of the sub just crowded me out. Especially after the mods themselves started parroting lines like "Everything is political" when I complained that I just wanted to enjoy some escapism. And this was back when people were arguing over Days of Wonder removing slaves from Five Tribes (still have my copy with slave cards), or when a game I backed on Kickstarter, Draco Magi, had it's cover artwork censored to make the woman on it less "sexualized". I think the final straw was when Shut Up & Sit Down posted this terrifyingly Orwellian review of Cards Against Humanity essentially stating it was a terrible game because it caused you to have politically incorrect thoughts, and people should not play it to avoid accidental thought crimes. This point of view was not appreciated.
Things have gotten so much worse since then.
An Elizabeth Hargrave rant wells within me.
That said, Cards Against Humanity is a terrible game that's funny once and then just becomes endless dick jokes.
Do tell? I've been significantly checked out of the hobby. Just broke my heart when GMTGames, one of my last bastions of male, pale and stale that I enjoy so much, cancelled Scramble for Africa in response to massive backlash around it's "colonizing" themes. I heard a smidgen about Wingspan winning all the awards, and some accusations of favoritism because it was designed by a woman. But nothing that implies the sorts of hysterical cancellation games or vote rigging that occurs during say, the Hugo Awards.
Yeah, not liking Cards Against Humanity because it gets boring is fine. Because it does. Not liking Cards Against Humanity because it goes against The Ministry of Truth... that's a whole other things. Leave it to a Brit to treat 1984 like a manual.
I personally think Wingspan is an over-complicated and half-baked game that is highly overrated precisely because it's designed by a woman who's a loud feminist in the game designer space.
However, Elizabeth Hargrave also has gone on repeated crusades against Gamelyn Games (publishers of the Tiny Epic series) because of their "objectification of women." I.e., women are too pretty. Now normally when I see these sorts of complaints, I expect to see chainmail bikinis or women in obvious sexual poses - you know, stuff that is clearly for the "male gaze" and whether or not you think that's a bad thing, you can't deny that that's what it is. But all the examples Hargrave has ever complained about were pictures where the men were also beefcakey, and the women were not obviously "sexualized," just... you know, a little too pretty, a little too hot.
I struggle to suppress uncharitable thoughts about women who resent the existence of more attractive women and reminders that men indeed find such women attractive.
Hargrave has of course also gone on rants about "underrepresentation of women" in game design (i.e., not winning enough awards), which almost got Ryan Dancy, the CEO of Alderac cooked when he made the mistake of trying to respond with the "pipeline" argument and dared to say something about women not taking criticism very well. (Hargrave did not take the criticism very well. Dancy duly groveled and apologized.)
Well, googling what she looks like more or less perfectly matched what I imagined from her politics. So I guess there is that.
Reminds me of Charlize Theron.... in Monster. That hairline in particular made me wonder if we were talking about an actual woman at all, or a person who went the male pattern baldness to estrogen route you start to see more often.
But nobody ever praised board gamer for their looks. Or smell. So you can't say she doesn't look the part.
Man, now I wonder, can you still chew the body odor at Gencon?
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I in no way want to endorse scolds going on moral crusades, but I do think that the boobs+butt torso twist pose is stupid, and that mage is very clearly drawn in said pose.
Also, agreed on wingspan.
Eh, I'll give you the boobs+butt torso twist being a very comic book pose, and the other chick is showing a lot of cleavage, but I maintain that standing next to a half-naked roided axeman, you've basically got highly unrealistic power fantasy body types.
I can't find the other one she complained about, but it was a different game where they clearly tried to "do better" with a female archer on the cover in a more realistic archer pose, but Hargrave still found her objectionable because her butt was too round and she was pretty.
Yeah, the axeman there is definitely not just meant to be a power fantasy, but also be attractive as such, even if most (straight) guys won't spell it out. The ponytail is the cherry on top, but the giant skull codpiece and flashing abs are a Tell, and one that's perfectly reasonable if it's an option.
((I will join with the original complaints that the art and typography isn't good, though depending on time and cost constraints I can be more forgiving on that.))
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If I’m buying off eBay how do I know which edition has the slave cards intact?
No clue, because even if someone got the original edition, if they were conformist enough Days of Wonder allowed them to request updated game components with the Arabic slave trade expunged.
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Ugh, there are few ideas I hate more than the "everything is political" mantra. I know exactly what you mean because I saw some of the same behavior. People weren't allowed to push back on politics and say "I just want to enjoy my leisure activity in peace", they were expected to just shut up and let the politics bullies ruin their fun. I think that insisting that everything is political is the most toxic idea I've seen in any sort of hobbyist space, bar none. And I mean bar none - I think that even something like outright racism (ugly as it is) ruins hobbies less than people trying to make it into their activism soapbox.
That's so unsurprising to me that it hurts a bit. Those guys are absolutely insufferable. I guess it's not shocking, because it's people who came from Rock, Paper Shotgun which was itself insufferable for injecting politics into everything. The moment when I realized I needed to stop listening to SU&SD was when they had a review of the game Istanbul, where they spent a significant amount of time complaining about Orientalism or something. And of course, when people on /r/boardgames pointed out "this is really obnoxious", they got told off for it.
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I have a half-baked theory- I think that board games tend to be nerdy (of course) but also relatively low-stress, and low-competitive. I know there are exceptions, like professional chess, but for the most part it's a pretty relaxed hobby. The result is a group that isn't fierce enough to resist takeover from the political entryists.
And, Fundamentally, the hobby still has a chip on its shoulder when it comes to being actually inclusive (i.e., bringing in non-nerds and especially women). Board games are only fun if you have other people to play with, so there's going to be a push to support whatever "current thing" is.
yeah, you can't just chill at home enjoying a board game by yourself. You need other people, and usually a specific number of very dedicated gamers to play the more complicated games. Putting together a group of exactly 7 people to play a multi-hour game of Diplomacy is something of a game in itself, so you really have to work at it and bring in anyone you can get sometimes, even if they're kinda toxic or bad at the game.
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